Is my SSD failing?

[Slatteew]

Hello all,

Lately my computer has been running slow, and this is a few days after a fresh Windows 7 Pro install. I have a San Disk Ultra Plus 64gb SSD for a boot disk and after booting up, it seems to run super slow. It boots up in ~17 seconds. When i try to open folders in My Computer, it will become unresponsive for a time. Games have run fine for about 10-15 minutes, and then start freezing up for a few minutes, and eventually freezing up permanently, but no BSOD ever appears. I also tried to benchmark the SSD lately using Passmark Performance 8.0 when running all tests, every test went fine, until i got to the drive tests.......then it just froze up and took ages to finish, ultimately leading to god awful scores. Lastly, when trying to update Windows, some updates are not even able to install. This caused me to want to reinstall windows with the recent fresh installation to see if something had gone wrong with an installation before and try to correct it rather than pay Microsoft to do it. Crystal Disk Info does not say anything is wrong with the drive though, it says 100% Good. I had a HDD i was using before this and replaced with the SSD because i wanted some faster boot speeds and a few programs running faster, and crystal disk info did have a caution up for that drive before i replaced it, as it had some of the exact same issues as i am having with the SSD. Does anyone think the drive is the problem, or is it something else?

 

[DeathAndPain]

I have experienced similar issues before. The SSD even reported its own imminent failure via S.M.A.R.T. I replaced my SSD because of this. In the end it turned out to be the SATA cable, and I believe the SSD was never close to its EOL in the first place. I am confident that this is the reason in your case, too.

SATA 3.0 is quite a demanding standard of data transportation. The cable should be as short as possible, and it should be as good as possible. Saving a few bucks here is the wrong decision.

 

[das_stig]

Download and run diagnostic toolkit, also check if new firmware released.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/9328/

 

[DeathAndPain]

As I said, my SSD even announced its own imminent death through diagnostics. I backed up my data, then removed and destroyed it for security reasons and installed a new one. That new one showed the same symptoms, however, so I believe the old SSD was never faulty.

Bottom line is that I would not trust any self-diagnostics report here, not before having made sure the cable is not the cause.

 

[Slatteew]

Thanks for the responses! I tried booting up this afternoon and it goes into Windows Disk Repair, no way around it, which cannot figure out how to fix it, so i requested an RMA from Newegg. No idea what could have happened, i turned off disk defragmenter so it would not mess up the drive.

 

[DeathAndPain]

No offense intended, but I would laugh so hard if you ended up experiencing the same I did: you get the new SSD, end up getting the same problems, and finally have to realize it was the cable.

My money is still on the cable, that much is sure.

 

[Slatteew]

I already tried switching between 4 different cables and no such luck. 🙁 Cables are the LEAST likely to fail.

http://tinypic.com/r/153s9dv/8
http://tinypic.com/r/akg3yd/8

There is the Crystal Mark Info and SanDisk info for the SSD. The one that has Caution is my WD Blue 250gb 7200RPM drive, and i know it has been in the caution for a while, which is why i bought the SSD.