Assistance - Calling all Samsung EVO owners
- Thread starter Aurhinius
- Start date
Results for the second EVO I got from Samsung -
Old drive on my partners PC - totally different to mine.
Intel Z77 SATA 3 AHCI port.
Old drive before clone -
Yeah not surprised and not good!
New drive after Acronis 2011 clone - Aligned perfectly
Striking similarity to mine after a clone!
Here's mine again - remember these are totally different source and destination drives with totally different data patterns from totally different PC's. Though both windows 7 64bit.
Only conclusion I can come to is this is the EVO's way of dealing with a large data copy and how it spreads out the data.
Old drive on my partners PC - totally different to mine.
Intel Z77 SATA 3 AHCI port.
Old drive before clone -
Yeah not surprised and not good!
New drive after Acronis 2011 clone - Aligned perfectly
Striking similarity to mine after a clone!
Here's mine again - remember these are totally different source and destination drives with totally different data patterns from totally different PC's. Though both windows 7 64bit.
Only conclusion I can come to is this is the EVO's way of dealing with a large data copy and how it spreads out the data.
Plus even though I used the optimise SSD on EaseUS, it knocked my alignment out, so I had to realign my OS partition, that was another 40mins
I`ve never had a problem with alignment after a restore. Having said that, I haven't used the restore facility that often.
I`ve just tested with HDTune again, shortly after switching on this morning. The graph was not as smooth as it was last night, there were a couple of spikes, although they weren't dropping very low.
I have just deleted about 15gb of files, retested, and the graph is almost level again. I am about to install Mass Effect 2, and fill the SSD with other files. What I'm trying to do is simulate a couple of months worth of work on the drive to see what effect it has. I`ve already added and removed a fair bit of data, and so far there doesn't seem to be any degradation. I'll keep "hammering" the drive and see what happens.
Here's something that might help understand what's going on with the "heartbeat".
This test has just been carried out after Installing Mass Effect 2, deleteing 30gb of data, losing 400mb of temporary files with CCleaner, downloading and installing the latest AMD catalyst drivers. In order of capacity free my drive went -
60gb > 46gb > 74gb. I also rebooted the system once after the catalyst install, played Borderlands2 for 10 minutes and generally "messed around".
The heartbeat effect was achieved by running and manually refreshing Samsung Magician every time the graph reached a 25gb marker.
It seems that external disc activity has an effect on the benchmark. It therefore seems likely that it's not the SSD causing it, it is some background activity. Maybe those who see the heatbeat effect have an app or service running that accesses the SSD or SATA port every few seconds.
UPDATE. Quite a difference when tested with an older version of HD Tune.
This test has just been carried out after Installing Mass Effect 2, deleteing 30gb of data, losing 400mb of temporary files with CCleaner, downloading and installing the latest AMD catalyst drivers. In order of capacity free my drive went -
60gb > 46gb > 74gb. I also rebooted the system once after the catalyst install, played Borderlands2 for 10 minutes and generally "messed around".
The heartbeat effect was achieved by running and manually refreshing Samsung Magician every time the graph reached a 25gb marker.
It seems that external disc activity has an effect on the benchmark. It therefore seems likely that it's not the SSD causing it, it is some background activity. Maybe those who see the heatbeat effect have an app or service running that accesses the SSD or SATA port every few seconds.
UPDATE. Quite a difference when tested with an older version of HD Tune.
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Deleted member 138126
Deleted member 138126
I think this perfectly sums up the issue.
Perhaps this is the key? May try a backup with EaseUs Todo and then restore using this option and see if that changes anything. Wonder what this option actually does...
Restored data with EaseUs tool with the SSD option - speed check is exactly the same as above. Checked alignment and it was aligned to 4k rather than the 1024 it was previously.
Ran minitool partition wizard 8 to realign the drive - all others it said were already aligned, the EVO it corrected and it's back to 1024 now. Still no difference though.
Edit: Both HDTune 2.55 and hdtach show the issue but are fine on my other SSDs - downloaded the trial copy of the newer HDTune and ran the test....
Does have a bit of a regular lumpy pattern but speeds way up in the data filled sections.... interesting.
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Maybe not.
There does seem to be a difference between the results given by the new and older versions of HD Tune.
