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SSD Slows down after reboot

Carosel43

I have a strange fault with my system.

My hard drive (sandisk ultra 2 480gb SSD) slows down after a while to the point where my pc takes forever to start up. I originally had this trouble with a 2.5inch mechanical hard drive that was in the system as a storage drive, so I removed it assuming it was dead and now the main hard drive is suffering the same issue.

Using one of those SSD speed tool things I discovered I was down to about 150mb/s on both read and write. Changing to another SATA port fixed it and got me back up to about 450 or so and I just assumed that was the end of it. Eventually I noticed the pc was slow again, did another check, and oh look, back to 150.

 

I then changed SATA ports, back to 450, and on every reboot/awake from sleep I now check the speed to see if it was slowly fading or just dropping out. I found that I loose about 50-60mb/s of my read/write performance per reboot/awake cycle and it seems I only notice once boot times get beyond a certain point.  Any ideas what might be going on?

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Did you clean install windows when you moved from your HDD to your SSD?

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Yes it was a clean install. It been working fine for the best part of a year and the system itself ran fine for over a year before that when I used a Seagate mechanical hard disk as my only drive. I upgraded to the SSD and after a nightmare installing windows due to a dodgy cable it has worked perfectly. Upgraded to windows 10, no problem. Then the 2.5inch mechanical hard drive I used for my photos kept slowing down. I assumed it was dead and removed it. Now the main one is doing the same :( 

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13 hours ago, Carosel43 said:

~snip~

Hello :)

 

Did you try completely swapping the port AND the SATA cable? Do you have other power cables to try with the SSD? 

I would also check the health of the drive and see if the raw values of the S.M.A.R.T. status show you anything strange with the drive. 

Do you have any pending updates for the drivers, OS or the BIOS? 

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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When changing ports I used different cables to no effect. Power has remained the same although I have disconnected it and plugged it back in to make sure it was all clean.

My drive does not have detailed error reporting/health checking available but was passed as healthy by a ssd health check program.

 

As for drivers, windows continues to update merrily and while NVidia control panel keeps asking me to update I don't feel the need to as everything works fine and this issue has been bugging me for quite a while now and I have tried numerous driver tweaks to no avail.

 

The BIOS is upgraded from the original the board shipped with but is not the most up to date as the most recent versions removes all of the overclocking tabs from the BIOS which is very annoying. And as the system has been fine for about 9 months with this BIOS and hardware config I do not think it is the problem.

 

One more piece of background, when I first noticed this issue with my slave drive ( WD 250gig 2.5inch drive) it not only ran slow but the hard drive activity light was on all the time, even with no activity according to task manager. Also when I plugged the SSD into the port formerly occupied by the WD hard disk windows still recognised it as the WD drive. Not that it made any difference to the performance, it still ran down just as it did when recognised correctly on any of the other 5 ports

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19 hours ago, Carosel43 said:

~snip~

Check the raw values of the S.M.A.R.T. status to make sure the drive is completely healthy. Post the status here if you have trouble reading it. 

 

I would still try the updates as they are often the culprit of such problems. 

 

Try benchamrking the SSD on another system to completely rule it out as the cause of the issue.

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Never had to check SMART values. wouldn't even know where to start with that.

Also the issue affects every drive I connect to the system. I put it all back to its original configuration the other day and the mechanical drive is down to below 20mb/s now. The SSD is still slowing down but about half the rate it did before.

 

 

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On 16.09.2016 г. at 5:02 PM, Carosel43 said:

~snip~

Try testing the drives on another computer if you can and see if the issue persists. 

 

There should be a diagnostic tool on the manufacturer website which can give you the S.M.A.R.T. info. You can also look for third-party tool that can give you the raw values of the S.M.A.R.T. status.

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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I will give that a go. Since reinstalling the mechanical drive my ssd has slowed down a bit but is holding steady, the mechanical drive however is down to 1mb/sec which is pretty pathetic.

