So Magician ISN'T Magic - How DO I set up the SSD optimally? And what do about slow writes?

Ordinary PC, I9-12900, 64GB 3600 memory, AMD XT5700

A follow-up to my question about Samsung Magician.

Primary storage (O/S, temp, cache, LR catalog, along with other normal stuff) are all on a 1TB M.2 device.

Other storage is on three SATA SSDs.


Oldest is a Samsung EVO 840, 1TB that appears to be fine. The benchmark numbers are
Seq Read: 549MB/s, Seq Write 525 MB/s, Rand Read: 93994 IOPS, Rand Write: 81542 IOPS
It has 9% over provisioning and appears to run fine.

Second is a Samsung 860 QVO that was primarily image storage ‘til it got full. It does NOT appear to be working well:
Seq Read: 559MB/s, Seq Write 287 MB/s, Rand Read: 94726 IOPS, Rand Write: 732 IOPS. Both forms of writing appear to be far below the norm. It has no over provisioning. It passed the diagnostic scan with no errors, and SMART shows no errors.

The third SSD is a Samsung 870 QVO, which is only a day old, and appears to be working fine.
Seq Read: 559MB/s, Seq Write 526 MB/s, Rand Read: 94970 IOPS, Rand Write: 81787 IOPS

Previously, SLC cache was mentioned as important, but how do I SET this cache to the correct amount so write speed deteriorates least?

And, what’s up with the 4TB SSD and the really slow writes? I can find some old threads that always wound up blaming something unrelated (seemingly) to the SSD, but hopefully there’s some simple thing it needs to get back to normal? So far, all I’ve found is running the KB5007262 patch, and/or deleting the USN journal. Are these the solution or is there something else I should do to get this slow, 4TB SSD back to normal?

Read the article from Seagate, and its got a lot of data, but very little information. According to that, there’s already 7.3% over provisioning. And I can add additional space for use that way, but it didn’t provide anything about – “if you’re doing this, this much additional over provisioning makes sense” or “if you mostly do this, don’t bother”. Same for Trim – it mentions it, and goes on about “DuraWrite” (I presume something Seagate?), but doesn’t tell me anything about when to use trim, and when to turn it off. It’s on, by default, on all three of the SSDs I’m using.

Hopefully somebody here can provide useful information about the cost/benefit of different choices, ‘cause the “user” group over at Samsung is totally non-responsive.

I wrote a brief explanation of SLC cache at the end of your previous post, basically it is not something you can alter.
Trim should be left on if supported by the drive and OS (not all drives support it, although most newer ones do).
Extra overprovisioning may extend the lifetime of a drive but as the Seagate article mentions most manufacturers already include some overprovisioned space at manufacture of the drives.
Any SSD will perform slower when it reaches a certain percent full, this is due to the way the drives write data, they cannot update the data in a block directly, they need to copy the data (old + updated) to a spare block first, erase the old block then copy the new data back to that erased block (an over simplified version of events), the more space available, the quicker this process can be.
A bit like finding a parking space in an empty car park compared to having to go round several times to find a space in an almost full car park.

As to the under performing 4TB drive, undo any changes you may have made based on articles read to return the drive to stock settings.
It is possible for an OS or driver update to tank the performance of a drive but also the drive being near full or not using the correct driver can also affect it. Most drives will perform better on sustained writes than lots of smaller writes, how are you using the drive?
Some more details about the drive would be helpful and running something like CrystalDiskInfo (available from the MS store for free) to see the SMART values reported.

Thanks for the reply...

Trim is on for all these drives by default.

Just to be sure I understand what it's going to do for me - over provisioning MAY cause the drive to last longer - though the 1TB drive is at least 9 years old and the 4TB drive at least 5 years old. When does giving up a bunch of storage space for over provisioning actually do anything?

There haven't been any changes to the drive. Other than the very occasional firmware update, it looks like it did the day it got turned on. BUT, just for giggles I ran another benchmark after the system rebooted earlier - I THINK the drive may have multiple personality disorder! Here's TODAY's numbers:
Seq Read: 559MB/s, Seq Write 544 MB/s, Rand Read: 94726 IOPS, Rand Write: 81298 IOPS

Is there a process that takes all the gibberish on the SSD and reorganizes it so all the existing data is contiguous? The equivalent of defragging an SSD?

Here's the Crystal Disk Info

SSDs work by spreading the data across the NAND packages, the access time for data is the same (or as near as makes no difference) regardless of where the data is since there are no physical heads moving across a platter, so no, data is not held in contiguous blocks, there is no need for it.
The drive you show is SATA so the speeds are appropiate for the drive, firmware updates can certainly alter the drives performance, in theory only upwards, but a bad update can obviously hurt performance. Speeds quoted by manufacturers tend to be for sustained writes under optimal conditions in a lab environment, in actual use the speeds very rarely match perfectly.
Overprovisioning is not really needed on modern drives as most manufacturers have already built it in, I have 3 SATA SSDs and 1 NVME and none of them have extra provisioning and never have had, they all perform as expected.
You could add extra overprovisioning to prevent slowdown of the drive as it approaches capacity or you could just make sure you never fill it up completely, personaly I would rather have the extra space available for storage, but it all depends on how you use the drive.

Cool. I"m always happy to have to do nothing! I'm gonna leave everybody alone and get on with more important stuff!