Windows Experience hard-disk score fluctuates

hdpcgamer · 22 Jan 2011 at 05:27

I am currently have Windows 7 Home Premium installed on my Kingston 64GB SSDNow V SSD (Read 200MB/sec, Write 110MB/sec) but I have noticed that the Windows Experience hard-disk score would fluctuate now and then between 6.7 to 6.9. Is there a reason for this?

The weird thing is when I had the same OS installed on my Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive, the score would always be fixed at 5.9.

Scuzzy · 22 Jan 2011 at 06:01

Using TRIM ?
Try using another bench program and monitor there results, like crystaldisk etc....

Speed · 22 Jan 2011 at 07:03

Frankly WEI means very little, so I'd ignore it. If you want to bench it use something like AS SSD or Crystaldisk as mentioned by Scuzzy.

Mechanical drives cannot exceed 5.9 as far as I'm aware so that would be why it was fixed.

hdpcgamer · 22 Jan 2011 at 19:31

Scuzzy said:
Using TRIM ?
Try using another bench program and monitor there results, like crystaldisk etc....

Isn't trim automatically enabled on SDD when using windows 7?

DragonQ · 22 Jan 2011 at 19:32

Yes, providing your chipset, driver and SSD support it, and your SSD isn't in a RAID array.

TheBiznes · 22 Jan 2011 at 19:38

Best way to test hard disk at a dos prompt. you might need to run as admin to see results goto windows system32 and find cmd right click and run as admin.

Thats start>run type cmd

then type winsat disk

You should then be able to see all your scores for different transfers etc might help you more.

Or as others have suggested try crystal or some other benchmark but sometimes they can be inacurate with some disk controller types.

This is sample output from my setup.

hdpcgamer · 22 Jan 2011 at 19:42

Speed said:
Frankly WEI means very little, so I'd ignore it. If you want to bench it use something like AS SSD or Crystaldisk as mentioned by Scuzzy.

Mechanical drives cannot exceed 5.9 as far as I'm aware so that would be why it was fixed.

I've just benchmarked my ssd using AS SSD and the read speed hits around 200mb/s consistently but the writes seems to fluctuate from as low as 50mb/s to 100mb/s. This is running the benchmarks straight after a reboot.

Speed · 22 Jan 2011 at 19:43

You can also check that TRIM is enabled by doing:

Start > CMD

Then Type: fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled)
DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

hdpcgamer · 23 Jan 2011 at 05:52

TheBiznes said:
Best way to test hard disk at a dos prompt. you might need to run as admin to see results goto windows system32 and find cmd right click and run as admin.

Thats start>run type cmd

then type winsat disk

You should then be able to see all your scores for different transfers etc might help you more.

Or as others have suggested try crystal or some other benchmark but sometimes they can be inacurate with some disk controller types.

This is sample output from my setup.

Thanks.

I've just tried running the dos benchmark and crystal and here are my results and I'd be very interested in any feedback on it:

My dos benckmark results seems much worse than yours. What SSD was you using when running that benchmark?

Looking at the crystal benchmark results, Seq Read seems fine at 249.5 MB/s but doesn't my Seq Write appear too low at only 57.32 MB/s?

hdpcgamer · 23 Jan 2011 at 05:55

Speed said:
You can also check that TRIM is enabled by doing:

Start > CMD

Then Type: fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

DisableDeleteNotify = 1 (Windows TRIM commands are disabled)
DisableDeleteNotify = 0 (Windows TRIM commands are enabled)

Thanks. I have just tried as you have suggested and results have come back as DisableDeleteNotify = 0 so it looks does look like trim is enabled.

Blue160 · 23 Jan 2011 at 13:21

I have the 30GB version of that SSD. WEI is still saying 5.9, but disk performance is obviously much faster, and I have checked Trim is enabled.

I had the same issue before with graphics cards, where WEI gave the same score for my HD4770 as for my overclocked GTX460. Best advice for WEI is to ignore it.

Lunatic Dreyfus · 23 Jan 2011 at 14:11

My SSD has a habit of doing this, though the scores went up from 5.9 to 6.8, after what looked like Trimming session. Still runs at full whack though.

WEI is a load of old nonsense really, but I would like all my scores in the mid to high 7's, where they belong.

hdpcgamer · 24 Jan 2011 at 08:00

Blue160 said:
I have the 30GB version of that SSD. WEI is still saying 5.9, but disk performance is obviously much faster, and I have checked Trim is enabled.

I had the same issue before with graphics cards, where WEI gave the same score for my HD4770 as for my overclocked GTX460. Best advice for WEI is to ignore it.

WEI has been pretty consistant with the rest of my other components where the scores are pretty much fixed except for the Kingston SSD and everytime I upgrade a component, overclock a CPU or GPU, the WEI does increase to match the change in performance.

hdpcgamer · 24 Jan 2011 at 08:05

Lunatic Dreyfus said:
My SSD has a habit of doing this, though the scores went up from 5.9 to 6.8, after what looked like Trimming session. Still runs at full whack though.

WEI is a load of old nonsense really, but I would like all my scores in the mid to high 7's, where they belong.

I'm beginning to think that the flactuation is down to trimming as that seems to be the most logical explanation.

When exactly does trimming take place?