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Why does my MacBook Pro's SSD is really slow? (kingston v300)

A

aHoks

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 6, 2014
3
0
Hi,
I have a Macbook 8,1 13".
I recently installed a new SSD (120gb) to the place of my previous HDD, and put my HDD to the place of my SuperDrive, and installed Mavericks to the SSD.
My SSD is Kingston, and it shows it can write and read with 450 Mb/s on its box, but Blackmagic shows only 120/150, do you know why or what did I do wrong?
2ltoz9z.png


I need help,
THANKS,
Akos
 
aHoks said:
Hi,
I have a Macbook 8,1 13".
I recently installed a new SSD (120gb) to the place of my previous HDD, and put my HDD to the place of my SuperDrive, and installed Mavericks to the SSD.
My SSD is Kingston, and it shows it can write and read with 450 Mb/s on its box, but Blackmagic shows only 120/150, do you know why or what did I do wrong?
Image

I need help,
THANKS,
Akos
Click to expand...

Did you install a TRIM enabler after putting the SSD in?
 
That is pretty slow, maybe you should return/replace it? Unless you did what he posted above ^
 
What is a Macbook 8,1 ?

I would look at the specs and see what you should expect.

R
 
Rhyalus said:
OK...I had the same computer and got ~450MB/s read and write as I recall (with a Samsung 840).

Just for the OP's reference.

For my knowledge, would Trim have such a large effect? I would not think so.

R
Click to expand...

Yeah it can if the SSD has been running for a while and no garbage collection has been done. TRIM will clean it all up and should restore the speeds, if, that is what the problem is.
 
Those look like SATA speeds. Click on your apple in the top left corner choose About This Mac. Then click on system report. On the left panel click on SATA/SATA Express. Then find your SSD connection. The link speed should be 6Gigabit, but what is more important is the negotiated speed. It should be 6Gigabit for SATA3, but I suspect it may read 1.5Gigabit in your case.

Let us know what it says.
 
aHoks said:
...
I recently installed a new SSD (120gb) to the place of my previous HDD, and put my HDD to the place of my SuperDrive, and installed Mavericks to the SSD.
My SSD is Kingston, and it shows it can write and read with 450 Mb/s on its box, but Blackmagic shows only 120/150, do you know why or what did I do wrong?
...
Click to expand...

Those numbers would be a decent speed for a spinning hard drive.
Are you sure that you are showing a test for the SSD, and NOT your hard drive? (Choose the target drive again?)
 
DeltaMac said:
Those numbers would be a decent speed for a spinning hard drive.
Are you sure that you are showing a test for the SSD, and NOT your hard drive? (Choose the target drive again?)
Click to expand...

I bet that is what it is. I missed that he kept both the HDD and SSD in the machine.
 
Brian Y said:
I highly doubt that. Getting 160MB/s from a 5400 2.5" drive would be near on impossible.
Click to expand...

Upon further review, I think you are clearly right about that. My only excuse for this incorrect assessment of mine is that I've only had one cup of coffee so far this morning! :D
 
I agree about the coffee :D
Not a spinning drive… But likely the negotiation speed - bet it's not making 6.0, and maybe not 3.0 - and the OP's numbers would be great with SATA 1
 
I selected my Desktop so that's the good drive.
Enabled TRIM, no change.
(I have a Yosemite on the HDD but I don't think it has an affect)
here's my screenshot of the SATA/EXPRESS tab:
2h7kvhx.png
 
It doesn't look like you've done anything wrong and that the system recognizes the SSD properly.

I would check with Kingston about any available firmware updates, or consider exchanging the SSD.
 
I have the same SSD in the same MBP and I get 320 MB/s with full disk encryption, so I believe you may have a defective drive.
 
You probably got one of the slow v300 with the slow NAND. What Kingston did was a bait and switch here, where they first produced fast drives and sent them to tech sites for reviews, and after the got good reviews they secretly switched them out for slower, cheaper chips.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

EDIT: Sorry, didn't read all response, just saw that the previous posters suggested the same thing. After store broke some months ago, I decided to pretty much never buy a Kingston product again. You should return the SSD if you still can and get a decent one from a different company.
 
Last edited:
konradsa said:
You probably got one of the slow v300 with the slow NAND. What Kingston did was a bait and switch here, where they first produced fast drives and sent them to tech sites for reviews, and after the got good reviews they secretly switched them out for slower, cheaper chips.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7763/an-update-to-kingston-ssdnow-v300-a-switch-to-slower-micron-nand

EDIT: Sorry, didn't read all response, just saw that the previous posters suggested the same thing. After store broke some months ago, I decided to pretty much never buy a Kingston product again. You should return the SSD if you still can and get a decent one from a different company.
Click to expand...

PNY also did the same thing with their Optima drives (changed the superior LSI controller to the crappy SandForce one).

Kingston and PNY are high on my no-buy list.
 
aHoks said:
Hi,
I have a Macbook 8,1 13".
I recently installed a new SSD (120gb) to the place of my previous HDD, and put my HDD to the place of my SuperDrive, and installed Mavericks to the SSD.
My SSD is Kingston, and it shows it can write and read with 450 Mb/s on its box, but Blackmagic shows only 120/150, do you know why or what did I do wrong?
Image

I need help,
THANKS,
Akos
Click to expand...

What did you end up doing?
 
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