x200s with SSD (Corsair Force GT 120 GB) not working well... :(

I recently got my hands on a Thinkpad x200s with the WXGA+ screen, 4GB DDR3, 1.86 GHz processor. It came with a mechanical HDD but without any installed OS. So I switched the mechanical HDD for a Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD straight away and installed Windows 8 Release Preview from MSDNAA.

The SSD has been running great for 8 months in a fairly powerful desktop computer being both extremely fast and surprisingly reliable (showed no problems people had with Sandforce-controllers).

In the Thinkpad however, I don't seem to get the desired performance. Sequential read is about 1/4 while the rest of the numbers such as 4K read/write are half or worse (including Access time). I know synthetic benchmarks aren't the best but I am pretty sure the computer could be quicker.


It doesn't say OK after storahci like it does on my desktop computer. Could this be the problem?

• AHCI is activated in BIOS
• fsutil command returns DisableDeleteNotify = 0
• It is properly aligned (removed partition and created new at installation)
• I tried without installing chipset drivers and with Intel drivers (which made it worse)
• I did the registry hack changing "Start" from 3 to 4 (slight improvement)
• The computer is running in High Performance mode

I have no idea what else to try. Unfortunately my internet is dial up modem-fast (I get about 5-10 kB/s) so I cannot try Windows 7. Downloading drivers and browsing the internet is painful as well.
Any ideas what I can try?
Could the "storeahci" not being OK be a clue?

Help

 

The Corsair Force 120GB SSD is a SATA III drive, if your system supports such interface (which from the looks of things your desktop does) then it will reach some good speeds. The Lenovo ThinkPad X200s on the other hand can only support SATA II speeds so the drive won't reach anywhere near its stated performance. You also have to remember that Windows 8 is a not a polished OS yet, there will be drivers that isn't fully optimised yet which may also include the default AHCI SATA driver from Microsoft.

 

Thank you for the reply.
Correct, it's a SATA III drive which my desktop supports. However, I believe that the speeds I'm getting are much slower than one would expect from a SATA II interface.

It might be true that Win 8 is not polished as it's not released yet, but I would expect that SSD's would work well as it has become so much more common compared to when they launched Win 7.

I would be happy if I could reach 50% in sequential read/write and almost the same numbers for 4K read/write and Access time with the laptop.
This article comparing SATA II and III shows that SATA II can match III in cases except for really high sequential read/write speeds.
SATA Controller Performance Explored - Puget Custom Computers


So I cannot accept this as normal quite yet

 

Problem solved!
Actually it was as easy as rolling back to Windows 7. So I haven't reallly found the cause in Windows 8...
Although there is not supposed to be any difference between 7 and 8 in terms of how an SSD performs (Source: StorAHCI Replaces MSAHCI) I guess the chipset or something becomes the bottleneck on Windows 8.

The computer feels more nippy in all situations.
Can't tell if it's due to actual higher performance, differences between 7 and 8, or a significantly faster internet connection
Synthetic benchmarks say there is though.



Now I am happy