SSD: SATA2 vs SATA3 vs stupidity

I just did something really stupid and wanted to share it so that perhaps I could deter someone else from making the mistake. I'd been itching to install a SSD to house Windows and most used programs. Anyone who's ever looked at benchmard comparisons of HDD vs SSD would want to switch out as soon as possible. So, I purchased a Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250 GB SATA drive, swapped it out for my HDD, migrated the entire OS and files from HDD to SSD and rebooted with much anticipation. When Windows booted I was disappointed to see that Windows loaded just as slow as it did from the HDD. So I ran the benchmarking program that came with the drive and was horrified when I saw the results (see thumbnail pic). Turns out that my motherboard has a SATA2 port rather than a SATA3 port. I'd seen that my external HDDs had SATA3 capabilities and just assumed that I had a SATA3 enabled system. Stupid assumption. I repeat, stupid assumption. Although a SATA3 SSD can run on a SATA2 port, when it does it loses almost all of the speed gains offered by SSD compared to HDD. It's like driving a Ferrari with a 2x4 wedged under the gas pedal. So for all of you lucky enough to find a SSD under the Christmas tree, be sure to check your computer specs closely before you tear open that box.

 

His point is that he's pointing out something that does not get mentioned when talking about SSDs. Case in point http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=282237

 

Rusty, something's wrong with your setup, even on SATA2, a modern SSD feels superfast compared to a HDD, boot and application loading times are improved enormously. As an example, my first SSD upgrade, on a nVidia chipset SATA2 with Intel Core2Dual improved Windows' boot times from 40 seconds to ~18, in that first week of use (I was a heavy user back then), I reckon I saved ~ 90 minutes - no chance of becoming distracted waiting 20 secs+ for Apps to load.

You need to check your settings, start with the SSD - what disk alignment do you have currently: http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/157

 

Could it be a BIOS setting that is slowing down the boot process?

The computer might be set to IDE mode instead of RAID or AHCI modes.

 

The attached image suggests that AHCI is activated, sequential read/writes are also fine for SATA2.

 

I'm running SATA3 SSDs on SATA2 mobos in 2 PC and had none of the issues you described. I agree with the others that you should go over your setup.

 

When I first installed my Samsung SSD, I had the same speeds as you.
I found out I had to run the Samsung Magician - Over provisioning will create an Unallocated partition.
Then I ran OS optimization.

My speeds doubled instantly.

 

satrow, thanks for the link

SSD Alignment Calculator shows that all 3 partition offsets are aligned.

 

Hi HollyWood, thanks for the reply.

I checked it out and my computer is set to AHCI mode.

 

Hi PSCO2007, thanks for the reply. You are right, overprovision (10% or 223.5 GB on my system) resulted in marked improvements in sequential read/write stats but only a minimal improvement is non-sequential read/write stats. I also played around with some of the other settings in Samsung Magician and currently have the following profile:

1.) OS Optimization

For those not familiar with Samsung Magician, it is a disk optimization/benchmarking app that came with the SSD and allows the user to adjust various system settings in
order to optimize the system for one of three preferred states:

- Maximum Performance
- Maximum Capacity
- Maximum Reliability

I chose "Maximum Performance" which entailed achieving the following system settings:

Hibernation Mode: Enabled

Virtual Memory: Allow system to manage (Magician suggests setting this to Min: 200 MB / Max: 2,000 MB but performance was notablly degraded by doing this)

Indexing Service/Search: Enabled

Prefetch/Superfetch: Activated

Write Cache Buffer: Activated

Write Cache Buffer Flushing: Activated

System Restore: Deactivated

Power Options:
-Turn off hard drive after x time: Deactivated
-MSIE JavaScript Timer Frequenchy: Maximum Performance
-Desktop background (Slide Show): Available
-Sleep after x: Never
-Allow hybrid sleep: On
-Hibernate after x: Never
-Allow wake timers: Enabled
-USB selective suspend setting: Enabled
-Power button action: Sleep
-Sleep button action: Sleep
-Link State Power Managemant: Off
-Turn off display after: 15 min.

Processor Power Management
-Minimum processor state: 100%
-System cooling policy: Active
-Maximum processor state: 100 %

RAPID (Real Time Acceleration Processing of I/O Data Mode: On

"RAPID mode increase the overall performance of your computer by pairing
the industry's fastest SSD with the most advanced storage mangement
techniques to deliver the fastest and most reliable user experience. RAPID
mode analyzes your application and data usage, dynamically optimizes the
I/O for Samsung SSDs, and eliminates system performance bottlenecks.
RAPID mode is fully automated. No user management is necessary."

2.) Performance Optimization: Completed

"If your current OS does not offer native TRIM support for SSDs, you can
use Magician to optimize performance as needed"

3.) Firmware Update: So far, unable to update firmware due to persistent unspecified installation error

4.) Over Provisioning: Set to 10% or (23.5 GB)
========================================
Is there anything you suggest I change?

