Degrading ssd performance

[W3RN3R]

Hello, hope anyone can help with this, i bought a gx2 teamgroup 2tb ssd a few months ago. I use it as my game storage drive, steam, ea etc. games loaded very fast at first, after some time i noticed that game loading times increased considerably, wrc generations for example took forever to load, where it loaded almost immediately when i first had the drive. I deleted the game folder and copied a backup to the drive, after doing that it was all fine again. Had to do this with all my games, now the same issue seems to happen again, not nearly as bad as it was, but noticeable. How is this possible? What's the point of having an ssd if weird things like this happens. I've read somewhere about data/cell ageing and i don't seem to be the only one with this problem. No issues according to crystaldiskinfo.

 

[Shrek]

A not very full SSD can run in SLC mode, so this might explain what you are seeing.

Switching between SLC and TLC | TechPowerUp Forums

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

If you start getting an error message about a corrupted file in the event log, then that SSD is done!

 

[Hardcore Games]

I suggest a usb hard disk can be handy to backup and reset the SSD to allow it to refresh the block translation tables

 

[W3RN3R]

Thanks to all of you, been reading about this and seems to be quite common. I'm not going to replace game folders everytime this happens just to get my performance back. I highly doubt this will happen with a Samsung ssd/nvme, very annoying issue that should not be IMO.

 

[Jacky_BEL]

Look up "SSD read disturb(ance)".

Turns out that the GRC spinrite v6.1 utility running in "Level 3" can be used to refresh the condition of SSD's.
Now I haven't tried this out myself , so feedback from those who did and saw improvement is very much welcome,
to establish if this method of refreshing of SSD's actually works.

 

[Ruru]

How much u have free space on that drive? Personally I keep at least 10% free on my SSDs

 

[massaker]

GRC spinrite v6.1 utility running in "Level 3" can be used to refresh the condition of SSD's.

So it's basically the same as HD Sentinel's "surface test"-> refresh data area, but much more expensive?

The upcoming SpinRite 7.0 will feature a UEFI-compatible version with a truly smart refresh algorithm for SSDs.

 

[AndyGawg]

How much u have free space on that drive? Personally I keep at least 10% free on my SSDs

Me too. I always overprovision any ssd by 10% , and my system drive by 15%. (Like can be done with Samsung majician, but I do it for all brands manually - errmm,.... mostly Samsung infact.)
Additionally, I keep available space around 30% or more.
I've never had a busted SSD, so I either lucky or doing something right.

 

[Ruru]

Me too. I always overprovision any ssd by 10% , and my system drive by 15%. (Like can be done with Samsung majician, but I do it for all brands manually - errmm,.... mostly Samsung infact.)
Additionally, I keep available space around 30% or more.
I've never had a busted SSD, so I either lucky or doing something right.

My only died SSD was a Kingston something, also that was a freebie so no actual casualties. It just died, didn't even detect in POST/BIOS :/

 

[W3RN3R]

This link explains the exact same issue I'm having with my drive, never knew it was a issue with some ssds to begin with. I still have more than 50% free space left, so definitely not that. I'm just gonna return the drive. My fault for buying cheap, only Samsung from now on.

Samsung's 840 EVO update fixes slow reads with old data

techreport.com

 

[micropage7]

Hello, hope anyone can help with this, i bought a gx2 teamgroup 2tb ssd a few months ago. I use it as my game storage drive, steam, ea etc. games loaded very fast at first, after some time i noticed that game loading times increased considerably, wrc generations for example took forever to load, where it loaded almost immediately when i first had the drive. I deleted the game folder and copied a backup to the drive, after doing that it was all fine again. Had to do this with all my games, now the same issue seems to happen again, not nearly as bad as it was, but noticeable. How is this possible? What's the point of having an ssd if weird things like this happens. I've read somewhere about data/cell ageing and i don't seem to be the only one with this problem. No issues according to crystaldiskinfo.

do you writing and erasing such a huge data very often?
ssd although it's fast, it degrades faster specially when you write/erase such a huge data often

 

[Jacky_BEL]

So it's basically the same as HD Sentinel's "surface test"-> refresh data area, but much more expensive?
View attachment 344516
The upcoming SpinRite 7.0 will feature a UEFI-compatible version with a truly smart refresh algorithm for SSDs.

Well it is good news for people that already have v6.0 and can now upgrade to v6.1
I find it remarkable that a program developped for "obsolete" HDD can benefit SSD's that work in a totally different way.

 

[W3RN3R]

do you writing and erasing such a huge data very often?
ssd although it's fast, it degrades faster specially when you write/erase such a huge data often

No i don't, it's only when i noticed the loading time increased with games, i replaced all games with backups and the performance was back to normal, not doing it again as it would only be a temporary solution. Tech reviewers should do follow up reviews on ssds with older data. Wonder how many users have this issue not even aware of it.

 

[Jacky_BEL]

I still like to have separate SSD drives for OS and Data , and have reused older smaller size SSD's for pagefile.

 

[W3RN3R]

I still like to have separate SSD drives for OS and Data , and have reused older smaller size SSD's for pagefile.

I have a Samsung evo 250gb with my os installed. The gx2 is just my games drive.

More links with these reported issues

Western Digital SSDs experiencing read performance degradation

According to several Chinese forum posts and my own experience, some (if not the most) Western Digital SSDs have serious performance regression problems. The read performance of old data drops significantly on drives such as WD Blue SATA, SN500, SN550, SN700, SN750 etc. Users reporting this probl...

linustechtips.com

Corsair MP510 (980GB) - slooooooooow with older files...

www.overclock.net

Would be interesting to see someone like gamer nexus doing investigation on this. Some manufacturers just seem to cheap out on nand chips and brag about their high TBW rating.

 

[AndyGawg]

I still like to have separate SSD drives for OS and Data , and have reused older smaller size SSD's for pagefile.

Agree. Same here, always done that and always will.

In relation to SSDs in general, there are now some pretty crappy brands I've heard/read. I stick to Samsung, but even they had an issue with bad Nvme 980 M.2s a while back if memory serves.

 

[Jacky_BEL]

Steve Gibson put out a SpinRite walktrough video on YT.

Now , I would ONLY use it on MBR partitioned drives.
There is some talk about version 7 with UEFI support but who knows howlong it will be before it gets out.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Steve Gibson put out a SpinRite walktrough video on YT.

Now , I would ONLY use it on MBR partitioned drives.
There is some talk about version 7 with UEFI support but who knows howlong it will be before it gets out.

I wonder if the performance issue is because the SSD is likely an older model given it's capacity and lacks internal housekeeping and/or wear leveling.

 

[LittleBro]

Thanks to all of you, been reading about this and seems to be quite common. I'm not going to replace game folders everytime this happens just to get my performance back. I highly doubt this will happen with a Samsung ssd/nvme, very annoying issue that should not be IMO.

This is definitely not normal, though may be common. I have only experienced this problem once and it was on my first SSD, Samsung 830 128 GB. I forgot to leave 10% of drive capacity unformatted (as over provisioning). Everything was fast for few weeks, then I could not see difference in Windows 7 boot time between old 7200 RPM HDD and mentioned SSD. I wiped out entire SSD, installed OS while leaving 10% unformatted and it never happenned again. Nowadays drives has over provisioning partition that is hidden from users, so when drive says it has 1 TB capacity, it actually has a bit more to have enough space as over provisioning and user is unable to allocate this space, it's hidden by firmware by default.

As @Ruru mentioned, is there enough free space on the drive? Even Windows requires some free space on NTFS partitions for it's own management.

Post S.M.A.R.T. output and disk space usage.