Question New SSD takes minutes to read

Jun 29, 2020
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Hi folks. New member but long time lurker. Up until now I haven't really had an issue that I wasn't able to solve just by reading existing threads, but I'm having a heck of a time with my current problem.

Several weeks ago I purchased a new WD Blue NAND internal 2.5" SSD. I already have two other 2.5" SSDs and an M.2 SSD on the rig and they have been working perfectly for years. This new drive, however, has been exhibiting some extremely annoying behavior and I have not been able to figure out what is wrong with it.

Whenever I turn the computer on from a shutdown, or if I just restart it, and try to access the folders in the new drive it takes about 5-7 minutes to respond. I will open my Windows Explorer and click on the drive and will be greeted by the green loading bar that takes about 60-90 seconds to display the icons/info of the folders located on it. When I then click on one of the folders I won't even get the green bar...it will just freeze up and grey out the Windows Explorer window for about 5 minutes (complete with the Program Not Responding message up top) while it tries to open the folders. If I try cancelling the operation or restarting the OS during this time it will hang indefinitely until I do a hard shutdown. If I wait it out instead of trying to close anything down it will eventually unfreeze and the drive will operate normally for an hour or so.

I've reached out to the manufacturer's technical support and their suggestions were to make sure the firmware was up to date (it is) and the SATA cable/port are working (they are, I will swap the SSD with an old HDD and the HDD will work fine). BIOS, chipset, all drivers (that I know of) are up to date, as well. They then had me send over event logs, system info, and scan reports but have not gotten back to me for days, so I am here reaching out for help from you folks.

I have moved all files over to my other drives and haven't had any problems. The files are basically just photos and videos my wife and I dump from our phones when the phones get full. I have tried the following:
  1. Moving all files and formatting the drive to start from scratch
  2. Going into drive Properties -> Customize -> Optimize (doesn't matter which type I set the optimization to, none of them fix the problem)
  3. Disabling indexing for the drive
  4. Checking to make sure driver and firmware for the new drive is up to date
  5. Downloading manufacturer's dashboard app for the drive and running diagnostics. Everything comes back clean without any errors.
  6. Swapping SATA cable and port

Thanks in advance for any assistance you folks can provide.
 
Seems the only things you haven't tried yet:
  • Mounted in another computer.
  • Run it under a Linux OS and formatted in something else than NTFS (e.g. Ext4 or btrfs) (you then would not be able to easily retrieve the files from within windows).
 
Jun 29, 2020
3
0
10
Well - unless you're located a place with hard restriction on internet use, then you're not telling the true?

I am not a computer wiz nor do I have a single bit of experience with Linux or ISO images, whatever those are. If you're implying that my ignorance is in fact me being dishonest then you are wrong and I would appreciate if you would hold off on your assumptions about my character. All I know of Linux is that it is an operating system. I do not know what is involved in switching out my Windows OS for Linux. I'm comfortable with Windows and it is all I've known for years and years. I'm not sure I want to switch OSs just because a drive is acting up.
 
Ok, then I'm sorry for my wording, but then you should also reply correctly too so that I would know that experience is the issue and not access issue.
Also, from what you write in first post, I got the impression you're more experienced than a regular user.

Since you're unfamiliar to Linux, you should know that you can boot into Linux without installing, the concept of a Live ISO image (on DVD or usb stick). I did never say you should install it to your computer.
Thing is - Linux can be used in certain cases in order to rule out a software issue.

Therefore the argument of having no access to Linux is an invalid argument. That is what I should write instead of accusing you lying.