Possible SSD problems with recent build

[nsampey]

Hi everyone,

A few months back I built a gaming computer for the first time in my life. I had a blast researching the parts and putting it all together, and that moment when I pressed the power button and it snapped to life was a hoot. And it works. Mostly. I used a 60GB SSD as my Windows 7 boot drive after reading several articles lauding them for their speed. A 750GB magnetic hard drive stores everything else.

Unfortunately, speed is the one thing I don't have. Booting up and shutting down is fine, if not especially speedy, but using my computer for everyday tasks can be an exercise in patience. The rig seems to grind ever so slowly through installs and file transfers, much more so than my considerably less-powerful laptop. Installing games through Steam is agonizing, even though my Steam directory is on my larger non-SSD drive. And it's been this way from the very beginning, leading me away from suspecting a virus has sneaked past my anti-virus software.

I know I'm using a Core i3 in this build, but I've used computers with far weaker chips that ran much faster. And actually playing games on the rig works perfectly -- no lag or slowdown at all.

I've researched the topic some more and have so far tried disabling my Windows pagefile, then moving it to the secondary drive, as well as switching the SATA mode on the SSD to AHCI, but I've never seen any real improvement. The problem seems to worsen when the available space on the drive falls below 20GB.

I'm just about ready to pull the SSD out and put everything on my big platter drive, but I thought I'd put this out here and see if anyone had any ideas. I still enjoy my new computer, but I know it can be better than this. Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer any help.

Here's the build I used:

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-Z68A-D3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Newegg.com - Corsair Nova Series 2 CSSD-V60GB2 2.5" 60GB SATA II Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Newegg.com - CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model CMX8GX3M4B1333C9
Newegg.com - ASUS 24X DVD Burner - Bulk 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 12X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS - CD / DVD Burners
Newegg.com - Western Digital Caviar Black WD7501AALS 750GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Newegg.com - Intel Core i3-2100 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 BX80623I32100
Newegg.com - MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card
Newegg.com - PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 750W High Performance 80PLUS Silver SLI CrossFire ready Power Supply
Newegg.com - Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - Operating Systems
Newegg.com - Corsair Special Edition White Graphite Series 600T Steel / Plastic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

[glc]

You have a bad SSD. Have you read the Newegg reviews on it? Garbage! Corsair builds some decent SSD's, but that one is not one of them.

For quality and reliability, we recommend Intel SSD's. There are faster ones out there, but they are not as reliable.

[nsampey]

Wow. The reviews were much kinder when I researched the thing. So I was totally overthinking the problem then. I'll replace the drive when I get the chance. Thanks, GLC.

[glc]

What you may want to do is go ahead and pull it, install everything on the spin drive. Then you could try getting a RMA, then use the replacement as a SRT cache instead of a dedicated drive.