Poor PNY CS900 Results

[KenW]

Hi All:

I need help analyzing readspeed results from and SSD I have that is performing much slower that expected. The SSD is a PNY-CS900 250GB that is about 18 months old. The PC it is installed is very old and only supports SATA II. I am providing both readspeed results and attaching SMART results taken after the readspeed ran. I also ran SpinRite level 2 before running readspeed. As you will see the read results are very poor at each point except 75%. The results I get from a 250GB Samsung SSD 860 EVO are 275 MB/sec across the board. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

  +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
  | ReadSpeed: Hyper-accurate mass storage read-performance benchmark. rel 1 |
  |  Benchmarked values are in megabytes read per second at five locations.  |
  +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+

   NOTE: A faster SATA drive is attached to a slower SATA link. You may add
         the /ident command-line option to display and identify the drive.

Driv Size  Drive Identity     Location:    0      25%     50%     75%     100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
 81  240GB PNY CS900 240GB SSD           131.5   143.0   185.7   250.0   146.9

                  Benchmarked: Sunday, 2022-02-06 at 06:53
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
   See the ReadSpeed forums at forums.grc.com for help and community support.

**********************************************************************SMART RESULTS*********************************************************************************************

 

[DanR]

NOTE: A faster SATA drive is attached to a slower SATA link. You may add
the /ident command-line option to display and identify the drive.

Driv Size Drive Identity Location: 0 25% 50% 75% 100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
81 240GB PNY CS900 240GB SSD 131.5 143.0 185.7 250.0 146.9

I would suggest you consider running a SpinRite 6.0 Level 3 scan on this drive one time. And then re-run ReadSpeed.

See my thread just prior to yours: https://forums.grc.com/threads/results-samsung-840-series-250-gb.923/

Please do NOT use Levels 4 or 5 as they can be potentially destructive to SSD life due to the large amount of writing they are cap[able of.

Nothing jumps out at me from the SMART data (I am no expert where SMART data is concerned). The 141 power-on hours over 18 months suggests light usage.

My SSD had far worse ReadSpeed performance than yours before I ran my SR 6.0 L3 scan on it. Even tho the results were what I expected and hoped for, they still left me greatly impressed! Hopefully you will see similar results.

 

[KenW]

Here are the results after running Spinrite level 3:

Driv Size  Drive Identity     Location:    0      25%     50%     75%     100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
 81  240GB PNY CS900 240GB SSD           140.8   141.9   158.5   198.7   172.4

They did not improve.

 

[AlanD]

You mention that you get better results from the Samsung EVO. Is that on the same machine? You say that the PC is very old, I am wondering if the bottleneck is not the disk, but something else, e.g. CPU or RAM.

 

[KenW]

Yes, the results from Samsung EVO were from the same machine and same SATA port. Here they are:

Driv Size  Drive Identity     Location:    0      25%     50%     75%     100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
 81  250GB Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB     530.2   544.4   544.6   544.6   539.9

 

[DanR]

From your original run:

NOTE: A faster SATA drive is attached to a slower SATA link. You may add the /ident command-line option to display and identify the drive.

And:

Driv Size  Drive Identity     Location:    0      25%     50%     75%     100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
 81  240GB PNY CS900 240GB SSD           131.5   143.0   185.7   250.0   146.9

This data clearly shows that the PNY SSD is NOT running on a SATA III link!

From your post SR L3 scan:

Driv Size  Drive Identity     Location:    0      25%     50%     75%     100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
81  240GB PNY CS900 240GB SSD           140.8   141.9   158.5   198.7   172.4

Not the results I would expect after a Level 3 run.

From the Samsung ReadSpeed run:

Driv Size Drive Identity Location: 0 25% 50% 75% 100
---- ----- ---------------------------- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----
81 250GB Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB 530.2 544.4 544.6 544.6 539.9

This Samsung IS clearly running at SATA III speeds.

Please make sure the PNY is indeed connected to the same controller as the Samsung.

If both drives are on the same SATA III controller, this indicates three possibilities;
- The PNY drive?
- The cabling connecting the PNY to the controller?
- The controller port?

Could you try a different cable, a different controller port, or swapping with the Samsung (connect to Samsung port with Samsung cable), and re-run ReadSpeed?