WD Black SN850 500GB Nvme M.2

[Nebulous]

Got my new WD Black SN850 M.2 drive yesterday. Using Macrium Reflect I cloned over from the Adata SX8200 drive. Once I swapped over to the SN850, it wouldn't boot into windows. Dam cloning softwares never work for me.

So I went ahead and just did a fresh os install. Right off the bat I was disappointed with the reads. I don't know why it is that every Nvme M.2 drive I get do not run their rated speeds ever. I purchased this drive because of it's performance, but again I'm rewarded with sub-par numbers I dunno if i should just send it back and stay with the crappy Adata drive instead.


No wheres near the 7k mark. Not even 6k

 

[EarthDog]

Neb, I thought in a previous thread we said to use ATTO (and test empty/no OS etc) to try and reach the label values? Try that, bud.

Also, IIRC, AMD is a bit slower than Intel in storage(?)... so there's that too...

You may want to force a TRIM on the drive as well with the Sammy software. I think the magician has some tools in there for optimization. Did you run those by chance?

EDIT: Another thing worth noting is the QD is 1 in these tests. If you raise the QD (you can in ATTO), you should see those numbers. But rarely do you get label ratings for several reasons.

 

[Nebulous]

Roger that, will use ATTO for next tests. Thanks.

*Update*

 

[EarthDog]

Similar results. Try raising the queue depth... running trim and optimizing the drive with the Sammy Magician software, etc.

Typically, smaller drives are slower than the larger ones. That said, the WD site doesn't seem to discern between them. A 1/2TB drive is faster than 500GB in most cases.

 

[Janus67]

Also there's a boost mode in the western digital software. I'm running the same drive but the 1TB version fwiw.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Writes take a much bigger hit with 250 GB SSDs than reads, unlike platter drives, which were usually slower with everything!

Smaller platter drivers, OTOH, were also a lot slower with reading, even at the same RPM. A 250 GB 7K HDD would also read slower than a 500 GB 7K HDD.

 

[Nebulous]

Welp decided to tweak around and use PrimeCache to help out. Now if my writes was this good on a nakid drive, I'd be really happy

 

[Oldschool_OC]

I read somewhere that both the SX8200 and the SN850 drives went through unannounced hardware changes months after initial release that resulted in greatly reduced drive speeds. The article gave the impression that the drives underwent no revision change, only hardware nerfs from the manufacturer that lead to disappointed end user experience.

 

[Nebulous]

I read somewhere that both the SX8200 and the SN850 drives went through unannounced hardware changes months after initial release that resulted in greatly reduced drive speeds. The article gave the impression that the drives underwent no revision change, only hardware nerfs from the manufacturer that lead to disappointed end user experience.

Oh yeah, I went thru that with the SX8200, thus is why I swapped out. I'm hoping that's not the case with the SN850 otherwise I will be highly pissed.

 

[MaddMutt]

How old was your sx-8200? I got mine ~ 6 months after we/ocf did a review of it.. mine was the 256gb version.

 

[Nebulous]

How old was your sx-8200? I got mine ~ 6 months after we/ocf did a review of it.. mine was the 256gb version.

I just got it last month. The 480GB version.

 

[MaddMutt]

UM... I never really benched that item. I stepped up from a sata ssd, so to me, it was super fast IIRC Prime cache and others like it - do a back ground write to system memory and then write to HDD/SSD/M.2.

 

[DaveB]

I just got it last month. The 480GB version.

I have the original 512 GB version of the XPG SX-8200 Pro which works great.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I read somewhere that both the SX8200 and the SN850 drives went through unannounced hardware changes months after initial release that resulted in greatly reduced drive speeds. The article gave the impression that the drives underwent no revision change, only hardware nerfs from the manufacturer that lead to disappointed end user experience.

I sure hope they don't turn into "Windows corruption edition" SSDs!

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Pretty zippy drive. I'm tempted to upgrade my EX920 to something better and relegate it to backup duty.

 

[dejo]

do you not still get a WD copy of Acronis with that drive?

 

[Nebulous]

Pretty zippy drive. I'm tempted to upgrade my EX920 to something better and relegate it to backup duty.

It's a nice drive. Runs pretty cool and with PrimeCache it's hella fast.

do you not still get a WD copy of Acronis with that drive?

Not to my knowledge. I didn't. Besides if I did I wouldn't use it. I tried 3 different cloning softwares and i was rewarded with bloo-screens and was forced to do a clean OS install the old way.


Macrium Reflect
Acronis
EaseUS

None worked properly even following instructions to the letter.

 

[Woomack]

I had no problems with Macrium Reflect on SN850 or any other SSD that I have. I was cloning SN850 at least 2 times (maybe 3). For sure both ways on Strix B550I Gaming and Z590I Unify (yes, AMD to Intel and back, and it was booting without issues).

Btw. depends on CPU/motherboard, I had between ~6500 and 7000MB/s read on my drive ... when the SSD was connected as 2nd drive. When the OS is installed on the tested drive, then the results are always worse.

 

[EarthDog]

That's funny. I have that issue with Acronis clones at times.... so far both Macrium Reflect and EaseUS (paid version) worked fine.

 

[Woomack]

For me, Acronis was failing in the past and I'm not using it, even if I get a free license with an SSD. Macrium Reflect works great on everything. I was moving RAID to single drives back (this is sometimes tricky) or single drives between AMD and Intel systems without issues. If it didn't want to boot then usually drivers were missing for a specific controller.
I wasn't using EaseUS so can't say much about it.