SSD performance degraded after using 2 years

[Cixert]

Just 2 years ago today I installed a SSD hard drive Kingston SA400 for the system in a computer with a first generation i3 processor.
At first the speed was very high and the tests with HD Tune gave a constant speed of around 175 MB/s (I don't remember exactly).
After a year of use the speed dropped to around 115 MB/s and the drive began to show speed fluctuations.
Now, after 2 years of use, the speed has dropped to 73 MB/s, reaching speeds typical of PATA disks in Pentium IVs.
After doing TRIM the performance is even a bit worse.
Unless otherwise explained, my conclusion is that SSDs are slower than HDDs.
Here the test

Edited April 19, 2022 by Cixert

[Tripredacus]

The performance falloff can be fast for TLC NAND (which this disk of yours is) especially if there are many write operations. It has been known for a long time about this issue with NAND and it is not a magical cure to data storage as compared to spindle disks. It depends on what your "use" of the disk is, whether or not it would have been expected that the ssd got slower or not.

[UCyborg]

Are there other types of SSD where performance doesn't decrease over time?

[Tripredacus]

From what I understand regarding the different NAND types, it gets worse over time. Meaning the newer types are not as good as the older types, but the newer types have higher capacity and lower price.

Look on page 2 of this PDF which has a short description of the 4 main types:

https://business.kioxia.com/content/dam/kioxia/ncsa/en-us/business/memory/asset/KIOXIA_SSD_NAND_Endurance_Tech_Brief.pdf

But it has always been the case with SSDs that you want to minimise the amount of writes that are made. With Windows, that is difficult to control without using RAM overlay. The best I could figure is to disable indexing and using a spindle disk as a dedicated page file/vmem location. With Windows also you can choose to install programs on another disk, but most programs are still going to be writing a lot to AppData and in the user profile, I wish there was a way to redirect those write without modifying Windows to store User folder on another disk, which causes many problems with just Windows.

[UCyborg]

On 4/21/2022 at 4:11 PM, Tripredacus said:

I wish there was a way to redirect those write without modifying Windows to store User folder on another disk, which causes many problems with just Windows.

Did you try using symbolic links or directory junctions to redirect individual programs' folders and did those cause problems as well?

[D.Draker]

On 4/18/2022 at 10:42 PM, Cixert said:

1 - At first the speed was very high and the tests with HD Tune gave a constant speed of around 175 MB/s (I don't remember exactly).
After a year of use the speed dropped to around 115 MB/s and the drive began to show speed fluctuations.
Now, after 2 years of use, the speed has dropped to 73 MB/s, reaching speeds typical of PATA disks in Pentium IVs.
2 - After doing TRIM the performance is even a bit worse.
3 - Unless otherwise explained, my conclusion is that SSDs are slower than HDDs.

1 - It's not actually "very high" , I usually get around 250 on my ordinary Raptor HDD from 2013.

2 - Yet again proves my opinion about TRIM being garbage.

3 - Yes, you're right - they look like scam .

[aviv00]

HWiNFO64 can tell life remaining

mb there new firmware

[Tripredacus]

18 hours ago, UCyborg said:

Did you try using symbolic links or directory junctions to redirect individual programs' folders and did those cause problems as well?

The issue isn't that simple. The reason is that every program is different and they store files all over the place. I'd rather spend the time using my computers for what I want to, rather than spend countless hours trying to track where a hundred programs write files and see if I can redirect them or not. Basically, I am past those days of hobbyist workings with Windows in that capacity.

[UCyborg]

Oh, well I'm a minimalist, so no such thing as hundred programs in use here. And the crap at work either makes distinct company named folder in %localappdata% or C:\ProgramData or writes to its installation folder, so not much to keep track off.