Very low write speeds in NVME SSD

[depakjan]

HI All,
I have a crucial nvme 1tb SSD , recently i benchmarked my ssd to see if its still working as expected but i realised my write speeds are ridiculously low, its just around 130 mb/s where it used to be > 1200 , as per all the hdd utilities the drive is in good health.



I have done the following

1. Forced optimize(trim) in windows 11
2. installed some micron nvme driver from crucial software
3. No new firmware updates
4. Power plan is in maximum perf already
5. I read something about APM but i cant enable or disable for this drive so don't think its applicable
6. BIOS is set to AHCI mode already

what else should I do, i don't remember when i got this drive, maybe three years old, how can i fix it ?

 

[Toothless]

Had the same thing happen to my 970 EVO. Basically your drive is dying or software issue.

 

[depakjan]

Oh god, if its dying is there any way to check, with hdd i guess bad sectors was a sign with SSD no idea, what software issue could cause this?

 

[oobymach]

I've heard about some ssd drives losing speed as they fill up maybe crucial are one of them? One of my old sata ssd's would start writing a file at 150mbps and then drop after a minute to around 50mbps. You have no data integrity errors and no critical warnings so the drive should still be in good health.

Do a search for your drive model and see if there are bad reviews and what they say.

 

[GerKNG]

your SSD is pretty full but 130MB/s is still way lower than it should be.

check SMART Values first.
a dying drive normally writes in the single megabyte range for a couple hours/days before it just dies completely (like my HP EX900 SSD)

Edit:
i just realized that the P1 is a QLC SSD.
130MB/s with almost 90% filled means that you basically have zero SLC cache left. 140ish MB/s looks quite normal. a 4TB 870 QVO barely achieves 160MB/s writing 4bit per cell. below that it's 80MB/s.

 

[Chrispy_]

It's first-gen 64L QLC right? That NAND is a turd but I'm not sure your drive is old enough to have exhausted it's endurance rating yet. It's only 11% through its TBW, supposedly.

I'm suspecting it's an OS/Firmware issue; W10/11 likely have patches/updates that alter the host-memory buffer for supported DRAM-less SSDs and even though the P1 has a DRAM cache, it could be operating in HMB mode for a weird detection/driver/firmware reason.

If it's not an OS drive for your system, the best thing to do is dump it in an different PC/Laptop and see if it sucks there as well.
If it is your OS drive, and you windows install isn't too much of a ballache to reinstall, Diskpart /clean it to destroy the existing partition info and do a fresh Windows install.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Drive is too full, clear out 50 GB and see if it changes.

 

[micropage7]

could be from dying, any sign of corrupted files or slow loading or something that not usual for nvme?

 

[Chrispy_]

Drive is too full, clear out 50 GB and see if it changes.

88% full shouldn't be that slow. Sure, it'll be less than optimal but 150MB/s is only what you see when it's 99.5% full, normally.

 

[eidairaman1]

If its the primary drive, it has to compensate for recycle bin and paging/swap space.

Try another cable as well.

 

[Chrispy_]

If its the primary drive, it has to compensate for recycle bin and paging/swap space.

Try another cable as well.

The pagefile and recycle bin are both included in the 88% full reading.

It has 12% of available space, plus some additional overprovisioning that's available only to the drive, so it really shouldn't get that slow until it's genuinely near 100% full.

@depakjan There's a dedicated Crucial SSD utility with self-test and firmware updates etc. I would be checking that out at this point:

Crucial Storage Executive Tool | Firmware Download

Download the latest version of Crucial Storage Executive to get the most from your SSD hard drive. Includes information on storage used & drive health.

uk.crucial.com

 

[TheLostSwede]

88% full shouldn't be that slow. Sure, it'll be less than optimal but 150MB/s is only what you see when it's 99.5% full, normally.

Depends on the drive, I had a Samsung OEM drive that was only 80% full and it was causing my laptop to stall out.
Sure, it was a fairly old SATA drive, but not used that much and at least TLC, but after swapping it out for a larger drive, everything was working fine again.

 

[Chrispy_]

Depends on the drive, I had a Samsung OEM drive that was only 80% full and it was causing my laptop to stall out.
Sure, it was a fairly old SATA drive, but not used that much and at least TLC, but after swapping it out for a larger drive, everything was working fine again.

Are you sure that wasn't one of the Samsung TLC failures - the 840, the 840EVO, and around half a dozen OEM models used by Dell/Apple etc such as the PM841?
I saw dozens of stalls/slowdowns on those because of degradation that was eventually fixed by idle background rewriting of old data for the 840 and 840EVO in firmware.
Long before Samsung admitted the problem (they were called out by multiple customers and high-profile review sites) the workaround was to use a free utility called diskfresh.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Are you sure that wasn't one of the Samsung TLC failures - the 840, the 840EVO, and around half a dozen OEM models used by Dell/Apple etc such as the PM841?
I saw dozens of stalls/slowdowns on those because of degradation that was eventually fixed by idle background rewriting of old data for the 840 and 840EVO in firmware.
Long before Samsung admitted the problem (they were called out by multiple customers and high-profile review sites) the workaround was to use a free utility called diskfresh.