However, I used the same (latest) version of HD Tune to test before and after carrying out a secure erase/restore. The secure erase does seem to have fixed whatever the problem was.
my test is no better on the 5.50 version of hdtune
ill try a secure erase when i build up a new computer on monday even tho i think its hdtune with the problem not the drive (very uneducated guess!)
but i want to find out if it has any effect now
its a weird one for sure!
ill try a secure erase when i build up a new computer on monday even tho i think its hdtune with the problem not the drive (very uneducated guess!)
but i want to find out if it has any effect now
its a weird one for sure!
Okay folks stop using HDtune 2.55 - it isn't showing correct results and I have no idea why.
Any results in HDTune pro have shown to be fairly accurate so those are still very much accurate.
There is still a drive performance issue as shown by my original tests and John's, selektor's etc that hasn't changed but lets remove HDtune 2.55 results as they are muddying the water.
I have run AIDA 64 disk benchs and they produce similar results to HDTune pro so that's good and proves these were accurate.
We'll have to assume anything tested in HDtune 2.55 as invalid. Sorry.
Lets move forward with HDTune Pro trial.
Unfortunately I cannot re-run my tests on my two drives that were bad because they are now erased. However the original tests on the first page without graphs were done in the pro version so as John and others who used this have shown, we still have an issue with the drive.
From my initial tests with the trial again on the cloned drives after a secure erase it does appear they are working perfectly now.
So the question that is outstanding the the original cause of this thread is - How are these EVO drives getting themselves in to such a state with sub 50mb's read performance.
Any results in HDTune pro have shown to be fairly accurate so those are still very much accurate.
There is still a drive performance issue as shown by my original tests and John's, selektor's etc that hasn't changed but lets remove HDtune 2.55 results as they are muddying the water.
I have run AIDA 64 disk benchs and they produce similar results to HDTune pro so that's good and proves these were accurate.
We'll have to assume anything tested in HDtune 2.55 as invalid. Sorry.
Lets move forward with HDTune Pro trial.
Unfortunately I cannot re-run my tests on my two drives that were bad because they are now erased. However the original tests on the first page without graphs were done in the pro version so as John and others who used this have shown, we still have an issue with the drive.
From my initial tests with the trial again on the cloned drives after a secure erase it does appear they are working perfectly now.
So the question that is outstanding the the original cause of this thread is - How are these EVO drives getting themselves in to such a state with sub 50mb's read performance.
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Just to show that the original issue was there these were shots using HDTune pro 5.5 which we seem to think is the working bench -
Here is my bad drive short stroke tested -
Against my sandisk drive -
So while we have had to invalidate some data -
The problem is there and yes from my testing now of the two new drives Samsung sent - They are both performing beautifully after an acronis clone. So yes secure erasing the drive does fix it.
The question remains - how did it get in such a bad state to begin with which was the original problem we were investigating anyway!
Here is my bad drive short stroke tested -
Against my sandisk drive -
So while we have had to invalidate some data -
The problem is there and yes from my testing now of the two new drives Samsung sent - They are both performing beautifully after an acronis clone. So yes secure erasing the drive does fix it.
The question remains - how did it get in such a bad state to begin with which was the original problem we were investigating anyway!
My guess is that a firmware update caused things to go wrong.
A secure erase after the update is like a "switch off and on again".
Just a guess though.
Really hope that's the issue. My brand new unopened 1 TB 840 Evo had 11hrs usage when I first turned it on (according to Crystal Disk Info), it already had the latest firmware out of the box.
I wonder if the firmware was updated at the factory and it's caused the issue.
Just have to wait and see, I only had the SSD two weeks when the performance dropped in HD Tune. It was perfect the first week after a clone.
It's very odd. Since I "repaired" my SSD, I`ve given it more stick than I would in a month or two (added and deleted 40gb+ of files a couple of times). According to the HD Tune benchmark I'm currently running, all is still OK.
Maybe it needs more time.
Soldato
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I ran the HD Tune 2.55 benchmark on my 1TB today, typically.
Really was not a good result though, but was much better on my Crucial M4.
How are you all doing the secure erase?
Really was not a good result though, but was much better on my Crucial M4.
How are you all doing the secure erase?
Managed to xget some free time.so decided to do a erase and restore
Big mistake
Cloned my drive ran it a few times,all working ok.secure erased via usb
Rebooted with crucial ssd (this had the clone on)blue screen can't repair,not happy am having to do a reinstal and ona crappy 2 meg line I am going to be at this all day