Very slow write speed on rMB 2015

[diegie]

Hi everybody,

I got an 2 years old rMB (2015), 1,1 Intel Core M, 8GB, 256GB and when I check the write/read speed of the HDD with BlackMagic, the write speed almost never goes above 80mb/s, read speed goes up to 600mb/s. I sense something must be wrong. I don't have filevault on, nor is something heavy running at the time of the test.

Is there anything else I can check?
I already did the usual, such as Disk EHBO, PRAM & SMC reset,...

 

[casperes1996]

Disk EHBO

What's that? Google didn't help me.

How's the actual write performance? I mean, not just what Black Magic says. Does it feel crazy slow on writes or is it just Black Magic? I haven't tested it on APFS, and it could just be that Black Magic doesn't present correct numbers for APFS

 

[diegie]

What's that? Google didn't help me.

How's the actual write performance? I mean, not just what Black Magic says. Does it feel crazy slow on writes or is it just Black Magic? I haven't tested it on APFS, and it could just be that Black Magic doesn't present correct numbers for APFS

Disk EHBO is when you go into Disk Utilities. You can let OSX check your disk. But it has no errors or something.
Well overall use is OK, but when I take a screenshot of copy a file to another location, it takes 3 seconds before it copies (it's a 100kb file or so). It didn't do that before, just recently (4 weeks or so). That is why I started checking the performance overall...

 

[casperes1996]

Disk EHBO is when you go into Disk Utilities. You can let OSX check your disk. But it has no errors or something.
Well overall use is OK, but when I take a screenshot of copy a file to another location, it takes 3 seconds before it copies (it's a 100kb file or so). It didn't do that before, just recently (4 weeks or so). That is why I started checking the performance overall...

Do you mean First Aid?

What OS version are you on, and is the drive APFS?

I would recommend a full reformatting and reinstall of macOS

 

[diegie]

Yes, bad translation, but it's First Aid in English. OS 10.13.3 (recently updated). HD is APFS yes. Full reinstall is an option, but not my favourite option.

 

[Samuelsan2001]

Hi everybody,

I got an 2 years old rMB (2015), 1,1 Intel Core M, 8GB, 256GB and when I check the write/read speed of the HDD with BlackMagic, the write speed almost never goes above 80mb/s, read speed goes up to 600mb/s. I sense something must be wrong. I don't have filevault on, nor is something heavy running at the time of the test.

Is there anything else I can check?
I already did the usual, such as Disk EHBO, PRAM & SMC reset,...

How much space do you have left on the drive if it’s full it will be slow to write that simple really.

https://www.howtogeek.com/165542/why-solid-state-drives-slow-down-as-you-fill-them-up/

 

[diegie]

How much space do you have left on the drive if it’s full it will be slow to write that simple really.

https://www.howtogeek.com/165542/why-solid-state-drives-slow-down-as-you-fill-them-up/

Around 45 gb is free so that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[casperes1996]

How much space do you have left on the drive if it’s full it will be slow to write that simple really.

"slower". It shouldn't be this much slower. 80MB/s is like the inner sectors if a slow HDD. Something is clearly wrong here.
Plus the SSD comes with over provisioning to begin with.

Yes, bad translation, but it's First Aid in English. OS 10.13.3 (recently updated). HD is APFS yes. Full reinstall is an option, but not my favourite option.

Since First Aid didn't report any issues, I highly doubt the following will work, but it's worth a try

Boot into Single User mode (hold cmd+s on boot up)
Now type "fsck -fy"

After it's done, you can type "exit" to continue booting up the machine.

It'll check and repair the file system (works better than First Aid), and also issue TRIM commands and cleanup the drive a tad

 

[diegie]

I just did the fsck -fy command and it ran. Just rebooted, but no difference in write speed atm.

 

[casperes1996]

I just did the fsck -fy command and it ran. Just rebooted, but no difference in write speed atm.

Didn't really expect it to work either, since Disk Utility's First Aid usually says "Problems were found but couldn't be fixed", if the fsck command would be helpful. Was just the best thing I could think of aside from a clean reinstall.

I have a few other things you could try, but they are all really unlikely to make any difference whatsoever for this issue...

Rebuild the GPT.
To do this, use Homebrew to install GDisk, sudo into your drive via gdisk and use it to rebuild the partition table (Vital that you don't mess up if you try this one, as it can not just cause loss of data, it can also confuse Disk Utility and make it more difficult than it needs to be to reformat the drive - never impossible, just a tad annoying)

Try logging into a guest account and run another speed test from there - this way you'll find out if it's something with the way your account is configured that is causing issues

 

[ZapNZs]

Have you used a SMART app to pull any data on drive health? (seems unlikely but this would help rule out hardware failure) (macOS has SMART built into it, but I've seen it routinely fail to detect or alert users to drives that were clearly failing or even had physically failed, both in regards to HDDs and SSDs)

 

[casperes1996]

Have you used a SMART app to pull any data on drive health? (seems unlikely but this would help rule out hardware failure) (macOS has SMART built into it, but I've seen it routinely fail to detect or alert users to drives that were clearly failing or even had physically failed, both in regards to HDDs and SSDs)

I agree this should be done (and that macOS' SMART detection and alert system isn't good enough), but with how new the machine still is this seems unlikely.

