Computer becomes very sluggish when writing to SSD?

F

FMX

Gawd
Joined
Dec 31, 2006
Messages
574
Every time I install a game or download something from Steam, my computer becomes very sluggish. Browsing the web, closing programs, generally anything becomes incredibly unresponsive.

I'm on Windows 7.

I have 2 Samsung SSDs. One is 256GB, one is 128GB. Drive C:\ is the 128GB. I usually install all games to the 256GB drive. I can't see why this would be an issue?

Any thoughts?
 
Define "my computer". What CPU, what motherboard, how much RAM? Which Samsung SSDs are they - 830, 840, 850, EVO, Pro?
 
Fairly run of the mill -

i5-3570k
8GB
Asus P8Z68-V

Both are 840's

I've never had this issue with regular hard drives so I don't know if the SSD's are to blame or something else.
 
Have you checked to see if your SSD's are performing up to par with any tool? The 840's (evo and regular) have a problem with slowing down over time and need the samsung magician firmware update to re-write all your data to refresh the cells. There's been many threads and articles confirming the 840 slowdowns. Try an SSD tool to see what your read/write speeds are. It usually affects only older data that has slowed over time rather than newer data but if you're experiencing many slowdowns it'd be worth a shot to check it out.
 
I did not realize all 840's are not created equal. Mine are Pro's, not EVO's. I can't find any substantial information with the Pro's being affected, though mine certainly is!

I ran a speed test with AS SSD Benchmark and on drive C:\ I'm getting write speeds of ~10 MB/s.

On the other drive, I'm getting write speeds of ~80MB/s

After looking at spec sheets, I should be getting write speeds of 390/520MB/s. Unbelievable.

Everything I read also seems to insinuate that only read speeds are affected, but both my read and write speeds are down.

Guess I'll just need to contact Samsung.
 
Last edited:
There's also a few threads on overclock.net that discuss it at length, i.e. 400-500 posts or so last I checked. I believe Samsung will only return the same product to you as they're claiming they're not technically defective but citing firmware bugs, so an RMA will really probably get you nowhere. Some ppl are up in arms about it while others are waiting to see if it's a TLC bug that's fixable or not. I'm in the patiently waiting stage as I have an 840 Evo 250GB. If they suggest you run the firmware updater every 6 months or so (I've ran it once and it helped quite a bit, but others have the slowdown coming back after 4-5 weeks) it's not that big a deal but if they truly don't come up with a final fix I have a feeling a lot of ppl will push it further (some have already petitioned they be replaced with an 850 evo). Time will tell to see what they come up with.
 
Your write speeds sound very odd given that they're pros and writing speed isn't normally affected by that evo bug. Try running diskrefresh, manual trim, and re testing.
 
It's obvious that something is seriously wrong. It won't be the 840 EVO bug, because the Pro does not have that problem at all.

How full are the SSDs, particularly the 128GB OS SSD? If you had them at something like 99% full, maybe it could create a bad slowdown situation. Simply running Disk Cleanup or CCleaner might help if that were the case.

Are they plugged into the motherboard's light-grey 6 Gb/s SATA ports rather than the bright blue 3 Gb/s SATA ports? (But what you're getting is way less than half speed...) You may wish to try the SATA ports you're not using in case the SATA ports you are using have gone bad.

Poor quality or damaged SATA cables (either data or power) could cause all sorts of trouble including this; you can get good SATA data cables for low prices at monoprice.com (SATA power cables are a thing with your PSU). Also, make sure that both ends of both data and power cables are plugged all the way in; they quite often can get jiggled just a bit loose even if they look like they're tight, so actually pull them out and plug them back in as tight as you can. Several help threads here have been resolved to be just loose SATA cables.

I wondered if maybe you were experiencing the Sandy Bridge B2 recall problem, but that was supposed to be all fixed before the Z68 motherboards came out. If you're not 100% sure that your motherboard is a Z68, you might want to check ASUS's Identify B3 Motherboards page, but I'm only mentioning this because it sounds so similar to your issue.

With that in mind, I would try making sure your motherboard has the latest BIOS (version 3603).

You may also want to install the latest Intel Chipset Driver in case the version you have has gotten screwed up.

When looking up the BIOS version, I saw the interesting note "P8Z68-V BIOS 3603(for Win7 & Win8)
For proper operation, please ensure to update Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver to version 11.5.0.1207 and BIOS to version 3603 before enabling Intel Smart Response Technology." Intel RST is now at version 13.6.0.1002. If you don't have Intel RST installed, it's possible that installing it might help, or it might change nothing; you can also try uninstalling it if you do have it in case it's causing the problem.
 
Last edited:
I built my current computer in November, 128 gb 850 Pro for OS and I enabled the Samsung speed boost utility. After about a month the system was having similar concerns. When I looked at the C drive space (not something I do regularly since OS and drivers go there nothing else) I saw it was essentially full.

