Intel SSD levels up but slows down!

[Philip]

Intel DSC2BW240A4 SSD. This was in the laptop I used continuously for 2 - 3 years intil I upgraded in 2018.

Do I believe this?? Not sure...

First run gave:
435 328 386 422 376 (I didn't bother to record the decimal place.)

I thought to myself, that sounds like some areas are doing error correction and need a helping hand with a dose of Spinrite Lvl 3.

So off I goes and spunrit it at Level 3. (First time I've ever used Level 3).

But Spinrite got stuck at around 27% with an R for Recovered data a blob or two back. It was also showing a considerable number of cabling errors. It was just stitting on top of the computer connected via cables fed through an empty front panel drive bay slot. Maybe electrical noise due to the SSD frame not being earthed.

Several hours later it was still stuck at 27%. Thinking the SATA channel had maybe locked up I rebooted with the SSD connected to the other SATA cable poking out of the drive bay.

RS now gave:
268.6 269.2 265.7 266.7 265.4

I didn't notice at the time that these were all considerably lower than when I started. But I did notice they weren't quite uniform, so restarted Spinrite Lvl3. But I wasn't sure whether the 27% was absolute or the current item, or which the current item was, so I started from zero. This time it ran without error.

RS now gave very consistent results:
269.0 269.4 269.1 268.9 269.3
but still below what I originally got. Strange!

 

[rfrazier]

Perhaps the 2nd cable is plugged into a port that can only do 3 Gbps. Those numbers are similar to what I get on my PC's.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron

 

[Philip]

Surely, all the SATA ports on a motherboard would be the same. To prove it, I did a comparison:

One port:
269.1 269.3 269.2 268.8 269.4

The other port:
504.0 507.8 495.0 493.0 520.6

I'm sorry to have to say you're dead right!

Here's a pic of the ports. It looks like the blue ones are 6G but all the others are evidently al only 3G.

 

[AlanD]

Looking at the colour differences, I suspect SATA 1 and 2 are one type - perhaps 6GB, SATA 3 and 4 are another, perhaps 3GB, and SATA 5 and 6 are different again, perhaps either can be RAID, or switchable to allow IDE interfaces to be used.

 

[PHolder]

What is the motherboard in the PC? Surely there is a manual online somewhere that will make it nice and clear as mud.

 

[rfrazier]

@Philip I'm sorry to be right, but thanks for the nod. Sometimes motherboard makers do things like that to save costs while still transitioning to new technology. My computers are about 10 years old. My laptop, for example, has only USB 2. My desktop has a couple of USB 3 but mostly USB 2. I haven't taken the time to dig into the motherboard to see if I have some SATA 6 Gbps like you do. But, you could, for example, put your boot drive and your gaming drive (if any) on the high speed ports. Other drives could go on the lower speed ports. 3 Gbps is STILL a pretty fast port.

Note, switching the cables around has the possibility of moving drive letters around or maybe even moving your boot drive. You might have to go into the bios and reset which drive to boot from. Not sure. And, I don't know about UEFI.

May your bits be stable and your interfaces be fast. Ron