For any of you familiar with benchmarking SSDs, which of the following results is more desirable:

 

#2 is excellent .

I also use - http://www.majorgeeks.com/content/p...l=www.majorgeeks.com/&ref=&ss=6217j6790245j16

Here's my most recent score: I only have 128gb ssd.

 

I'll bet your start time is less than 30 secs.

 

Wow, nice numbers!

I assume you have a SATA3 enabled system, right? I ask because if you are able to get those stats on a SATA2 system then I'm still doing something very wrong.

 

Yes, I have Sata 111.

 

Yeah, but just barely (when I time it from the "Starting Windows" announcement). Is that the "official" start of the boot process, for purposes of measuring "boot time"?

Another question for you. Are you letting Windows handle virtual memory or are you using the Samsung Magician recommendation of Min/Max = 200 MB / 2,000 MB?

 

I let the Magician handle everything.

Download - http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/720-restart-time.html

Run it and it will tell you exact time.

 

Thanks for the fun little toy. Restart time = 100 secs. on the nose

All I have autoloading outside of Windows services is:
- Norton360 Security Suite
- Acronis TrueImage Backup service
- Everything Search
- Wizmouse (mouse wheel enhancer)
- WScheduler (Windows Task Scheduler replacement)

And to be honest, 100 secs. is a marked improvement :-o

 

My rough and ready check on Windows' boot time is TaskMan's Up time in the Performance tab, I start it as soon as I can (usually ~14 secs, mSATA drive, ~= to SATA2 in sequential speeds; full bandwidth mSATA ITX 'boards are rare). As I stated before, on my old core 2 dual with SATA2 ~18 secs cf. ~40 secs on my old 2.5" HDD.

How much RAM do you have - with 4GB or more, you shouldn't feel a speed drop/longer boot time with a small or no paging file?

Hibernation ought to be off on a Desktop if you only use Sleep, saves costly drive space = to RAM size.

Indexing really isn't needed on an SSD, just take control of where you save your files - and you use Everything!

Prefetch/Superfetch should be off - not needed with an SSD.

Set System Restore for 3-4%, it's good to have a safety net.

Does your system have TRIM enabled? What SATA chipset driver is it using (AMD/Intel/nVidia/MS?



Biggest problem I see on yours, Rusty, = random writes, they should be 40-60k ballpark. Now I see Norton as well - uninstall it fully, use SymNRT and test again.

Use Winpatrol to load the non-vital at boot stuff 2-3 minutes later.

 

I normally avoid posting in the tech forums here on MG because I don't actually have the time anyone who posts here deserves and needs in order to actually solve their problems, not anymore. I read the threads though, and I noticed that a few fairly important pieces of information are missing from this one.

1. Which motherboard are you running your SSD on?
2. Which SATA controller and port on that motherboard is the SSD hooked up to?
3. Which driver are you using for that SATA controller? (This is the chipset driver satrow is asking about.)
4. Which specific version of Windows are you using?

I'll do my very best to stick around and be active now that I'm diving head first into this murky pool. :-D

 

I sense that I am in the presence of royalty. I bow to thee

Thank you for the reply, Mimsy. Here are the short stats about my system. Full stats are included in the attached zip archive.

I am running Windows 7 Premium Home Edition (sp1) 64-bit on a Hewlett-Packard p6774y Desktop PC

Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250 GB
Motherboard Model: FOXCONN 2AB1
Motherboard Chipset: AMD 785G (RS880) + SB750/SB710
ATI/AMD SP5100 (SB700) - SATA AHCI Controller
SSD connected to SATA Port#0
2.90 GHz ADM Phenom II X4 840T Processor
6.0 GB installed RAM
802.11n Wireless LAN card
ATI Radeon HD 4200 display adapter
Hewlett-Packard DVD/CD-Rom device
USB 3 mass storage device (Seagate 3TB external HDD)
USB 3 mass storage device (ioSafe 3TB external HDD)
Generic- Compact Flash USB Device
Generic- MS/MS-Pro USB Device
Generic- SD/MMC USB Device
Generic- SM/xD-Picture USB Device
HP LaserJet Professional M1217nfw MFP Printer
All hardware drivers up to date according to IObits Driver Booster although it missed the fact that the firmware for my SSD is out of date. Having difficulty getting new firmware installed. I plan on calling tech support later today.
All available Microsoft updates installed (except MSIE 11)

I can't for the life of me figure out which chipset the SSD controller is using. Hopefully it's in the report that's attached.

 

Thank you for hanging in with me satrow. Unless you think it inadvisable, I was just going to let Windows handle my virtual memory. I'm not hard up for disk space and plan to put only program files along with OS files on SSD.

