Very slow write speeds on new crucial p3 plus m.2, should I return it?

Posted by No-Association3574@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 28 comments

I recently purchased a crucial p3 plus 4tb and after installing windows and around 200gb of games, I notice it got incredibly slow. I mainly play games, read, watch media, unzip alot of files, and do alot of copying from downloads to various other folders. I just upgraded from a samsung 500gb 970 evo plus, or so I thought.

This drive is much slower than the samsung one. I can definitely see lag already with barely any storage used. I'll right click on a file to extract it and the right click doesn't register immediately, I notice a good 1-3 second lag on that. I also see that when I copy something from the downloads folder to the desktop; it takes 2-3 seconds or so to even register, and sticks on 0% for 3-5 seconds it. It definitely takes it's time copying everything over. 10-15 sec for 1gb of a zipped file. Extracting the files isn't too bad at least.

After extracting files using winrar, the files are literally invisible on the desktop until i manually copy something to the desktop. Ive never seen anything like that. None are marked hidden.

I am not sure what I should do.

32gb ddr4 ram
x570 aorus elite wifi
ryzen 5 3600
1060 6gb :/

Would this be a good drive to keep for storage or is it just bad all together and should be returned?

I see the Samsung 990 PRO Series - 2TB PCIe Gen4. X4 NVMe 2.0c - M.2 is on sale on amazon, would that be a better m.2 to install my os on?

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MrManala@reddit

My 4 TB version is around 90% full and now it's writing 30 MB/s. It can't even keep up with USB HDD's when copying. And it's not even my OS drive. Completely useless junk from Crucial.

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cguy1234@reddit

I thought I was the only one. I have two of these 4TB drives and they seem quite slow. In Windows, it often seems to top out at 100 MB/sec but often goes a lot slower which is crazy.

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sekazi@reddit

I keep write caching disabled on my system. I do not really care about the performance but I would absolutely never buy one of these drive for a system that actually needs to do anything. I have two of the 4TB ones like you. When I was mirroring drives with robocopy it would often pause for many seconds at a time and them proceed. It took 8 hours to copy all of the data. I had about 30GB free.

In the same system I am running also Crucial BX500 2TB, Crucial BX500 4TB and Crucial MX500 4TB. The P3 Plus drives are the slowest.

I really hate that manufacturers try to hide what type of NAND they are using. Even trying to hide if they have DRAM. All of the Crucial drives I have are horrible for performance but I am only using them for bulk storage that is mostly only read from.

I do plan on putting another 4TB in the system and also replace the existing 2TB with a 4TB but not sure when. Also finding a place for another SSD is a challenge since it is a Fractal Terra case. No sure I want to chance it either since I do have a 4090 going into the case.

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cguy1234@reddit

Do you have any available PCI-E slots? I'm using some cheap adapters on various systems I have to add more NVME. I may also need to go external in some cases with USB-C enclosures. Yeah, there seems something quite wrong with some of these P3 Plus drives, I've never seen NVME be so slow.

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sekazi@reddit

It is a mini ITX build so only 1 PCIe slot. The board had 2 NVME slots which have the P3. It only has 1 SATA port left. I am already going to be pushing the power limit with a 850W SFX running a 4090. I may just wait out for some 8TB SATA SSD's. The Terra case is only 343x153x218 mm (9.56x6.02x8.58 in). It has a slight 1mm bulged to it already with a 4070 Ti Super and Noctua Ghost CPU Cooler. The last SSD got pressed up against the PSU and side panel. The 4090 I have coming says it is the same dimensions as my 4070 Ti Super so it better fit.

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cguy1234@reddit

Sounds pretty tight. Yeah, maybe the SATA SSD is a good route or maybe some external/network storage.

Some-Challenge8285@reddit

I found the cause of it, you need to install the drivers which can be found on this page https://uk.crucial.com/support/ssd-support/p3-support

ubloodybench@reddit

Dude, I might love you for posting this lol. Was losing my mind that an hdd im still using was faster than an nvme ssd. Now I get whatever disk usage as my download speed is. I havent tried a simple file transfer yet

FaceOdd5978@reddit

Thank you. This does seem to work!

Public-Cranberry-484@reddit

Thank you for this.. I downloaded the firmware for P3 plus after seeing your post.

I have 2x1TB Crucial P3 plus as my C: and D: drives. Previously, when I was copying large folders (about 50GB+) into the C:/, after the initial cache dump (of about 10GB) for about 10-20 secs, the sustained writing speed dropped down to 30MB/s for the remainder of the write. This is no where near even a standard HDD write performance IMHO.

Now, after installing the firmware, there seems to be an improvement, (but I wouldn't say that the issue is completely fixed). Now, after the initial cache dump of about 10-20secs when the writing speeds are about 500MB/s, speed of copying varies between 5MB/s (halts for 2 seconds), and then shoots to 200-500MB/s for few seconds and then halts. This sequence repeats..

Overall, there is an improvement in the copying speed (as compared to 30MB/s sustained write speed, which takes forever to copy a folder of that size). I think this is an underlying hardware architecture problem.

