# New Crucial M500 SSD Freakishly Slow - [SOLVED]



## AutoPsychotic (May 25, 2015)

I just put together a build with a brand new M500 240GB, installed Windows 7 64-bit SP1 and everything seemed okay. It was working like a dream; boot up happened in under ten seconds, etc. 

Now it's been just a few days, with minimal use, and Windows started taking longer and longer to boot each time (the logo screen, before it even gets to logon). It's at something around 100 seconds now, so I figured I should run some benchmarks to check on the status of the drive. 

Here's what I got: 







The Read Speed and Read Access Time okay, but most of these results seem way off. 

What do I do? Any suggestions? Do I have to return the whole drive under warranty and wait to get a new one before I can use my new computer?


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## SuperSoph_WD (May 26, 2015)

Welcome to TPU, @AutoPsychotic! 

Make sure that the SATA mode in BIOS is set to AHCI for the SSD, this should improve the speed. Btw do you have TRIM enabled?
If you have a secondary data HDD in the system, I'd recommend checking this detailed tutorial/guide about SSD & HDD optimization in Windows 7: http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds

Hope it helps you. Keep us posted! 
SuperSoph_WD


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## Jetster (May 26, 2015)

What are your system specs. How did you set the drive up?

Did you leave space for over-provisioning?

Its probably a SATA driver


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## R-T-B (May 26, 2015)

Jetster said:


> What are your system specs. How did you set the drive up?
> 
> Did you leave space for over-provisioning?
> 
> Its probably a SATA driver



OP is not likely to cause a performance drop that drastic...  I'm going with an incorrect TRIM setup, like installing in IDE mode or something.


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## Jetster (May 26, 2015)

It can if the drives full but its not likely in this case. 

I'm going with its a Intel system and RST is not installed


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## Hugis (May 26, 2015)

Jetster said:


> It can if the drives full but its not likely in this case.
> 
> I'm going with its a Intel system and RST is not installed




AS SSD states amd_sata....


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## AutoPsychotic (May 26, 2015)

SuperSoph_WD said:


> Welcome to TPU, @AutoPsychotic!
> 
> Make sure that the SATA mode in BIOS is set to AHCI for the SSD, this should improve the speed. Btw do you have TRIM enabled?
> If you have a secondary data HDD in the system, I'd recommend checking this detailed tutorial/guide about SSD & HDD optimization in Windows 7: http://www.overclock.net/t/1156654/seans-windows-7-install-optimization-guide-for-ssds-hdds
> ...



Thanks! Long-time lurker, first-time poster, so I'm not necessarily "new" per se, though I appreciate the welcome all the same.  

SATA mode was definitely in AHCI from before Windows installation. TRIM was enabled. I followed a similar SSD optimization/setup guide initially (as this is my first SSD I actually own), which apparently lead me astray as it recommended I _disable_ Write Caching entirely, and that seems to have been one of my problems. 

I have now re-enabled Write Caching, as well as entirely removed the AMD SATA driver(s) (letting Microsoft install and use its own automatically), and that seems to have helped a great deal (see updated benchmark below).



Jetster said:


> What are your system specs. How did you set the drive up?
> 
> Did you leave space for over-provisioning?
> 
> Its probably a SATA driver



Not sure what is meant by over-provisioning, but the drive is mostly empty as this is a brand new Windows install; it has ~200GB free space on the drive. 

It seems you are correct that a SATA driver was a big part of the problem. I just uninstalled the AMD SATA drivers (installed from the motherboard manufacturer's website), and with the stock Microsoft SATA driver(s) it's now performing a lot better (see updated benchmark below).



R-T-B said:


> OP is not likely to cause a performance drop that drastic...  I'm going with an incorrect TRIM setup, like installing in IDE mode or something.



Definitely not IDE mode. AHCI mode with TRIM enabled.



Jetster said:


> It can if the drives full but its not likely in this case.
> 
> I'm going with its a Intel system and RST is not installed



AMD system, though now using stock Microsoft SATA driver(s), which yielded this benchmark: 






So that seems to be a marked improvement, though it's still taking ~40-45 seconds of Windows logo time to boot, from power on to Windows desktop, which is still a far cry from the 10-15 seconds I was getting with this drive initially. 40-45 seconds seems more to me like HDD boot times than what I should be getting with this SSD. What else am I/could I be missing?


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## AutoPsychotic (May 26, 2015)

I went to AMD's website and grabbed the latest set of chipset drivers from there directly (because MSI Live Update is useless), and re-ran AS SSD with the following result:




Windows is still taking ~30-40 seconds to boot.


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## xorbe (May 26, 2015)

Jetster said:


> I'm going with its a Intel system and RST is not installed



I uninstalled Intel RST as fast as I could ... made all my spinners unload/load cycle click every few seconds.


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## jsfitz54 (May 27, 2015)

Have you tried using this:  http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/support-storage-executive

What is the "write caching" size that you selected?  How much memory do you have?