Boot time of 40 seconds on a HDD? 18 seconds on SATA2? Wow. I'm definitely doing something wrong here.

I have 6 GB RAM (upgradable to 8 GB)

I've turned off hibernation and indexing, as you recommended.

System Restore now set to 5%

Prefetch/Superfetch turned off, as recommended

Yes, TRIM is enabled.

I can't decipher which SATA chipset the drive is using but hopefully it's in the report I attached to my response to Mimsy.

Is there a specific problem with using the Norton 360 Security Suite? I know that it's definitely the single biggest contributing factor to my boot time, but are there additional reasons for uninstalling it? For now I will go just go ahead and uninstall it to see what effect it has on system performance. Will post benchmark results after reboot.

 

"Boot time" decreased from 100 sec to 93 sec. I'm still unclear as to what the start point is for boot time. I'm measuring from the time power is restored to the computer or as soon as the screen goes black during a reboot operation. End of boot time measured as time when all applications have finished loading. The loading of applications seems to add very little time to total boot time, requiring only 2 - 3 sec. after desktop appears. That of course assumes that the apps don't start loading until after the desktop appears, and I don't know if that assumption is correct. Rather than delay the loading of startup apps, I simply toggled them all off and rebooted. Total boot time decreased by only 3 secs. (to 90 sec). In any case, although I find the subject matter fascinating, I'm really not all that concerned about boot times, as I typically reboot only every couple of days.

More concerning to me is the I/O speed of my SSD, notably the random read/write times. Unfortunately, effectuating the recommended changes described in my last post did very little to alter those values (see thumbnail pic). I'm hoping that the firmware upgrade will have a positive impact, but I'm not holding my breath. I will post updated benchmark results after firmware gets installed. Thank you again for your time satrow.

 

<On my SATA2 'board, there was no AHCI possible and it was a 5,400rpm 2.5" drive, over the years I've spent a lot of time trying to get under par hardware working as fast and efficiently as possible, moving up to the SSD required very few tweaks, most of which were implemented on the HDD before the clone to SSD>

That vbs restart timer measures 3x things, each of which should be treated separately: Windows shutdown, Bios initialization + hardware detection and Windows' Boot time. Stick with measuring Windows' up time via TaskMan for now. Bios and Shutdown need different tweaks and checks.

From Device Manager, 'Update' the driver for the ATI/AMD SP5100 (SB700) SATA AHCI Controller - select Update driver software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer - select the Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller. That should enable Magician to update the SSD firmware and also allow a little extra speed.

Read through this and do as suggested for 12, 14, 17 and 18 (the remainder I think you've you have already done or are of variable benefit/have other drawbacks).

External drives, inc. USB thumb drives and especially any networked/shared drives, can have a big effect on boot time, disconnect them all and break any Shares, they can be reconnected and reconfigured once you have some benchmarks for the base PC.

Obviously, the more 3rd party software autostarting and the more 'active' that software is, the greater the effect will be on boot times and disk/CPU activity - get it clean and keep it that way, WinPatrol is your friend here.

This is a clone - not a fresh install - it's quite possible that some 'tweaks' or 3rd party software used previously are having a detrimental effect on the speed of the machine, if you have a lot of 'junk' software installed, undo anything you can remember doing with them before uninstalling them.

 

Hi David, I installed updated drivers for the motherboard but ran into persistent BSODs upon rebooting. Diagnostics done from WinPE showed that the SSD is still fine. Tried to reinstall drivers from Samsung's install disk but setup just wouldn't launch. So I just restored the whole disk from a disk image about 12 hours old and everything is running fine again.

When I installed the drive, I used the disk cloning software (Samsung Migration Wizard) to copy an image to the SSD. I thought about doing a fresh install of Windows but really didn't want to have to reconfigure all of my programs. I'll probably end up doing that eventually...... just have to get myself in the right frame of mind to do it.

Thanks for the link to the HP update page. There were a few minor upgrades that I hadn't yet effectuated, but nothing having to do with the SSD. There is a BIOS upgrade but the issues it addresses don't apply to me, and I don't want to possibly make things worse by flashing my motherboard when there's not much to be gained. I've been reading up on SSDs.... fascinating stuff. I'd very much appreciate a heads up if you happen to come across that link you mentioned.

I'm really perplexed by the image you posted, especially when viewed in the context of the benchmarks I posted for my drive. Mine showed decent sequential I/O numbers but lousy non-sequential. Yours shows pretty much the opposite. What could possibly account for that? :confused

 

Hi Satrow, I updated the driver for ATI/AMD SP5100 (SB700) SATA AHCI Controller in Device Manager then rebooted. Still couldn't effectuate the firmware upgrade via Samsung Magician program (keep getting same nonspecific error message). Haven't been able to get in touch with anyone at Samsung. They're probably short staffed and I'll have to wait until the new year to deal with the SSD firmware upgrade.

