SSD Drive Letter Not Listed In Task Manager

[Sparky862]

Okay, when I open Task Manager, I can find Disk 1, 2 and 3 each assigned to a letter (C,D,G). My SSD which I will talk about now is listed as Disk 0 with now Drive Letter.

 

So, patching games on Steam takes forever. Patching a 80gb file takes 3hrs. I open Task Manager and the Disk is 100% being utilized. Read/Write speeds fluctuate between 4MB/s-15MB/s. Under Disk Management the SSD and all drives list fine.

 

Like I don't know what's going on here. If this is normal behaviour and things on Steam with such huge files to patch would take this long?

 

I have attached the Disk Management view with Disk 0 being in question. Attached Device Manager and also some 3rd party app listing my SSD Status in question.

 

 

[Murasaki]

Maybe Windows doesnt like you assigned the letter A to the drive? A is usually reserved for floppy disks (legacy thing)

[Sparky862]

1 minute ago, Murasaki said:

Maybe Windows doesnt like you assigned the letter A to the drive? A is usually reserved for floppy disks (legacy thing)

It was E, I changed it to A in hoping it would fix things. But it didn't

[MiszS]

not the crystaldiskinfo 

[Sparky862]

Task Manager also shows 100% Disk Usage at 4.7MB/s .... I should be getting like 200MB/s?

[MiszS]

1 minute ago, Sparky862 said:

Task Manager also shows 100% Disk Usage at 4.7MB/s .... I should be getting like 200MB/s?

Is it a sata, or an NVMe SSD? There's a chance you got scammed, because there's no way an SSD is that slow

[Sparky862]

3 minutes ago, MiszS said:

Is it a sata, or an NVMe SSD? There's a chance you got scammed, because there's no way an SSD is that slow

SATA. I mean it all worked before no issues? Drive is practically new (8 months). Sometimes when I boot up Windows the Drive does not even load and I have to restart windows.

 

The Drive appears under Disk Mangement, but it does not Inisialize. So I end up restarting a few times and it shows up.

[MiszS]

1 minute ago, Sparky862 said:

SATA. I mean it all worked before no issues? Drive is practically new (8 months). Sometimes when I boot up Windows the Drive does not even load and I have to restart windows.

 

The Drive appears under Disk Mangement, but it does not Inisialize. So I end up restarting a few times and it shows up.

Do you have the drive for 8 months, or was it released 8 months ago? Those speeds seem typical for scams where instead of the actual SSD inside, there is just a microSD card that's way slower, and also made to display way higher capacity than it actually is 

[Sparky862]

1 minute ago, MiszS said:

Do you have the drive for 8 months, or was it released 8 months ago? Those speeds seem typical for scams where instead of the actual SSD inside, there is just a microSD card that's way slower, and also made to display way higher capacity than it actually is 

No I have it for 8 months and I know it worked before. Like now suddenly it jumped up to 54MB/s and it now takes my 80gb Steam file 10min to patch. Then suddenly it slows down to like 4MB/s and just stay there for 20 to 30min then jumps back up again.

 

Is there not a way to Benchmark the SSD and run it through a test to see the performance?

[MiszS]

1 minute ago, Sparky862 said:

No I have it for 8 months and I know it worked before. Like now suddenly it jumped up to 54MB/s and it now takes my 80gb Steam file 10min to patch. Then suddenly it slows down to like 4MB/s and just stay there for 20 to 30min then jumps back up again.

 

Is there not a way to Benchmark the SSD and run it through a test to see the performance?

I mean, you can use crystaldiskinfo, but that's still weird if it worked fine before, how much of it is filled up?

[Sparky862]

1 minute ago, MiszS said:

I mean, you can use crystaldiskinfo, but that's still weird if it worked fine before, how much of it is filled up?

300GB Free of 2TB Storage

[MiszS]

Just now, Sparky862 said:

300GB Free of 2TB Storage

Then i have no idea lol

[Sparky862]

Maybe it's just Steam being Steam. How do I use the CrystalDiskInfo to benchmark the SSD in question?

[SlayerOfHellWyrm]

So, that's a HikSemi WAVE(S) SSD. They are known to be very low-quality drives. Odds are, that thing has 0 cache and writing the patch has filled it, then with poor quality/tier NAND, it's just slowing to a freaking crawl. You can use something like CrystalDiskMark, Atto, HD Sentinel, and other similar tools to benchmark the drive, but make sure you do large file size tests too. I don't have faith in that drive at all.

[Brando212]

2 minutes ago, Sparky862 said:

How do I use the CrystalDiskInfo to benchmark the SSD in question?

CrystalDiskMark is what you want for benchmark; it's another one of their apps.

 

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskmark/

[Sparky862]

1 minute ago, SlayerOfHellWyrm said:

So, that's a HikSemi WAVE(S) SSD. They are known to be very low-quality drives. Odds are, that thing has 0 cache and writing the patch has filled it, then with poor quality/tier NAND, it's just slowing to a freaking crawl. You can use something like CrystalDiskMark, Atto, HD Sentinel, and other similar tools to benchmark the drive, but make sure you do large file size tests too. I don't have faith in that drive at all.

I am not sure what you mean by it having 0 cache?

 

Would that explain the drive going to 54MB/s then after a while just drops to 7MB/s and stays there for almost 30min before jumping back up to 54MB/s?

[Brando212]

2 minutes ago, SlayerOfHellWyrm said:

So, that's a HikSemi WAVE(S) SSD. They are known to be very low-quality drives. Odds are, that thing has 0 cache and writing the patch has filled it, then with poor quality/tier NAND, it's just slowing to a freaking crawl. You can use something like CrystalDiskMark, Atto, HD Sentinel, and other similar tools to benchmark the drive, but make sure you do large file size tests too. I don't have faith in that drive at all.

I agree with this. Based on what you've described with the inconsistency of working between boots, I'd say the drive is on the way out. May want to get a replacement/upgrade and clone things over.

[Sparky862]

2 minutes ago, Brando212 said:

CrystalDiskMark is what you want for benchmark; it's another one of their apps.

 

https://crystalmark.info/en/software/crystaldiskmark/

So what settings do I set it at? 64GB file size to Bench? What's with the 8 que and 1 thread options?

[SlayerOfHellWyrm]

1 minute ago, Sparky862 said:

I am not sure what you mean by it having 0 cache?

 

Would that explain the drive going to 54MB/s then after a while just drops to 7MB/s and stays there for almost 30min before jumping back up to 54MB/s?

I'm referring to a DRAM cache. Let me use an analogy:

You have a dirt pile to move, and you can load the dirt into the transport vessel with a backhoe, so your speed limit is how fast you can carry the buckets to where you need the dirt to go. With a DRAM cache, it's like having a wheelbarrow alongside the buckets. If you only have to move an mount of dirt equal to or less than what the wheelbarrow can carry, it's way faster than a bucket. However, once you need to move more, you still have to use some buckets as well because you can only empty the wheelbarrow so fast.

It's not the best analogy, but it gets across what a DRAM cache kinda does. Makes the drive go fast, but if you start moving way more data than the cache, or the drive is nearing full it starts to slow. Without a DRAM cache, that just happens from the get-go, and the fuller the drive gets the slower it gets.  It can definitely explain the speed jumping around some.

[MiszS]

On 5/9/2024 at 8:30 PM, SlayerOfHellWyrm said:

I'm referring to a DRAM cache.

Doesn't have to be DRAM, i have a DRAMless SSD, but it's still fast and never has those problems, because it has SLC cache, which is way faster than the regular TLC that most of the cells are made out of