Took a few minutes to figure out it was the speed boost thing reserving some of the drive for its usage. Once I disabled that the drive had plenty of space to operate normally again. When I switch to Windows 10 I'll move my 256 from gaming to OS, pick up a 512 for games and use the 128 as a scratch disk.

As others have posted drivers and other things can cause issues, how long have you been using the drive as the OS disk?
 
Check if your partitions are aligned to 4k and also make sure you are using AHCI or RAID mode and not IDE (aka "legacy mode"). If you're on IDE mode then get RAIDFix, run it, reboot, set your system to RAID mode in the BIOS, boot into Windows and install the latest Intel RST drivers. Or use the registry hack to enable AHCI and switch to that.

Not sure if 840 Pro ever got firmware updates but also check that.
 
evilsofa said:
It's obvious that something is seriously wrong. It won't be the 840 EVO bug, because the Pro does not have that problem at all.

How full are the SSDs, particularly the 128GB OS SSD? If you had them at something like 99% full, maybe it could create a bad slowdown situation. Simply running Disk Cleanup or CCleaner might help if that were the case.

Are they plugged into the motherboard's light-grey 6 Gb/s SATA ports rather than the bright blue 3 Gb/s SATA ports? (But what you're getting is way less than half speed...) You may wish to try the SATA ports you're not using in case the SATA ports you are using have gone bad.

Poor quality or damaged SATA cables (either data or power) could cause all sorts of trouble including this; you can get good SATA data cables for low prices at monoprice.com (SATA power cables are a thing with your PSU). Also, make sure that both ends of both data and power cables are plugged all the way in; they quite often can get jiggled just a bit loose even if they look like they're tight, so actually pull them out and plug them back in as tight as you can. Several help threads here have been resolved to be just loose SATA cables.

I wondered if maybe you were experiencing the Sandy Bridge B2 recall problem, but that was supposed to be all fixed before the Z68 motherboards came out. If you're not 100% sure that your motherboard is a Z68, you might want to check ASUS's Identify B3 Motherboards page, but I'm only mentioning this because it sounds so similar to your issue.

With that in mind, I would try making sure your motherboard has the latest BIOS (version 3603).

You may also want to install the latest Intel Chipset Driver in case the version you have has gotten screwed up.

When looking up the BIOS version, I saw the interesting note "P8Z68-V BIOS 3603(for Win7 & Win8)
For proper operation, please ensure to update Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver to version 11.5.0.1207 and BIOS to version 3603 before enabling Intel Smart Response Technology." Intel RST is now at version 13.6.0.1002. If you don't have Intel RST installed, it's possible that installing it might help, or it might change nothing; you can also try uninstalling it if you do have it in case it's causing the problem.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the incredibly detailed and helpful response. Also thanks to anyone else who helped.

The 128GB drive has been used for about 2 years and has 16GB free. The 256GB drive has 69GB free.

I don't have any Samsung software on this machine so I'm assuming Speed Boost isn't a factor here.

I will try cables, upgrading BIOS, downloading Intel RST, etc...then report back.

[Edit] - cables are in the right position. I don't have different ones to test. BIOS is out of date but ASUS Support page is down. This is so very aggravating. I installed the RST drivers to no avail. What do you mean by partitions aligned to 4k? BIOS says that they are in RAID mode. It looks like there was a firmware release for the 840 Pro about a year ago. I'll try that and report back if that helps anything.
 
Last edited:
Ok, we're getting somewhere!

I think the firmware update did it oddly enough. Or, it could have been the performance optimization tools in the Samsung software.

Still not where it needs to be though? The top results are from the 256GB drive

Write speeds on the 128GB (OS drive) are still not up to par? Should I be concerned with the green bar?

m8uqdk1.jpg
 
Things are looking much better now. The 128GB OS disk having only 16GB left might be a reason why the write speed is slower, due to write amplication.

Run Windows' native Disk Cleanup, making sure to tick the box for Windows Update Cleanup; if you haven't run Disk Cleanup in a long time, the Windows Update Cleanup is a new thing that can free up quite a lot of disk space. Also tick the box to clean up System Restore files.

Then run CCleaner.

You may want to reduce the system pagefile size to something reasonable like 700MB (if you go lower, it will talk about a minimum size recommended and I use that); it might be set as high as 12GB by default if you have 8GB of RAM.

If you don't use hibernation on your PC, then run cmd as an admistrator and issue the command "powercfg -h off" to delete the hibernation file.

After all that, in the Samsung Magician software, run Performance Optimization to manually pass the TRIM command to the SSD. This is not normally something you need to concern yourself with and you shouldn't need to do it again.

Note: whenever you're done using the Samsung Magician software, visit the Windows system tray and close Samsung Magician through its icon. It does not need to be running when you're not using it and should not be left running because it's been known to cause trouble, particularly with sleep. It should definitely not have a shortcut in the Windows 7 Startup Items Folder.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top