This article seems to clearly explain this:

https://www.servethehome.com/crucial-p3-plus-1tb-pcie-gen4-nvme-ssd-review/3/

DrunkOnRedWine@reddit

100% the same as I was getting. Erratic performance in games too

KeepItOriginal@reddit

installing anything on this drive is so frustrating with the speeds. I wish I caught on to this sooner cause I had this drive for over 2 years and just now realized im being totally throttled by this SSDs speeds more than anything.

Heavy-Currency-6009@reddit

I enabled write-caching on the device and speed problem was solved

Tasty_Face_7201@reddit

How

AllenDiese3@reddit

how do you do that please ? is there a tuto somewhere ? thank you

ShaolinMilk@reddit

I installed the Crucial Storage Executive tool and it fixed everything for me. I literally went through every fix in the book, spent hundreds of hours because I was lagging and stuttering in games. But then I started to notice random stutters and lags on the desktop and chrome as well. I also felt like in quite a few games, the 120fps I was getting did not feel like 120fps. It felt "jittery" and not smooth at all. Another big tell was my mouse and keyboard would have delays and weird movements that did not feel good.

Once I installed this software, enabled momentum cache and provisioning, it was an absolute game changer. Something so damn simple had to be so damn hard. I bet so many people returned their drives because of slowness and sluggishness. Hope this fixes someone else's issue in the future!

Kindly-Grab6837@reddit

Sorry I did all this and raised a case with support. Still this drive is slow in responding due to indexing the drive. This kind of frustration shouldn't happen. I will not purchase another Crucial drive.

I have the same issue slow in every M.2 port, CPU and Motherboard. My Gen 3 M.2 drives are quicker than this drive. Think I'll return it to Amazon as defective.

I did the Momentum and provisioning stuff still slow.

Garbage M.2 drive.

If you open a case with support they will send you a procedure to do which helps a lot. After updating the drivers, firmware, and settings in the BIOS made a difference. Give it a try before you decide to return it.

Thanks I got it working better with firmware update, driver install and Momentum and provisioning settings. Better but for me still very erratic. I'm returning to Amazon for a refund and I bought a Samsung 990 Evo Pro instead.

Racerx136@reddit

I am returning mine. I have it in a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure so I did not expect 5000 speed but I expected 2000 - 3000 r/W . I got over 3000 read and 500 write but the kicker was when I tried to transfer a 16gb file to it the speed quickly dropped to 150. I knew it was QLC but the reviews implied it was modern QLC that could sustain high transfer speed much longer. I will never buy a QLC drive again.

Successful-Split9935@reddit

I don’t know who you are, but I want to express my heartfelt gratitude. For over a month, I struggled to figure out why I experienced even the slightest stuttering in my games. I tried every possible solution—from optimizing settings and overclocking to even replacing thermal paste—leaving no stone unturned. Never in a million years would I have suspected that my SSD was to blame.

Enabling momentum cache and provisioning completely transformed my system’s performance. It’s incredible how something so simple could have such a profound impact, and I can only imagine how many others have been misled by sluggish performance.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I hope you stay healthy, You truly are a legend.

BovineOxMan@reddit

Seems a bit garbage, have the same issue with mine 84% full and 150MB/second, gonnah swap it out and see if that solves things

zsoltbarabas76@reddit

My problem with an 8-month-old Crucial P3 Plus 4Tb ssd is that it works fine for hours, no problem, and then suddenly I feel it slow down during work (I'm editing 4K hevc video with FCPX)

I make a test with BlackMagic Disc Speed Test app, between 3-500 W/R. A minute later test it again and it's lightning fast, between 2800-3100 W/R as a normal speed.

I replaced the case (this is a builded external SSD), until now it was an Acasis TB4 case, now I have a Satechi, which is faster by default, the Acasis could only do W/R around 2300.

Could it be a problem with the SSD? I already reformatted it once. Nothing has changed. It does the same on MacBook Pro M1 and Mac Studio M2 Max.

aednichols@reddit

What you're seeing is filling up and then flushing the fast cache. It's like a sink that you pour a bucket of water into, then it drains slowly. 2800 MB/s is the bucket, 300 MB/s is the drain. I ran into this on a Crucial P2 that caused my entire system to stutter when installing games. I "fixed" it by rip and replace with a WD SN850X that has been flawless.

supercakefish@reddit

Crucial P3 Plus uses QLC NAND whereas Samsung 970 Evo Plus uses TLC NAND. So what that means is that when the SLC cache is filled up on both SSDs then the transfer speeds will be reliant on the performance of the flash chips - and QLC is typically slower than TLC during intensive usage scenarios. Furthermore, the Samsung has DRAM cache which is a further boost to performance in heavy workloads, whereas the Crucial lacks DRAM.

So the reason why the older PCIE 3.0 Samsung typically outperforms the newer PCIE 4.0 Crucial is because the former was a high-end model for its time that used cutting-edge components for the year it released in, whereas the latter is a budget-focused model that accordingly uses cheaper internal components.

mlostek@reddit

So that means, in general, looking for a TLC instead of QLC is the better choice?

Yep, that’s exactly what I would personally recommend.