2012 11" SSD sudden slow down

I have the same problem

2012 cto air 13' i5 128g 8g

help

I have the exact same problem as hdsc on my Macbook Air mid 2012 1,8 core i5, 128GB, 8GB ram.

its TOSHIBA vs. SAMSUNG. Your problem is likely the mfg of the SSD in the first place. From what i have been reading and told by my friends in the "tech" community, Apple is only putting the "faster" Samsung SSD's into your motherboard when you upgrade to the i7 @ 2. I have a 256 Samsung matched with this i7 and 8G ram config - thing runs consistently on the same app mentioned above at ~400 over ~450. I have read a larger number of threads confirming this over the last few days, and it sorta makes sense. You spend $100 more to upgrade to the i7, and Apple hooks you up with the slightly better of the two flash drive mfg. Of course Tim Cook will never admit to this. 🙂

That's because most people do not understand how SSD work. They are totally different than normal HDs. It's perfectly normal that SSDs getting slower over time. The problem is that people are only reporting their speeds right after they purchased it. Most won't even notice some slowdowns. Those that do are asking themselves whether there could be a problem of some kind.

Basically there are three options I could think of:

- The SSD is aging fast because you did a lot of file transfers with it.

- The SSD is going to be failing soon. Slower speeds are a sign that the controller tries to avoid bad blocks.

- The controller od the SSD is not working properly. Older Sandforce-controllers are known to act odd in some cases.

I really urge you to read the following articles:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/inside-the-ssd-revolution- how-solid-state-disks-really-work/

After reading you should also understand why it is a real problem that Apple only offers it latest Pro-models with SSD only and that Pros won't have the option to choose between those and normal harddisks.

Not true in this case. My 2yr old MacBook air SSD is just as fast as new. This reduction happened suddenly after initial use.

I just bought a base 2012 13" and the same thing happened. Initial speed test 365MB/sec. A while later, only 240.

I've done other benchmarks. It seems to be Samsung vs. Toshiba. The 128gb drives are Toshiba which exhibit this behavior. The 256gb is Samsung and it has consistently high speeds, close to 450mb write. Similar performance on the rMBP 256GB drive. All the 13" MBA in the store whe only reporting 240 write.

Maybe it's something about the first time it's writing the drive it can do 360, then on every other pass, it has to erase first before writing, slowing it down.

Or is it a firmware bug in the SSD controller? Is there a way to ask Toshiba for comment?

I would love a response on this because I'm noticing the exact same behavior on my Toshiba 128gb in my 2012 MBA.