Is the drive on the primary sata connection "0"?  (not set up for raid by mistake or secondary controller)

Current Bios for motherboard?

What antivirus program is in play?

Options: Admin tools, sys config, startup???

Was initial bench after Windows install but before loading other programs?


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## AutoPsychotic (May 27, 2015)

jsfitz54 said:


> Have you tried using this:  http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/support-storage-executive
> 
> What is the "write caching" size that you selected?  How much memory do you have?
> 
> ...



I don't know that I was given a Write Caching size option. It was just a checkbox. 

Yes, the drive is on the primary SATA connection 0. Not set up for RAID.

Yes, current BIOS for mobo. 

No antivirus currently (unless you cound Windows Defender). 

Startup options are relatively clean; nothing loading on windows boot aside from Rainmeter and Winamp Agent (neither of which are responsible for the slowdown). 

Yes, initial bench was before running Windows update. 

That Storage Executive program says "No supported drives were found in the system."


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## R-T-B (May 27, 2015)

Longshot:  Are your partitions aligned properly?  (If you just used the Windows 7/8 partitoner and not some third party data migrator from god knows where, they almost certainly are).


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## RealNeil (May 27, 2015)

SSDs in my AMD based motherboards don't perform as well as SSDs in my Intel based motherboards do.
I'm not sure why this is so, but it is.


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## jsfitz54 (May 27, 2015)

AutoPsychotic said:


> That Storage Executive program says "No supported drives were found in the system."



I had this issue with an old Gateway laptop and a non traditional installation, I had omitted the 100MB partition (on purpose) and was running a cloned version; (3 times cloned from spinner to SSD to SSD to SSD).  I lost Office 2007 in the process but don't care.

I did a reinstall from an ISO with *no key, SP1,* which omitted all the Gateway (AMD) proprietary installation items including the rescue partition.
Microsoft link here:  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery

How did you install?

This fixed the "no supported drive error" and all is working better/faster now.

*Please fill out "System Specs" when you need help.*


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## RejZoR (May 27, 2015)

I had similar bad performance with my Crucial M4 and AMD laptop. With AMD SATA it was crawling. With Windows SATA driver, it's fine. Which is strange since I did use same laptop with same drive a year or two ago and it worked fine even with AMD SATA...


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## AutoPsychotic (May 27, 2015)

R-T-B said:


> Longshot:  Are your partitions aligned properly?  (If you just used the Windows 7/8 partitoner and not some third party data migrator from god knows where, they almost certainly are).



Yep, partitions are aligned. 



jsfitz54 said:


> I had this issue with an old Gateway laptop and a non traditional installation, I had omitted the 100MB partition (on purpose) and was running a cloned version; (3 times cloned from spinner to SSD to SSD to SSD).  I lost Office 2007 in the process but don't care.
> 
> I did a reinstall from an ISO with *no key, SP1,* which omitted all the Gateway (AMD) proprietary installation items including the rescue partition.
> Microsoft link here:  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-recovery
> ...



Installed from ISO on bootable flash drive, SP1, no proprietary installation items. 

See, if it had always been this slow on this particular system, I'd be unimpressed, sure (HDD performance on an SSD, woo), but I'd accept it. What really irks me is I had this system booting in under 10 seconds, then (for no discernible reason) it stopped. That's why this is so frustrating.


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## AutoPsychotic (May 28, 2015)

*FIXED!*

I just spent all night trawling through the Interwebz for a solution (any solution) to this. It finally works again as it is supposed to.

I can't say for certain which individual thing fixed it, since I often made several changes/installations on a single reboot, but I can say it now consistently boots as quick as it should on this SSD (MainPathBootTime between 9245 - 12903 ms for the animated logo part on four subsequent reboots).

Here is a short list of the changes I made which seemed to have the most impact/contribution to resolving this, or at least the last few significant changes before it started once again working as it should:


Re-enabled Prefetch and Superfetch (both through the registry as well as services)
Installed the following three hotfixes from Microsoft: KB2505454, KB2510636 and KB2617858
Enabled ReadyBoot (which depends on Superfetch to operate)

So there it is, and I made a backup/complete image of my boot drive onto my Seagate Barracuda 3TB as soon as I confirmed all was working well after three reboots in a row. 

Ran another benchmark with AS SSD, but no point in posting it here as the results are almost identical to the last one posted in this thread (776 total score).

I would like to thank everyone here who helped me work this out. Contributions were very helpful, and I am grateful, even just to have someone else as a sounding board off of whom to bounce ideas.

Thanks again everyone.


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## RealNeil (May 28, 2015)

I'm glad that it's fixed.


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## rtwjunkie (May 28, 2015)

Thanks for sharing with us the resolution!  You may have helped others in the future.


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## OneMoar (May 28, 2015)

make sure write-caching is enabled as well


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