Slow Speeds with Crucial M4

climhazzard36

climhazzard36

climhazzard36

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I have a crucial M4 64GB attached to the SATA3_0 port on my GA-P67A-UD3-B3.
The SSD's firmware has been updated to 000F and my Mobo's bios is F9 (both newest)

However I'm getting very slow speeds. Compared to average speeds online I'm getting half speed for Sequential read/write and 4k-64 read/write/
any help would be great.

(Attached: AS SSD Benchmark result)

EAB3D.png
 
These are the general guidelines to install an o/s on a new SSD. Hopefully the more experienced members can help.

Tip 1) A new install of Windows 7 should be put on the SSD to make the most of it. You may need to remove ALL other hdd's from the system during the install if you get "unable to find partition" or similar errors.

Generally speaking Windows should be installed on the SSD and applications / games should be installed on a standard HDD. Obviously the bigger the SSD, the less relevant this is.

Tip 2) enable AHCI in the bios before you install windows 7 that's very important.

This ensures windows detects that it is on an SSD and should help windows change various settings such as TRIM, turning off defrag etc.

Tip 3) Disable disk defragmenter, superfetch, hibernation (start > cmd (right click, run as admininstrator) > powercfg -h off) and Indexing. (See Useful Link 2) )

Tip 4) Windows default locations can be changed to use a standard hdd, keeping your ssd from becoming full. Right click on My Documents (and music etc), properties... Click the Location tab and choose where you want it moving to.

Tip 5) Pagefile. Keep this as small as you can on your SSD to free up space, or move its location to your HDD. Alternatively you can create 2 pagefiles, a small one on your ssd, and a larger on your hdd.

Tip 6) System Restore. You should reduce the amount of space taken up by system restore.
Click to expand...
 
Tip 3 is partial junk, if the drive is fast enough, windows will automatically disable defrag & superfetch for that drive.
Disabling defrag et al completely impacts upon any mechanical drives fitted to the system.
And I see Tip 5 is still doing the rounds, Microsoft themselves have noted that an SSD is the perfect place for the pagefile.
 
With Tip 5 I simply removed the Pagefile as I got 8GB RAM.

anyways the problem still remains, its acting like its running in SATA2 although connected to a SATA3 port and with the chipset drivers installed :/
 
Check that it's on an Intel controller and not a Marvell one.
Try another SATA cable, I believe some can't do SATA III speeds (may be wrong here), personally I bought a bunch of Silverstone braided 500mm SATA III cables.
 
Yours seems to be running the iaStor drivers; that's not right as mine says msahci there.
 
QUOTE=bledd.;21771044]Check that it's on an Intel controller and not a Marvell one.
[/QUOTE]

+1

Check that you are using one of your two native Intel Sata 6GBS ports and not one of the Marvell add-on controller's ports,

Regds, JR
 
AS SSD Benchmark 1.5.3784.37609
------------------------------
Name: M4-CT256 M4SSD2 SCSI Disk Device
Firmware: 0309
Controller: mv91xx
Offset: 103424 K - OK
Size: 238.47 GB
Date: 26/04/2012 20:24:49
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 371.18 MB/s
Write: 223.18 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 19.92 MB/s
Write: 49.84 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 178.19 MB/s
Write: 157.44 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0.103 ms
Write: 0.416 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 235
Write: 230
Total: 585
------------------------------


okie so those r mine any good ? or do i need to tweak
 
Thanks a lot for the replies.

I found the problem and its a really embarrassing one. I accidentally plugged my HDD into the sata3 port and the SSD into the adjacent SATA2 port as the two sata cables were the same colour and tied together.

They must have twisted around when I wasn't paying attention and I plugged them in the wrong slots :/

I have experimented with the default and the iastor drivers and the default yield the best results for me. Here are the new results:

PdDer.png


Lesson here: Double check for silly mistakes!
 
I have one slight problem still. When I boot up the welcome screen shows for about 5 seconds.
I have only what I need enabled at boot.

Is it possible to reduce this time even with a few startup programs enabled?
 
hhmn am i reading it wrong or are my write times a lot better but your read times are a lot better ?

anyway to change that.. ?

mind you i just realised i did have a game open at the same time i think i should shut everything down first

what do you think
 
I think it may be down to the sata3 controller, people tend to have different results all over.
Or it could be policy settings.

I've got "Enable write caching on the device" checked and "Turn off Windows write caching..." unchecked
 
craarc said:
hhmn am i reading it wrong or are my write times a lot better but your read times are a lot better ?
Click to expand...

Looking at your previous post it looks like you're using the Marvell controller. Change it to the native Intel one. And your SSD is 256gb, which has faster write speeds than the 64gb version due to the way the controller works. You're also using firmwire 0309 instead of the latest 000F one.
 
Yeah just looked it up:

m4 64GB:
READ: 500MB/s
WRITE: 125MB/s

m4 256GB:
READ: 500MB/s
WRITE: 260MB/s

Also the read speed is only 500MB/s in the newest firmware, previous to that its 415MB/s, so update like Orcvader said :)
 
0009, 0309 and 000F gives the 500mb read speeds, I think craarc's main problem here is he's using the Marvell controller instead, which never gives full 6Gbps speeds...
 
Ahh right.

Btw just to say, solved the 5 second delay. If you have a gigabyte motherboard don't install the 'SMART 6' program, it can/does cause a delay. I uninstalled the program now i'm booting in under 20 seconds.
 
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