Nah, OEM drive, PM871.

 

[Chrispy_]

Nah, OEM drive, PM871.

If it's a PM871a rather than a PM871b then it's the problematic 21nm planar NAND that I'm talking about, the last they made before going 3D.

Maybe I'm wrong but you match all the symptoms, the drive is from the right era, and you said you didn't use it much which was the behaviour that allowed voltage drift in the first place. I bought about 50 of them (840 and 840EVO) and noticed the issue in a couple of OEM drives in Dell laptops too.

 

[depakjan]

Thanks all for your suggestions,, I have already installed crucial software even that reports good health, I have run all their tests and its ok as well, I have directly slotted in my motherboards primary m2 slot there is no cable involved, unfortunately its my OS drive so thinking whether to try the secure erase as its too much hassle but if you all think drive is dying I may have to move to a different drive anyway.

I feel like its windows 11 after upgrade this is the first time I am benchmarking also other than this I don't see any major hiccups as I don't any frequent writes other than downloading games.

 

[Chrispy_]

Thanks all for your suggestions,, I have already installed crucial software even that reports good health, I have run all their tests and its ok as well, I have directly slotted in my motherboards primary m2 slot there is no cable involved, unfortunately its my OS drive so thinking whether to try the secure erase as its too much hassle but if you all think drive is dying I may have to move to a different drive anyway.

I feel like its windows 11 after upgrade this is the first time I am benchmarking also other than this I don't see any major hiccups as I don't any frequent writes other than downloading games.

You can confirm the problem is your OS by downloading a tiny USB-bootable linux distro.
If performance is shit even when running linux off a USB, then you have a dying SSD.

I don't keep up with the linux scene so I don't know what the best USB-bootable utility distro is these days (it used to be DSL) but I keep a bootable Ubuntu distro on a USB for testing shit and fixing broken Windows OS drives.

 

[X71200]

It's a P1 which wasn't really a great SSD even on a fresh install, it's probably bunked since almost the entire drive is full of files. Open space / clear the SSD.

 

[depakjan]

Thanks will try the live linux and see, i have cleared the space as well , its still the same

 

[Toothless]

If its the primary drive, it has to compensate for recycle bin and paging/swap space.

Try another cable as well.

So uh, where do you plug the cable into an NVME? Asking for a friend.

 

[X71200]

I do plug a cable to a NVMe, but it's U.2 so... yeah, lol.

The drive is still filled very much, lots of small files can murder this kind of drive's performance.

 

[eidairaman1]

The pagefile and recycle bin are both included in the 88% full reading.

It has 12% of available space, plus some additional overprovisioning that's available only to the drive, so it really shouldn't get that slow until it's genuinely near 100% full.

@depakjan There's a dedicated Crucial SSD utility with self-test and firmware updates etc. I would be checking that out at this point:

Crucial Storage Executive Tool | Firmware Download

Download the latest version of Crucial Storage Executive to get the most from your SSD hard drive. Includes information on storage used & drive health.

uk.crucial.com

Ok its their version of Magic

Thanks will try the live linux and see, i have cleared the space as well , its still the same

Its the line of drive itself. Nothing you can do to make it faster.

 

[depakjan]

i guess full format is the only option, i will buy a new one and try it.
is this a good cheap and reliable drive

Kingston NV1 1TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe Internal SSD Up to 2100 MB/s SNVS/1000G - Newegg.com

Buy Kingston NV1 1TB M.2 2280 NVMe PCIe Internal SSD Up to 2100 MB/s SNVS/1000G with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[X71200]

Buy something like this instead:

Mushkin Pilot-E 1TB PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe 1.3 M.2 (2280) Internal SSD - Up to 3,500MBs – Opal Data Encryption - MKNSSDPE1TB-D8 - Newegg.com

Buy Mushkin Pilot-E 1TB PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe 1.3 M.2 (2280) Internal SSD - Up to 3,500MBs – Opal Data Encryption - MKNSSDPE1TB-D8 with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[Mussels]

All SSD's slow down as they get full
Hell, mech drives do as well it's just not quite as extreme.


It doesnt matter what you buy, if its past 80% full it's going to slow down - if it's hot, it's going to slow down. Writing enough to fill the cache? Going to slow down.
NVME speeds are very much an "upto" speed, not a constant.


If you need the ability to do large writes regularly, you need to get one of the more premium drives with a large cache and less layers (SLC/MLC, not TLC or QLC)