 

This issue effects every hard drive I install but without another system to test these drives in I cant rule them out totally, but all of the drives I install are good drives that I have used for some time so I think the issue is with the motherboard or windows. When I get a moment I will jot down all my o/c settings and then flash my bios and start again, see if that fixes anything

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as i'm not an expert or anything but coudn't this be motherboard related?

since you have the problem on more harddrive's and the only similar i can tell is your motherboard :P 

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10 hours ago, Carosel43 said:

~snip~

Any luck with the BIOS update and reset? 

Did you manage to get the health status of the drives?

 

I'd try to find a friend with another system to completely rule out the drives and possibly take the motherboard to a technician. 

 

Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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I did not get around to resetting the bios yet as I was tracking the development of the fault. Since my last post the mechanical drive basically slowed to a stop and the old issue with the hard drive activity light being permanently lit (irrespective of drive activity) returned. The SSD didn't get any slower and seemed to be ticking along just fine.

 

Then on Saturday we had a power failure due to an appliance in the kitchen blowing itself up and tripping the ring main. This knocked out the computers power and once the smoke cleared in the kitchen I powered up the system again, restarted, and boom. All drives back to maximum speed and hard drive light now blinking away like it should. In the few days since I have not noticed any slow down and indeed it seemed to boot slightly faster right after the power outage than at any point before. I have not checked to see what th mechanical drive is up to as its only in there for testing, I don't actually use the drive at all.

 

I will check the performance of both drives later and see where we are.

 

Even if it has begun to slow the mechanical drive again it still makes zero sense that a power failure would reset things. the BIOS was not damaged and the system just rebooted as normal and windows did its little 'your system did not shut down properly' thing. Nothing seemed to change.

 

My gut feeling is that its a motherboard/bios/broken windows issue as the drives would be slow/loose data all the time if they were on the way out. One thing I forgot to mention before is that when the drives slow down, the SSD in particular has very high response times showing in task manager. Easily into 3 digits at times and I know that is not right. Just another piece of the puzzle!

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18 minutes ago, Carosel43 said:

-snip-

Have you tried disabling fast startup? It always gave me more issues (Slower startup times / shutdown times).

 

It's in Power Options -> Choose what the power buttons do (Side bar) -> Click link "Change settings that are currently unavailable" -> Then uncheck "Turn on Fast Startup" and save changes. See if that helps your times, for me, my PC would take minutes to shut down with it enabled.

 

However, I don't understand why your speeds are dropping so low as you mention.

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I will look into it but I don't think its the issue as the system ran fast/stable in its current configuration for many months before this issue crept in.

 

my start up time is in the order of 30-40 seconds? shutting down is longer but still under a minute. When the slow down really takes hold it takes 3 or 4 minutes to get into windows which is getting back to my mechanical HDD days!

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I'd try taking the whole system to a technician so they can check the motherboard and see if they find some issues. Try checking the CMOS battery on the motherboard if it keeps its voltage properly. 

 

Try testing your PSU too as well as all the cables. 

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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2 hours ago, Carosel43 said:

I will look into it but I don't think its the issue as the system ran fast/stable in its current configuration for many months before this issue crept in.

 

my start up time is in the order of 30-40 seconds? shutting down is longer but still under a minute. When the slow down really takes hold it takes 3 or 4 minutes to get into windows which is getting back to my mechanical HDD days!

Yeah, that sounds more like a hardware / windows install issue. I'm doubtful it's the SSD since it seems to be working properly. You might try other ports (I think you have already) or a different SATA cable.

 

Also try to view in Resource Manager what exactly is eating the bandwidth (Or if the bandwidth is there to begin with). I hope the motherboard isn't bad...

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My feeling is its a setting somewhere and if it keeps getting worse I will clear cmos etc and start over. I have swapped out cables and ports on the SATA side and it seems to make no difference at all. The fact that windows saw the SSD as the mechanical hard drive after the mechanical drive was removed from the system and the SSD plugged into where the HDD used to be suggests windows is confused but I cant be bothered with a reinstall right now and I don't fancy stripping it all down and taking it to a shop. they would have to use the system for 2 weeks to even begin to see the issue. The cost of that would be more than a new board.

