Intel SSD 530 NAND Write Problem

[fZhan14]

Hello, everyone:

I bought an Intel SSD 530 120G for my laptop several days ago. It worked well with the OS Win8.1 Pro x64.

When I paid attention to the NAND writes, something make me confused.

The situation is as follow:

The SSD with the OS is the first(primary) Disk, and the HDD is the second one. I have moved the cache of IE, chrome and Firefox to the Hard Drive using IE setting or mklink command, and verified it correctly. With the explorer working, the written data stream from cache is produced in the HDD partition theoretically, also I have got this conclusion through the System's Resource Monitor and the Diskmon from Microsoft website. When I cached several Movies embedded in any explorer without other operation separately, there are lots of written data traffic produced in the HDD partition, and just little data wrote in system disk(SSD), it's no doubt. Finally, each test(using one kind of explorer) improved less than 200Mb in Total Host Writes which is normal for system operating, but this process also consumed about 3Gb SSD's Total NAND writes in total in the CrystalDiskInfo 6.0.1. Also I have got the same result with the newly Intel SSD Toolbox, AIDA64 3.20 and CrystalDiskInfo 6.0.1. In fact, this written data traffic produced by explorer's cache in HDD is calculated into the SSD's total NAND writes.

Actually I'm not care of the SSD's wear, and I'm sure it couldn't reach the limited lifespan with normal usage until next generation product arrives. This accidental discovery confused me now, and the result above make me suspect the theory, Putting IE/Chrome or System cache into other medium/drive saving your SSD's wear.

Q:Here, I want to know what makes this strange condition happen, the drivers, system's bug, bad support for old mainboard, the system's setting&config or the special system log?

Testing condition:

Thinkpad R400(GM45 motherboard)/P8700/8Gb RAM/Intel 530 SSD+Hitachi 7k500/Intel 5300 AGN/Win 8.1 Pro X64 with the Win 8.1's Default config and drivers, except trunning the service Superfetch off mannually.

I could make sure the location of explorer cache(IE, Chrome, Firefox) in HDD, also the written data traffic in HDD, and the vast imprived NAND writes in SSD simultaneously.

Thanks for your help.

[DSoll]

thank you both for checking the response time on your 530s, it definitely seems to be a general problem with this ssd.

i tried disabling hipm and dipm already but as Besovski says it doesn't change anything, the power states are probably controlled by the ssd internally.

making the sandforce controller more efficient is nice but you simply cannot implement a power management which causes response times like an optical disc drive, we really need a fixed firmware.

[ARu]

possible issue with ANCI drivers for Windows 7 64?

done two test on normal login and Safe Mode, please compare results

SAFE MODE

NORMAL LOGIN

noticed difference on two tests

[MMISS58]

Interesting thread. Just wanted to throw out my info after using my intel 530 for around a month and a half.

[VPety]

Hello all.

I'm faced to the same problem.

I'm using 240GB 530-series for MySQL database on Linux (yes, I know that it's not the best idea to use it for MySQL, but I had the only option at that time).

My NAND writes was 2.6 times bigger than Host writes.

Searching on the internet gave me nothing, except one link in intel community russian branch https://ru.intel.com/business/community/?showtopic=9283 https://ru.intel.com/business/community/?showtopic=9283

They discovered that the problem is in DevSleep function introduced in new revision of SF-2281 controller. Device is going to energy saving mode too often, and it writes down it's cache to NAND every time it going to that mode.

I wrote a small bash script that reads a small file 8 times per second in infinite loop:

# !/bin/bash

while true

do

dd if=/var/lib/mysql/readme of=/dev/null bs=512 count=1 iflag=direct

sleep 0.125

done

And it really works! While script is running, NAND writes dramatically decreased, and now I have total NAND writes only 1.6 times bigger than host writes.

In addition, the latency also decreased more than twice.

I wonder, is there any way to completely disable DevSleep?

[JChil2]

evol.ver

Anyway you could write a windows batch file to reproduce your Linux bash script ? I am not experienced to do this. I would like to try this in windows 7 to see if it makes any improvements.

My write amplification continues to increase.

Thanks

Jonnie