The article link you provided in your last post is dead. Could you check that and post that again?

I had no idea that external drives affected the performance of the SSD. That could be a factor with me as I have three USB external HDDs attached and usually have one of my many USB flash drives plugged in as well when I boot. I'll have to consolidate those. I working hard on getting the autostart cleaned up but it's difficult for a software junkie like me to go cold turkey on the apps Actually, I've done pretty good as far as the autostarting apps. The few I have left, I've assigned to WinPatrol for delayed execution. However, I still have a ways to go in terms of removing the many 3rd party services that load automatically and are most certainly dragging down performance. I just have to get serious about uninstalling.

Many thanks to you and David for your insight, your guidance, your recommendations, and of course your patience. I do very much appreciate the assistance. My benchmark scores also thank you, as they have slowly improved as well.

 

Sorry about that, hopefully fixed the URL below (6 page article).

Connected/networked drives shouldn't have a direct affect on the SSD speed (they will have on boot/shutdown times), it could be that some auto starting App/Task or Service is using CPU cycles or running at an elevated CPU priority whilst 'doing something' with them or logging to the SSD while benchmarking is in progress.

Why you can't update the firmware now is something of a puzzle, must be something else involved that I've not experienced.

 

Finally back home where I can get to the system report.

So David and satrow are already giving you lots of great help with your specific issues, so there is no point in me addressing them again. Too many cooks in a kitchen and all that. So I'm just going to blather about a couple of minor things about SSDs in general that might help you or anyone else who comes across this thread.

The first and most important one is that although SSDs have evolved intro very complex and complicated devices, when all is said and done, they are almost entirely plug-n-play for the average home user. In fact, any current SSD that requires a lot of tweaking before it runs normally should be returned to its place of purchase and replaced with a drive that actually is current, rather than just claiming to be. Tweaking is something you do to the SSD, along with troubleshooting, after you've run it for a while and discovered it's not running properly after all, and something needs to change. Like with rusty's 840.

I have four SSDs of different models in computers all around my house, and haven't done any special "tweaks" on either one of them. Never had problems either. I installed the SSD, installed windows, and ran experience index to get the drive out of the auto-defrag schedule. I then set the power savings settings to never shut down the SSD no matter what, and that was all.

That is actually important. SSDs are complex creatures and the reason you don't need to do any tweaks to help them run right is because they can do all that by themselves now. Current ones at least. rolleyes The problem is the drive controller can only do all the housecleaning work it needs to do when there's no drive activity at all going on. That means when the PC goes to sleep, so you really don't want the SSD to unexpectedly lose power after ten minutes of sleep mode, because losing power while in the middle of working on something is a crash. Repeated crashing is very bad for both the SSD and the data on it.

Lastly, rusty, with regards to drivers:

Your attached system report indicated you were using the MSAHCI driver that comes with Windows. Some SSDs love it, others hate it. Some love it on one motherboard and hate it on another. They are temperamental that way. Because of how complex SSDs actually are under the hood, which driver you use makes a big difference. So does having a current motherboard BIOS and SSD firmware, by the way, so I hope you are able to get hold of Samsung and get good support from them on that update. The most recent driver from HP is two years older than your 840, and may not have a clue on how to manage it. Microsoft's driver, though it shows a date of 2006, is more current, since they continuously update it through Windows Update.

Looks like you're making progress though, which is great. Now just be careful not to over-benchmark the poor thing!

 

To verify that the file hiberfil.sys is gone, go to Folder Options -> View tab
and temporarily uncheck Hide protected operating system files.
Then open Explorer.
If it is still there, run CMD as administrator and enter

Code:

powercfg -h off

 

David, Thanks for the link (again:-o) Good to have that page bookmarked. Thanks also for the clarification concerning externally attached HDDs. I'll unhook them and see what kind of boot times I get.

OK, you convinced me, I'm gonna bite the bullet and do a fresh install of Windows and everything else so that the whole system is "off the shelf" new again.

 

Thank you for the thoughtful reply, Mimsy. That approximately doubles what I know about SSDs, controllers, motherboards, and firmware. I will most definitely upgrade the firmware for the chipset ASAP and remain hopeful that it will result in at least modest performance increases. Thank you again for taking the time to respond.

 

Thanks for posting that link again, satrow. Great article (and a good site overall)
I still haven't gotten in touch with Samsung yet. I tried live chat and e-mail but was told on both occasions that the matter is too technical. I'll keep calling. If it turns out to be something interesting, I'll post it here.

 

Go for it! If everything works well after the fresh install you know for a fact that whatever was going on was software-caused.

As opposed to the non-technical issues that tech support normally handles? :confused

 

:-D I didn't even think about that, but it is rather absurd.