Need help figuring out problem with SSD - Random 16.0 Read @ 4MB/S (too slow!)

[carbon17]

Hey HardForum,
I'm new here so apologies if I don't know exactly where to post this or what the format is for asking help, I assume the SSD category is proper.
I'm having a problem with one of my SSDs, the random read speed is horrendous, causing me to have 38 hour backups for just ~1 TB of data to an external USB3.0 HDD (2tb).

Some info about the problem:
My computer has 2 SSDs, one of them is 512Gb the other is 1TB, they are both SanDisk Ultra 3D SSDs. I started doing a backup and one of my drives was so incredibly slow it took over 48 hours of uptime to backup the entire PC.
The C drive, 512GB, is where Windows is located. The other 1TB Drive (X is where I keep my games, files, photos, etc. After digging around various places, trying to find a solution, I realized the best place to ask would be here.
I have tried numerous things so far to diagnose the problem on the 1TB SSD: TRIM is enabled, changing SATA cables, changing SATA ports, making sure the BUS of the SATA cables is open (not shared, etc). Updating drivers, changing windows power settings, so on and so forth. Nothing has really helped.

So, when I backup to my external HDD: the 512GB drive is fine, it backs up in less than an hour...
but when the software (Acronis) begins backing up the 1TB ssd... it runs extremely slow.
I have tried various backup tools: Veeam, Windows Built-in Backup, Acronis, AOMEI, Macrium Reflect, all have the same problem.

I ran a diagnostic "winsat disk" on the CMD prompt and found this problem...
As you can see the problem lies therein:
X drive: Disk Random 16.0 Read 4.36 MB/s
C drive: Disk Random 16.0 Read 323.02 MB/s

I thought, ok maybe if I backup sector-by-sector, since the linear access times are still fast, I could get away with that (since I only use the external drive for backing up my PC). Didn't help, the backup software still needs random access it seems. If I could literally clone the disk in a linear way then I bet it wouldn't be an issue since the sequential read and write on the X drive is fast enough.

Anyway, if anyone knows the problem, please let me know: Why is my Disk Random read so slow on my SSD, but not the other SSD? They are the same brand and model just different storage sizes.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>winsat disk -drive x
Windows System Assessment Tool
C:\WINDOWS\system32>winsat disk -drive x
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive x -ran -read'
> Run Time 00:00:04.06
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive x -seq -read'
> Run Time 00:00:43.97
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive x -seq -write'
> Run Time 00:00:04.13
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive x -flush -seq'
> Run Time 00:00:00.94
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive x -flush -ran'
> Run Time 00:00:00.91
> Dshow Video Encode Time                      0.00000 s
> Dshow Video Decode Time                      0.00000 s
> Media Foundation Decode Time                 0.00000 s
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       4.36 MB/s          5.0
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   191.49 MB/s          7.3
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Write                  358.10 MB/s          7.9
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes     0.325 ms          8.4
> Latency: 95th Percentile                     0.684 ms          8.5
> Latency: Maximum                             11.273 ms          7.9
> Average Read Time with Random Writes         0.332 ms          8.8
> Total Run Time 00:00:54.13

C:\WINDOWS\system32>winsat disk -drive c
Windows System Assessment Tool
> Running: Feature Enumeration ''
> Run Time 00:00:00.00
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive c -ran -read'
> Run Time 00:00:00.34
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive c -seq -read'
> Run Time 00:00:04.81
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive c -seq -write'
> Run Time 00:00:03.45
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive c -flush -seq'
> Run Time 00:00:00.66
> Running: Storage Assessment '-drive c -flush -ran'
> Run Time 00:00:00.64
> Dshow Video Encode Time                      0.00000 s
> Dshow Video Decode Time                      0.00000 s
> Media Foundation Decode Time                 0.00000 s
> Disk  Random 16.0 Read                       323.02 MB/s          8.1
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Read                   463.74 MB/s          8.1
> Disk  Sequential 64.0 Write                  438.41 MB/s          8.0
> Average Read Time with Sequential Writes     0.195 ms          8.6
> Latency: 95th Percentile                     0.520 ms          8.7
> Latency: Maximum                             10.141 ms          7.9
> Average Read Time with Random Writes         0.174 ms          8.9
> Total Run Time 00:00:10.02

 

[MrGuvernment]

random 4k performance on SSD is still not always great, how many files and what is their average size you are backing up?

 

[carbon17]

random 4k performance on SSD is still not always great, how many files and what is their average size you are backing up?

The X: drive has about like 60% full, about 600gb. Avg file size is probably like 7-10mb on photos, whatever the regular file size is for documents like excel and word, and a few games are on that drive as well. Those are probably 4gb exes.

 

[Iratus]

Latency is twice as high too

I had problems with Sandisk drives before, maybe have a look at the smart data and see if there’s stuff showing.

If that looks fine then do a firmware update and finally you can do a proper wipe on it can sometimes help with a couple of rarer faults (generally write degradation though)

If none of that works then at least it’s wiped so you can send it back for warranty replacement as it’ll probably be the controller or onboard memory. It sounds like it’s having a map table issue though (it’s been 20 years since I looked at instruction level stuff but from memory sequential doesn’t look up after the first one as it just goes “next”) which basically would mean it’s struggling to find the chunks of data.

All that can be done with the Sandisk dashboard software which isn’t terrible, it’s got diagnostics too though I never had that find anything that wasn’t in the raw smart data.