MyDigitalSSD mSATA SSD 64GB Very Bad Performance - Update: FIXED w/ FW 030

[jbrian420]

Yes, I'm getting those speeds if I turn on all 0s for data as well but those are inflated numbers on ssdreview. My numbers are with random data. Who writes all zeroes I'm the real world?

Sent from my DROIDX using Tapatalk

[MyDigitalSSD]

I'm just about to purchase one for my X220, and I'm hoping that these issues will be resolved soon after its arrival! Is anybody getting similar results close to those found on TheSSDReview?

If you are buying the 128GB you have nothing to worry about that part has not changed one bit since March of 2011 when we released it.

The 64GB has never been a huge performer when it comes to top speed and when we were forced by Toshiba to change over to 24nm flash on the part we knew it would effect the performance even more and that is why the price also dropped a good 20%.

We did not consider taking it off the market because it is still around 10 times faster than your average HDD and the pricing is just to low to ignore for someone in the mood to trick their PC out on a small budget.

MyDigitalSSD

I installed the new firmware to my drive and got a significant increase in its performance. It definately feels faster and the numbers are a little higher. Heres my new Crystaldiskmark results:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 138.609 MB/s
Sequential Write : 97.760 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 107.653 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 74.687 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 7.943 MB/s [ 1939.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 21.791 MB/s [ 5320.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 52.261 MB/s [ 12758.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 21.175 MB/s [ 5169.8 IOPS]

Test : 500 MB [C: 60.5% (36.1/59.6 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/02/29 22:03:59
OS : Windows 7 Home Premium Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)

My windows index score also jumped up to 6.9 from 5.9 with previous firmware. The new Firmware really has made a big improvement and hope they keep the improvements coming.

That is great news did it also get ride of your lag problem you mentioned before?

Also I am looking forward to FW 16 sounds like Phison is really putting some time into improving performance of their controller with the 24nm flash.

MyDigitalSSD

[John1971]

Ok got some info back but looks like it is not a silver bullet yet. Phison suggested trying a Disk Defragment. This will improve the usability of the drive.

Thankyou for keeping us informed - much appreciated. I conducted a defrag of the MyDigitigasl SSD (I initiated this whilst booted into my laptop HDD). This took a very long time with five passes.

Booting into the SSD, I saw an immediate improvement in write speeds and general responsiveness. 4K and 4kQ32 writes are about 10MB/s which is good. I do, however, seem to get occasional locks up when using applications. I have disabled my anti-virus program but these occasional lock ups stilll occur for about five seconds. I am in ACHI mode, AiStor drivers are active and alignment is OK. I will keep playing with the SSD to see if performance degrades or improves and report back here.

[ph4tb0i]

I got the 64GB drive yesterday and it came with Firmware 14 that had performance similar to the first post on this thread. Tried to upgrade to 15 and I think the SSD is now bricked. Any idea what to do? I tried upgrading but it gave me a bad checksum error and now I can't upgrade nor do anything with the SSD. Might return it for a refund...

http://i.imgur.com/n6aGF.jpg

[MyDigitalSSD]

I got the 64GB drive yesterday and it came with Firmware 14 that had performance similar to the first post on this thread. Tried to upgrade to 15 and I think the SSD is now bricked. Any idea what to do? I tried upgrading but it gave me a bad checksum error and now I can't upgrade nor do anything with the SSD. Might return it for a refund...

http://i.imgur.com/n6aGF.jpg

One more user is having that same error. My staff and Phison are out for the weekend but there are many people here who may know how to help in the mean time. I have also asked an NBR member who is very knowledgeable on FW upgrades if he knows what to do.

MyDigitalSSD

[ph4tb0i]

Thanks for the prompt response! Looking forward to getting the solution.

On another note, is there an ETA of when 16 is going to come out? Thanks!

[MyDigitalSSD]

Hi all I was just informed on top of doing a Defrag you should clean your drive with software like SDelete by MicroSoft. Let me know how that works out.

Thanks for the prompt response! Looking forward to getting the solution.

On another note, is there an ETA of when 16 is going to come out? Thanks!

My go to guy was unable to help because he said he could not reproduce this error so unless someone else did and fixed it we are going to have to wait untill Monday. Sorry about that I know how excited you probably are to get the drive up and running.

MyDigitalSSD

[User Retired 2]

Hi all I was just informed on top of doing a Defrag you should clean your drive with software like SDelete by MicroSoft. Let me know how that works out.

Sdelete writes zeros (0x00). Better to use the AS-Cleaner component of Tony Trim to write 0xFF into empty space instead so a NAND write can then occur without a prior erase. Per this article:

Secure Erase, using HDDErase or HDParm, does restore performance to SSDs. It is simply a command that is sent to the controller of the drive. The controller then runs a built-in routine that resets the NAND to an erased (non-programmed) state. Secure Erase was originally developed for conventional drives. The controller of the drives were programed to write zeros (0x00) to the entire drive once the command was received. With SSDs, NAND programmed with 0x00 will be in a used state and require an erase-before-write which will degrade performance. SSD manufacturers have wrote the firmware of the controllers so that when a Secure Erase command is received 0xFF will be issued to the NAND which results in all cells being placed in an erased state. This is a factory fresh state and writes can take place without the need for an erase first.

Other utilities such as DiskPart do not have this capability because instead of issuing a command that the controller acts upon the utility is doing the actual writes. The /Clean All command of DiskPart will result in 0x00 being written to the entire drive. This is the reason for the difference in completion speed of these type of utilities and an actual ATA spec'd Secure Erase. When the controller of a SSD receives a Secure Erase command a high voltage is applied to the substrate of the NAND and the entire drive is reset to 0xFF in a few hundred milliseconds. DiskPart and other similar utilities actually write 0x00 to the entire drive.

[MyDigitalSSD]

Sdelete writes zeros (0x00). Better to use the AS-Cleaner component of Tony Trim to write 0xFF into empty space nstead. Then Garbage Collection knows which blocks it can operate on.

Thanks for the info Nando4. Hope this works even more magic to get these 64gb drives humming along even faster.

MyDigitalSSD

[ph4tb0i]

Ok. Solved the firmware "brick" problem and got it to firmware 15!

This is what I did:

1. Downgraded to F12. That uses a different command line writer and it downgraded my firmware to F12.
2. Re-ran the F15 upgrade. This time the update ran fine. I have no idea what caused the initial hiccup.

Re-installing Windows now and will re-benchmark after the install is complete.

EDIT:
Much better results with FW15 though I wish it was a bit more faster


With FW14:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 137.989 MB/s
Sequential Write : 64.711 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 108.938 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 21.197 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 10.863 MB/s [ 2652.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 1.889 MB/s [ 461.1 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 43.760 MB/s [ 10683.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 1.498 MB/s [ 365.7 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 74.5% (44.3/59.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/03/03 9:32:13
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)


With FW15:


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 137.989 MB/s
Sequential Write : 59.312 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 107.671 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 40.666 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 11.402 MB/s [ 2783.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 8.865 MB/s [ 2164.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 55.149 MB/s [ 13464.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 11.485 MB/s [ 2803.9 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 48.6% (28.9/59.4 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/03/03 17:50:46
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x64)


Hope 16 pushes things up even more. UPDATE: See below post for after programs/updates were installed. Performance took a DIVE