 

As for the PSU I would expect to see other issues with the system if it was to blame. Both my CPU and graphics card are overclocked a reasonable amount and the corsair 700 watt psu is more than man enough.

 

Other than the drive slowing down the system is perfect. No BSOD, no random behaviour or anything strange. One of my games regularly (once a week) crashes during map changes but the forum for the game suggests its a common issue so I'm ignoring it as a factor for now.

 

If there is a mechanical issue then its the weirdest issue I have ever known!

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23 hours ago, Carosel43 said:

~snip~

Clearing the CMOS may help you solve the recognition problem. Also, since you had issues with the installation and this is an upgrade of the OS I would strongly suggest backing up everything and performing a fresh clean install of Windows 10 after making sure you are in UEFI mode using AHCI instead of IDE in the BIOS. 

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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I already checked the AHCI mode and thats all good. In the BIOS i also have an option for hard disk or SSD and SSD is selected. 

 

The OS currently on the drive was a clean install of win7 which was upgraded to 10. My original installation issues seemed to come down a dodgy cable and this install went through fine. The upgrade to 10 knocked out a few things but nothing major. The system ran fine for several months in that configuration before this issue began. 

 

When i get in tonight i will install the SSD tools offered by sandisk and see where i end up. I might also clear CMOS just so its ruled out as an issue

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18 minutes ago, Carosel43 said:

~snip~

If you have enough free space on the SSD try to leave some unallocated space and install another OS (Linux-based for example) and also run the benchmarks. You can do that from a bootable thumb drive too. This should eliminate the OS/driver factor. 

OS upgrades have been known to lead to similar issues.

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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I dont have any access to linux OS. I can stick a version of windows 7 or 10 on another drive but i only have mechanical drives kicking about. Also i would need to reinstall the whole thing and run it for 2 weeks to see if there was an issue. If im doing that i might as well wipe the existing drive and start again. 

 

Right now though the system has reverted back to snail speed mechanical drive with always on HDD light, but the SSD seems to be hanging on. As its current setup, while compromised, is not slowing me down or causing issues with use i might just ignore it if the cmos clear/ssd tools do nothing for me

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Ok I have numbers to show. I have two shots of some runs I did on the drive to see how fast it was. I did the tests more or less back to back. Usually the top two are hitting 450 when everything is perfect, as for the other numbers, frankly, I have no clue what they actually mean.

I downloaded the SSD tools from sandisk, they tell me the drive is happy as a pig in plop and everything is up to date. No firmware outstanding, and the short SMART test passed without incident.

 

What do we think of the screen grabs?

as-ssd-bench SanDisk Ultra II 28-Sep-16 6-02-17 PM.png

as-ssd-bench SanDisk Ultra II 28-Sep-16 6-04-19 PM.png

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16 hours ago, Carosel43 said:

~snip~

These speeds are still twice as high as a regular HDD but should typically be even higher.

Did you check the Resource Monitor (as @scottyseng suggested) for any abnormal activity? 

 

Captain_WD. 

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Yea I have been keeping an eye on that as a matter of course. There are windows components and steam doing odd bits here and there but nothing significant.

 

I also tried to clear CMOS but to no avail as the jumper is buried under my big old cpu heatsink so I need to remove either that or the graphics card to get at it. Some long nose pliers or tweezers might do it but I need to hunt around to see what I have and work out a way of not shorting anything. I don't really want to remove the graphics card as its right pain getting all the cables routed again.

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The saga continues.

No system changes other than a windows update. Mechanical HDD back to life and these results for the SSD

For some reason it said the drive was inaccessible for the read Acc time test but other than that its all fine. This is pointing towards a windows issue I think?

as-ssd-bench SanDisk Ultra II 29-Sep-16 10-20-12 PM.png

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