Question Is there anything I can do with this M.2 SSD?

[Troughy]

So my PC was built around July 2020, and it had this same Adata XPG Gammix S5 1TB M.2 SSD since then. I don't remember when the problems started appearing at first, but I do know that it started with Windows not booting (the M.2 SSD was not detected by UEFI as a boot device). Usually I could fix that by removing the SSD and then putting it back, but there was a time when this happened every single time I tried booting my PC, so I installed Windows on a normal SSD. I've been using it to store games and it worked perfectly fine for a long time, but recently it started having issues again..

When I tried installing a game on it, it just crashed Windows. What I mean by that is when I wanted to cancel the download, it just straight up didn't cancel (EA app btw), and then when I opened explorer to manually delete the files, after clicking on the drive, it just froze explorer. It froze it in a way that I couldn't even shut it down, not with cmd (taskkill), not with task manager, I literally couldn't kill that frozen explorer process.

Then other programs started freezing as well, Ctrl + Alt + Del didn't work (or it only opened minutes after pressing the keys). Yesterday Firefox froze randomly while a video was playing but the vid kept playing until a while (and I know this is related to the m.2 ssd because before this happened, I tried to open the drive in explorer and it froze again)

Also when it works, then no software can tell anything's wrong with it. It's still got 98% remaining life, only 21TB written to it (600TBW), but I ran Crystal disk mark on it, and well.. just see for yourself:

https://imgur.com/AdR0jmD

View: https://i.imgur.com/AdR0jmD.png

In this vid im not even pressing anything: https://streamable.com/jbpetr
also yesterday CrystalDiskMark was creating the test file for too long, and when I checked on the contents with explorer, some folders opened, others didn't (E:\blabla is not accessible, a device which does not exist was specified)

I plan on buying a Samsung 980 which is literally better in every way (except it doesn't have a heatsink) and costs half the price of the S5 as of today, but before that I just wanted to ask if there's anything I should try before replacing it.

Full specs:
ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0
AMD Ryzen 5 2600
Sapphire Radeon RX 570
2x8GB DDR4 RAM (G.SKILL Ripjaws V F4-3200C16-8GVKB) 3200MHz
Samsung SSD 870 QVO 1TB
Adata XPG Gammix S5 1TB
and an old 500gb HDD

 

[Leptir]

The 1TB 980 is $50 nowadays, so I'd say just go and buy it. And, BTW, it doesn't need a heatsink.

There are some things you could try, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not when you can get a new SSD for so cheap. You could try using DISKPART and nix the whole drive, see if that helps. Or you could just secure erase it. You could also check SMART to see if there are any errors.

But keep in mind that when an SSD (or HD for that matter) starts acting up, it's likely to do so again before long and you risk losing your data. (Been there, done that.) That's why I don't recommend messing with it. Just replace it and be done with it. Of course, that's assuming the SSD is bad. You could also be dealing with a corrupt installation of Windows or who knows what.

 

[Troughy]

The 1TB 980 is $50 nowadays, so I'd say just go and buy it. And, BTW, it doesn't need a heatsink.

There are some things you could try, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not when you can get a new SSD for so cheap. You could try using DISKPART and nix the whole drive, see if that helps. Or you could just secure erase it. You could also check SMART to see if there are any errors.

But keep in mind that when an SSD (or HD for that matter) starts acting up, it's likely to do so again before long and you risk losing your data. (Been there, done that.) That's why I don't recommend messing with it. Just replace it and be done with it. Of course, that's assuming the SSD is bad. You could also be dealing with a corrupt installation of Windows or who knows what.

Definitely not a corrupt installation of Windows, I've reinstalled it several times in the last 3 years (even reinstalled it after recording that vid I linked, which was about a month ago)
Really hope it's not the motherboard.. Although it's somewhat comforting to see that the only ratings of the XPG on the site I bought it from are 2 one star reviews, both saying their SSD slowed down/died after a few months
I ordered the Samsung 980, if I don't forget I'll edit this post in a few weeks/months to give an update

 

[Troughy]

Soo I just did a firmware update and Crystal Disk Mark now shows way better results.. The 2099.62MB/s read bascially matches the advertised max read speed (2100MB/s) but the write speed doesn't (advertised max is 1500MB/s).

https://imgur.com/MRfsKn6

View: https://i.imgur.com/MRfsKn6.png

2nd test with 1GiB test file:

https://imgur.com/u7B2RhY

View: https://i.imgur.com/u7B2RhY.png

Since I never even knew that firmware had to be updated on this thing, I've cancelled the orders and I'll give it a few more days/weeks to see if this fixed all issues.
EDIT: I also used Adata's SSD Toolbox to optimize the SSD, which performs a trim command on the ssd. No idea what that does, but maybe that also helped? or maybe firmware update did nothing and the trim was what helped.. We'll see

 

[Leptir]

Trim is complicated to understand, but the long and the short is that Windows does it automatically, so there is no need to do it manually... unless you are doing a lot of disk writing AND the disk is very nearly full. In that situation the drive slows down dramatically and you do need to trigger a manual trim.

Yeah, your numbers look much better now... sort of. Your random performance is rather dismal, especially RND4K Q1T1. It could be because your disk is 90% full. I'd get a 2TB drive. You don't want to run an SSD so close to full capacity.

 

[Troughy]

Trim is complicated to understand, but the long and the short is that Windows does it automatically, so there is no need to do it manually... unless you are doing a lot of disk writing AND the disk is very nearly full. In that situation the drive slows down dramatically and you do need to trigger a manual trim.

Yeah, your numbers look much better now, but RND4K Q1T1 looks dismal to me.

Is there something I can do about that? To be honest, if I see "2099MB/s", I'm happy no matter what the other tests say
Also it seems like that's slow for everyone.

 

[USAFRet]

Is there something I can do about that? To be honest, if I see "2099MB/s", I'm happy no matter what the other tests say
Also it seems like that's slow for everyone.

Your drive is a bit too full.

 

[Leptir]

To be honest, if I see "2099MB/s", I'm happy no matter what the other tests say.

Then you should inform yourself what those tests mean. Sequential read/write almost never happens in normal use, random read/write is much more important. And RND4K Q1T1 is especially important because it reflect how responsive your system feels.

Anyway, seriously, you don't want to run your SSD at 90% full, it'll only cause you grief. Get a 2TB SSD.

 

[USAFRet]

To be honest, if I see "2099MB/s", I'm happy no matter what the other tests say

This is like when you're shopping for a car, and looking at the published Top Speed.
140mph vs 165mph.
The 165mph is obviously better, right?

But you've completely ignored the 0-40, 0-60, and 40-70 times.
Which is where we all live in daily use.

 

[Leptir]

This is like when you're shopping for a car, and looking at the published Top Speed.
140mph vs 165mph. The 165mph is obviously better, right?

But you've completely ignored the 0-40, 0-60, and 40-70 times. Which is where we all live in daily use.

This is a good analogy.