Samsung T7 SSD drive speed dropped to single digit

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Samsung T7 SSD drive speed dropped to single digit

I purchased a Samsung T7 SSD 2TB about a year ago and formatted it to APFS since I only used it with a Mac. At that time I got speed of 800 MB/s both read and write.

Today I pulled it out to store more data and transfers were extremely slow. I did another Blackmagic speed test and the speed is 5 MB/s! Nothing changed with the drive so I'm assuming software updates somehow messed it up. Did anyone face anything similar?

PS: I have already tried firmware updates and different cables (Samsung provided and Thunderbolt cable), and still nothing seems to work.

Speed test results

Storage Information

It seems to be attached to USB 3.2 Hub which has support of 10 GB/s.

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 14.5

Posted on Jun 21, 2024 8:50 AM

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Answer 1

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AbhishekChd Author

Level 1

12 points

Jun 23, 2024 6:01 AM in response to BobHarris

@BobHarris I suspect that was it! When I read about it no support for TRIM seemed to be available for APFS on MAC on USB ports, or rather wasn't suggested. The algorithms seem to run automatically when trying to override new files and needed GC. So I started writing 100GB worth of data and for the first 10GB it was extremely slow and suddenly it went back to its original speed of 800 Mb/s!

Although it's disappointing to see no support in Samsung's interface to do this manually for now this works. Thanks, everyone :)

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Answer 2

Jun 22, 2024 8:18 PM in response to AbhishekChd

What is the exact model of your Mac and version of macOS being used? You can get this information by clicking the Apple menu and selecting "About This Mac".

Also, have you tried using each of the other USB ports on the computer.....especially the ports on the other side if using a laptop?

Make sure to disconnect all other external devices from the computer in case one of them is causing a problem.

In the Apple System Profiler, check the USB section and see what type of connection you have with this T7 SSD....especially the stated connection speed.

Try booting into Safe Mode to see if that makes any difference. Have you even tried a simple reboot?

The DriveDx report @a brody suggested may provide a clue as well.

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Answer 3

Jun 23, 2024 6:06 PM in response to AbhishekChd

From reading the Samsung T7 documentation, it appears the special USB driver provided by DriveDx is not compatible with the T7 SSD driver if you had it installed.....it is an either or case where only one of the two can be installed.

Did you install the Samsung Magician software? It supports TRIM. Plus it supports accessing the SMART health attributes. See page 5 & 6 of the Samsung Magician software user manual. There is a good chance you can used DriveDx to access the SMART health information if the Samsung Magician software is installed. Besides being a very nice app, DriveDx also presents the SMART health attributes in the most easy to read format compared to other apps, but if it cannot access the health information even with the Samsung Magician software installed, then you can post the SMART health info & attributes from it instead.

https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/tools/

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Answer 4

AbhishekChd Author

Level 1

12 points

Jun 23, 2024 2:06 AM in response to HWTech

I had tried restarts before so based on @a brody and your suggestions I tried the following.

I ran the tests completely offline.
Check for health status through DiveDX but the drive does not support S.M.A.R.T scans
Boot in safe mode and reran the tests, I also tried moving some data.
I tried all the ports for the same without having anything else connected to it.

One thing I noticed is I tried these with a 3.5GB file, and reading from the hard disk took about 5 seconds. Writing the same file back takes about an hour. So it's just a writing issue somehow.

More Information

Device: Apple M1 Pro
MacOS: Sonoma 14.5 (23F79)
Connection Type: USB 3.1 (10 Gb/s)

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Answer 5

a brody

Level 10

85,372 points

Jun 22, 2024 7:58 PM in response to AbhishekChd

Data transfer rates can be affected by traffic to the cloud or other connected devices. Try doing the transfer with the internet turned off on both WiFi and ethernet, and only the drive connected to the computer.

If it is still a problem http://www.binaryfruit.com/ DriveDX does have an extension you can load to test the health of external drives as easily and internal drives.

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Answer 6

BobHarris

Level 9

57,197 points

Jun 23, 2024 4:16 AM in response to AbhishekChd

I suspect you have a garage collection issue.

https://www.techtarget.com/searchstorage/definition/solid-state-storage-SSS-garbage-collection

https://www.kingston.com/en/blog/pc-performance/ssd-garbage-collection-trim-explained

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Answer 7

BobHarris

Level 9

57,197 points

Jun 23, 2024 7:22 AM in response to AbhishekChd

I'm not sure if the USB device protocol includes the ability to send TRIM requests from the file system to the device. From what I can find via Google, internal and Thunderbolt attached drives have the ability to use TRIM, so I'm speculating that the reason USB does not, is the USB protocol. TOTALLY SPECULATION.

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Answer 8

BDAqua

Level 10

250,619 points

Jun 23, 2024 4:38 AM in response to BobHarris

Aha, that could do it! :)

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Samsung T7 SSD drive speed dropped to single digit

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