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.

[yn]

Hi, Tom,

I totally agree with you. I just bought this intel 535 SSD without doing any research and fell into this damned Write Amplification Gate. It seems that Intel doesn't want to solve this AT ALL. My nand write is increasing at 1GB/3min rate in idle state. I'm running Mac OS X now which means php_monkey's patch doesn't work for me. This intel drive is totally unacceptable. If Intel still doesn't release any fix or patch, Why not take a Class Action Against Intel?

[CPop]

nyfbb, I think on Mac you have the dd tool. On 3'rd page of this thread someone posted this as a workaround for unix based OS. Also porting solution provided by php_monkey to unix is not that hard, basically all that someone has to implement there is reading from disk without using cache / running application as a deamon.

Workaround found on page 3 for unix based OS:

Create a script that reads from disk every 125 ms (you could increase this to 250 and it should work still fine) and execute it. Make sure you have as if (inputFile) a file that exists on your SSD.

# !/bin/bash

while true

do

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

sleep 0.125

done

[DLuka1]

I am dealing this with Intel support now. The latest news is: problem has been reproduced.

Meanwhile I found that not all SSDs have this problem: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1SRHDUL6PK456/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1SRHDUL6PK456/. May be this is a new firmware bug?

[DLuka1]

Update from Intel. Problem has been confirmed. Investigating the cause.

[DLuka1]

Update from Intel. Investigating can took several months. O'RLY???