SSD ball-achingly slow, is wipe+reinstall only option ?

[Tunnah]

Heyo folks, I've noticed my SSD has become really sluggish. I typically store game images on D: (a HDD) which is on a SATA port who's controller is 3rd party, so I put the system slowdown down to that. However, I started moving them to the SSD for mounting and install as thought it might be quicker - using D: to install yielded 30mb/s, whilst copying the image to C: yielded about 100mb/s.

However upon trying to install from C: to C: yielded same speeds, 30mb/s...now I know I shouldn't expect lightning speed when doing drive A > drive A, but 30mb/s seems ridiculous.

I run with about 20-40gb free of a 240gb total, I've tried cleaning up and don't have much running in the background (I keep a pretty tight ship, hell I can't think of a program I've installed in a year)

So is it time to secure erase and start again ? Or does anyone have any ideas ?

[Agent]

What drive? Have you run a benchmark tool on it to see what results you get from it? is TRIM enabled and working?

[directhex]

Secure Erase completely ****s SSDs, since it writes data to every sector of the drive, negating TRIM

[Agent]

I've just noticed you have a Vertex. If you have a Sandforce based drive, then the speed dropping through the floor and staying there is a 'feature', certainly on older models. You'll only see its best performance when using data that can be compressed.
Make sure it has a up to date firmware. Some of the earlier ones were truly terrible.

[kalniel]

The other point is are you sure you are disk transfer limited on install?

I didn't quite understand your post, but from what I can tell:

HDD->? install is 30mb/s
HDD->SSD copy is 100mb/s
SSD->SSD install is 30mb/s

Is that right? If so, your install could be limited by say single thread CPU performance. Or could be some software gunk that's itself limited (eg on-demand virus scanner).

[herulach]

Are you running in RAID 0? If so Are you sure whatever you're using supports TRIM on RAID 0 arrays? If it doesn't (or your drives don't do trim) then you're more than likely seeing the result of having SSDs 90% full.

[Kovoet]

You using sata 'll or data lll

[Tunnah]

Didn't really post enough details sorry about that.

It's an OCZ Octane 256GB SATAIII, tied to an Asus P8P67-Pro on the Intel SATAIII port, my storage details on my profile need updating

I assume TRIM is fine, running Windows 7 64bit SP1, all current updates.

Here are ATTO results



AS SSD:


Agent: OCZ Octane, yes and yes. No Vertex was my old setup need to update info

directhex: sorry don't mean secure erase, mean a fresh install.

kalniel: I don't think so, performance has dropped, rather than it being something from the get-go..although I have had some issues with the AV acting like a complete and utter nutsac and crippling me from time to time, will try disabling AV with next install.

herulach: no sorry info is out of date, single drive.

kovoet: SATAIII

I used to run with RAID0 but SATAII, upgraded because I wanted the SATA port back and the drives weren't that perky. Upon first installing it was really sweet..but now even firefox takes a while to load, and websites load up considerably slower.

Another thing I was wondering, could it be swap-file related ? I never used to use one, but had to reinstate it after losing 4GB RAM to repairs (3 months on still waiting). The swap file is on another SSD that is used exclusively for torrents, SATAIII but jmicron controller.

[Tunnah]

Hmm weird..

Kalniel I turned off AV and am installing a game from a a mechanical disk and it does seem slightly faster, however the curious thing is I can use my computer; normally browsing the web is off-limits, firefox locks up, pages don't load/take minutes to load etc. even using explorer is a nightmare.

Will play around with the AV off see how my system is...I have a huge amount of custom rules and exclusions in both the AV and firewall (I use ESET personal security) so maybe that's why it's so slow.

Install is still major-slow though, down to 15mb/s, will free up some space and try SSD > SSD