Surface Pro 2017 I5 4G RAM 128G SSD extremely slow SSD performance

Question

Got the newest surface pro 2017 , however was very disappointed with its SSD performance.  I tried to extract a large zip file with lots of small files in it ( .js, .html , .css etc).  It took more than 6 hours to extract 70% of the 9 gb file. I did some research and realized the problem is with write speed of small files ( < 4k ).  The AS SSD bench mark showed 0.39mb/s for 4k file write. It kind of match real world situation where speed is actually lower , <100kb/s at certain times. I have attached two screen copies to show the speed. 300kb/s is the speed in floppy drive era. I have turned off search indexing and bitlocker and that did not help. There are older threads on similar issues. The solution would be to install Samsung NVM express driver or Samsung Magician tools. However the latest version of driver or software would not work with my surface pro, apparently the windows 10 is too new and the 128G Samsung KUS020203M SSD is too old. I have spent more than 24 hours on this thing and next steps would be firmware upgrade or take it apart to replace SSD.

I did lots of research before buying this surface pro. So far I liked everything else except for the slow SSD. 300kb/s is not acceptable as I am a developer and I deal with lots of small files. Unless there is a reasonably feasible solution to solve the SSD performance issue this surface pro is going back to the store.  Also forget about 13.5 hour video play time on single battery charge, my fully charged battery dropped to below 20% trying to extract one zip file.

Please share if you have experienced similar problems and if there is a solution/update on this issue.

thanks

Answer 1

Hi,

There are several possible causes for your device to have slow performance. One possible resolution is to ensure that your device has the latest updates. To ensure that all updates are installed in your Surface, you may click this link: Surface Pro update history.

Answer 2

He reports that the issue is with the write speed of small files. Which update do you think would address this?

Answer 3

I contacted support on this issues.  I let them on my new Surface Pro i5 2017 with 256SSD to correct the problem. He was one click away from WIPEING my Surface clean to factory defaults before I stopped him.   He had no clue.

I have been through all the diagnostics and driver checks ...  And nothing seems to correct it. I will call into Microsoft support tomorrow and talk to a manager.  I paid WAY too much to get a drive that writes slower than my micro sd card.  Seriously Microsoft?

Answer 4

About your Surface Pro (2017), speaking with a manger can provide you better options. Please let us know the outcome of your conversation.

Thanks.

Answer 5

This is the performance I am getting across the write size range.  Clearly there is an issue with the configuration.  With only a 4k allocation unit, the small file write speeds should be much faster.  instead of 349 at 500 k file size I should see something like 12000+.  This is slower write speed than the Micro SDXC in I have in this unit.  My SDXC is more than twice the write speed up to 16meg file size.  A similar Samsung SSD in a USB 3.0 external Enclosure is getting 35 to 45 times better speed with small files.  So the unit can support the transfer speeds and it is reasonably fast with larger files peaking in excess of 260 meg write and nearly 600 megs read.  The problem is not the drive itself or the controller, it is the software or configuration.  It feels like the write cache is turned off. If I turned off the write cache on my external SSD the performance would drop closed to what I am getting with the internal SSD.  Microsoft needs to get this fixed.

Internal SSD Test

External USB 3.0 Samsung 128gb SSD Same Type

Micro SDXC 128gb u3