 

[diegie]

Didn't really expect it to work either, since Disk Utility's First Aid usually says "Problems were found but couldn't be fixed", if the fsck command would be helpful. Was just the best thing I could think of aside from a clean reinstall.

I have a few other things you could try, but they are all really unlikely to make any difference whatsoever for this issue...

Rebuild the GPT.
To do this, use Homebrew to install GDisk, sudo into your drive via gdisk and use it to rebuild the partition table (Vital that you don't mess up if you try this one, as it can not just cause loss of data, it can also confuse Disk Utility and make it more difficult than it needs to be to reformat the drive - never impossible, just a tad annoying)

Try logging into a guest account and run another speed test from there - this way you'll find out if it's something with the way your account is configured that is causing issues

I just tried the guest account thing, but I get the same results there.
[doublepost=1516951946][/doublepost]

Have you used a SMART app to pull any data on drive health? (seems unlikely but this would help rule out hardware failure) (macOS has SMART built into it, but I've seen it routinely fail to detect or alert users to drives that were clearly failing or even had physically failed, both in regards to HDDs and SSDs)

Not really clear what a smart app is? Can I download it and test it to pull data of my drive?

 

[casperes1996]

Not really clear what a smart app is? Can I download it and test it to pull data of my drive?

SMART. It's an abbreviation. One of those abbreviations nobody ever can remember what stand for. But it's a way for drives to report their status and health to a system, so the system can alert the user that the drive is failing before it fails, so data can be backed up. As said, SMART detection is built-in with macOS, but it's not as good at reporting the drive status as most other SMART tools are.
I use smart controls myself. It's open source.

 

[diegie]

SMART. It's an abbreviation. One of those abbreviations nobody ever can remember what stand for. But it's a way for drives to report their status and health to a system, so the system can alert the user that the drive is failing before it fails, so data can be backed up. As said, SMART detection is built-in with macOS, but it's not as good at reporting the drive status as most other SMART tools are.
I use smart controls myself. It's open source.

Ok, I just used smartcontrol over brew and this is the result I get:


=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===

Model Number: APPLE SSD AP0256H

Serial Number: C02528202Y5FV9FA0

Firmware Version: 5.844.01

PCI Vendor/Subsystem ID: 0x106b

IEEE OUI Identifier: 0x000000

Controller ID: 0

Number of Namespaces: 1

Local Time is: Fri Jan 26 21:19:39 2018 CET

Firmware Updates (0x04): 2 Slots

Optional Admin Commands (0x0004): Frmw_DL

Optional NVM Commands (0x0004): DS_Mngmt

Maximum Data Transfer Size: 64 Pages


Supported Power States

St Op Max Active Idle RL RT WL WT Ent_Lat Ex_Lat

0 + 0.00W - - 0 0 0 0 0 0


=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===

SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED


SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02, NSID 0x0)

Critical Warning: 0x00

Temperature: 42 Celsius

Available Spare: 100%

Available Spare Threshold: 0%

Percentage Used: 9%

Data Units Read: 48.029.930 [24,5 TB]

Data Units Written: 41.562.401 [21,2 TB]

Host Read Commands: 1.213.903.200

Host Write Commands: 696.534.117

Controller Busy Time: 0

Power Cycles: 2.927

Power On Hours: 845

Unsafe Shutdowns: 55

Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

Error Information Log Entries: 0


Read Error Information Log failed: NVMe admin command:0x02/page:0x01 is not supported

 

[krabdb]

Your laptop is OK. Blaсkmagic began to show very low results at the first pass on all my macbooks. I have exactly the same rMB 2015 (1.1/8/256 with macOS 10.13.3 and 132Gb free). On the first pass W85/R584, on the second pass W123/R584 and on the third and further W310/R700.

The rMB itself did not become slower, just a wide spread appeared in the results of the application. Of course, rMB is not a speed demon, but, subjectively, its performance remained the same as a year ago.

 

[ZapNZs]

Out of curiosity, I just tried Blackmagic on my 2017 with a NVMe SSD with 10.12 (so HFS+)...


Quit it and opened it a second time....went to about 300.

Did it again and got this...

Must be the App...

 

[OldMike]

Just wanted also say that I get very erratic reading from Black Magic also. Initially I was thinking there was something wrong with my MacBook when I first tested it out. After playing with it, though, I realized that it might not be properly assessing the speed of the drive. I have had ultra low and ultra high readings from Black Magic.

I don't really trust the readings that much anymore...