XPS 9550 - 1TB NVMe Slow 4k Read/Write

Question

Is my 1TB NVMe defective?

I decided to research why when I unzip files it takes awhile when there lots of little files (compared to my work 2 year old work laptop that has a SSD for the same zip file).

I updated BIOS to 1.1.15. Updated about everything from the dell site. Still no improvements.

I ran Crystal DiskMark 5.1.1 x64 and the results made me sad but also explained the slowness.

The zip file is ~23MB (lots of little files) and unzipped its about ~92MB

It's painful to watch it unzip. My older work laptop SSD screams through this file.

It is also worth mentioning I ran dell diagnostics and there was an error code 2000-0151, could not send DST Short. It is NOT running under AHCI but RAID (seen lots of reviewers commenting on that). I've spent the past several hours looking online at several other people's issues and possible solutions and not entirely convinced the right answer has presented itself.

Thank you for your time,

k

UPDATE 1
Based on Techgee's suggestions, it reminded me of the troubleshooting I had to do for why "right-clicking on the desktop" the context menu took a long time to show up. Based on research, they recommended looking at the explorer shell (using shellviewex) and disabled Nvidia/Intel shell integration (incase anyone had that issue too).

Anywho, one of the steps was to load into SafeMode to see if it was some service. And it seems to be the case... see results being in safe mode. Night day difference

Now the hunt is to find out which service (maybe Anti-Virus) or integration plugin that is causing the slow down :( *sigh*

Thanks you all for chiming in, I'll report back when/if I know more.

k

UPDATE 2

I do believe I give up. The performance running windows normally yields inconsistent results, specifically the random 4k read/write.

I chatted with Dell Support and I have to send my laptop in. So last night I backed up all my files and out of good measure of privacy, I did a Windows reset and now somewhere in the process it failed stating an error occurred please reboot. Thus its in an endless reboot situation. We shall find out the results once I send it in (takes 2 weeks to get it back).

grrrrr

k

I should also mention all the flavors of BSOD I've experienced before this and after I noticed the error on the SSD:

BAD_POOL_HEADER - multiple times
KERNEL_SECURITY_CHECK_FAILURE - multiple times
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (nvlddmkm.sys) - might of been fixed with latest nvidia drivers, can't be for certain now.

beamermt79 · Answer

From a quick google search and a search on here, it looks like an SSD failure is occurring.  I'd have tech support replace it.

Techgee · Answer

Oddly, CrystalDiskMark looks ok, but the zip performance indicates something is wrong.

From my experience with the 9550 and what I'm able to gather from web there are 4 possibilities:

1) I've had a random issue with the drive seemingly getting "hung up" and Windows consuming upwards of 17% CPU usage which seems to be related to trying to read and/or write to the drive. (I suspect this is a problem with the drive firmware, drivers and/or BIOS - issue is definitely related to Intel RST.) To test for this look at CPU in Task Manager and see if "System and compressed memory" never goes below 17%. Persists even after a reboot or after several days. Only fix I was able to find was to Safe Boot, switch to AHCI, let Windows "settle down" and finish above process, then Safe Boot again and go back to RAID.

2) Antivirus might be interfering with performance and/or BIOS tests. You might try temporarily disabling it (making sure it's disabled through a boot cycle) or uninstalling it.

3) There's an incompatibility with Dell's drive test, BIOS and/or NVMe and the error is "phantom" and can be ignored.

4) Drive is having hardware issues. Given the bleeding edge nature of the 9550, Skylake, NVMe, TB, etc. I'd consider this the least likely cause, but you never know.

A few interesting links I found: Someone suggested switching to AHCI and then running the tests (successfully, in their case) here. (It's my suspicion that the person had issue #1 above and temporarily switching to AHCI fixed it.) Some persons with XPS 13 Skylake saying diagnostics fail but SSD seems to be fine here.

Techgee · Answer

...oh, and I'd probably try different Power Options (High Performance from a fresh boot on A/C) to see if that makes a difference.

Techgee · Answer

Because RAID is for the most part stable with NVMe drives (at least with the Samsung PM951 Dell's new laptops come with). I think Dell knew this and that's why it comes that way from Dell, even though it's just a single disk (no RAID array or anything).

I've tried pretty much all the AHCI drivers for NVMe (3 of them - Microsoft's, Samsung's and Intel's) - and they all seem to have issues like random BSOD and/or reboot failing. I've had AHCI drivers be stable for weeks and then start getting random BSOD again. Got tired of it and went back to RAID.

Hopefully at some point generic/standard AHCI drivers will work for everyone without issues with NVMe drives.

beamermt79 · Answer

Good answers!  I'd like to know why the laptop is in RAID mode too, did it come that way or are there multiple drives in an array?

beamermt79 · Answer

I never knew that! Interesting. I wonder if it also boosts speed (outside of your problem).  I have an SSD that's rather slow.  I should try RAID.

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XPS 9550 - 1TB NVMe Slow 4k Read/Write

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