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]

i have the same problem with a write amplification of about 8...

290 GB Host Writes, 2376 GB NAND Writes after two months of usage as system drive in a perfectly optimized win 7 pc (no page file, no prefetching, correct alignment, ...).

a 330 series drive in another pc shows a write amplification of about 1, win 7 system drive as well...

but this is not the only problem, the 530 has an extremely high response time of about 160ms as reported in another thread here by two other users already. this response time seems related to the sleep modes of the drive, if i use ioping to create a read request every second and prevent the drive from entering deep sleep the max. response time is down to about 5ms, with a read request every 50ms the response time is at flat 0 as i would expect from a ssd.

the x25m g2 i replaced with the 530 never had this kind of response times, it just performed properly just as the 330 in the other pc does...

i tried all kinds of different drivers already and disabled all power management features on the host pc with no effect, so i'm afraid this behavior is even intended by design.

could some other users of the 530 please check the response times they get to figure out if there are any 530s working properly? the windows integrated performance monitor is all you need (avg disk sec/read and avg disk sec/write counters), even the resource monitor (task manager->performance->resource monitor->disk) shows the high response times.

my request to intel: please release an i400 (520 series) like firmware for the 530 disabling the new sleep states of the sf2281 b02 controller, label it optional or beta if you want but the 530 is unusable this way.

[ASeva]

test read access

drive wakes ~160ms

device sleep have timing 3000ms but drive still erase nand

1000ms

0 0 0.133 ms 0.081 ms 414138262 0 1 1.251 ms 999.953 ms 466432170 0 2 4.134 ms 2001.004 ms 269269105 0 3 2.060 ms 3005.089 ms 457692773 0 4 1.406 ms 4007.111 ms 82383165 0 5 2.077 ms 5008.147 ms 460235333 0 6 4.132 ms 6010.192 ms 334188678 0 7 1.301 ms 7014.228 ms 418758196 0 8 2.179 ms 8015.296 ms 268927207 0 9 0.237 ms 9017.324 ms 843070632000ms 0 0 2.226 ms 1.528 ms 230204247 0 1 4.068 ms 2003.436 ms 399801141 0 2 4.133 ms 4007.505 ms 323984655 0 3 2.110 ms 6011.608 ms 381871443 0 4 4.251 ms 8013.725 ms 48332368 0 5 2.093 ms 10017.839 ms 306379122 0 6 2.050 ms 12019.930 ms 33942998 0 7 2.114 ms 14021.981 ms 402706320 0 8 4.386 ms 16024.071 ms 274643557 0 9 4.307 ms 18028.193 ms 1068020313000ms 0 0 1.413 ms 0.828 ms 118952680 0 1 1.372 ms 3001.660 ms 92475813 0 2 2.217 ms 6002.812 ms 308318477 0 3 1.377 ms 9004.966 ms 57499531 0 4 4.240 ms 12006.093 ms 326510635 0 5 1.433 ms 15010.291 ms 228502202 0 6 4.561 ms 18011.403 ms 136832083 0 7 4.180 ms 21015.539 ms 107324202 0 8 2.206 ms 24019.683 ms 25455820 0 9 1.362 ms 27021.861 ms 4127955185000ms 0 0 161.921 ms 0.733 ms 330586492 0 1 4.214 ms 5162.012 ms 233597301 0 2 164.631 ms 10166.204 ms 370307407 0 3 4.208 ms 15330.489 ms 346451720 0 4 164.043 ms 20334.701 ms 398918990 0 5 2.206 ms 25498.973 ms 420880425 0 6 1.335 ms 30501.165 ms 403480779 0 7 2.156 ms 35502.409 ms 23859342 0 8 165.133 ms 40504.647 ms 48430179 0 9 164.657 ms 45669.877 ms 4223566557000ms 0 0 165.983 ms 0.479 ms 136778164 0 1 4.112 ms 7166.097 ms 377675237 0 2 5.009 ms 14170.421 ms 391153378 0 3 1.373 ms 21175.751 ms 285149890 0 4 5.774 ms 28177.086 ms 261676332 0 5 2.284 ms 35182.427 ms 138660241 0 6 1.328 ms 42184.731 ms 238985837 0 7 4.332 ms 49186.096 ms 19270772 0 8 1.354 ms 56190.409 ms 408951026 0 9 5.671 ms 63191.716 ms 184770230

[ARu]

yes on resource monitor I also have response time up to 160 ms

Intel - we need updated firmware ASAP!

[ARu]

any luck with Windows 7: AHCI Link Power Management - Enable HIPM and DIPM?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/177819-ahci-link-power-management-enable-hipm-dipm.html AHCI Link Power Management - Enable HIPM and DIPM - Windows 7 Help Forums

[ASeva]

no effect