SSD slows to crawl write, but normal read?

[Awinn17]

Hey guys. Bought PNY XLR8 Pro 120 in 2013. In hindsight, over the last two months it's been slowing down exponentially on write, but staying normal on reads. Last 3 weeks have been frustrating. This past week I started to panic as it was slowing fast and the last day I decided to replace it I couldn't even get Acronis to install in time to mirror it to the new one. Ended up using clonezilla created on a different PC, luckily worked first try perfectly.

New hard drive works perfectly with no settings altered, using the same SATA cable and port the old one used.

I had tried everything I could with settings (optimize, cleaned up 50 GB free space, checked Trim etc) and it just kept getting worse showing no improvement.

Am I right in thinking this is a mechanical failure? It went downhill surprisingly fast the last day.

Now it's sitting here. I performed a "clean" on it and created a new partition, but it still didn't want to write files as an extra disk. Transfers some quickly at like 200 MB/s then stops about 1 second in and drops to zero. Resource monitor shows it's still writing the first files. I was thinking a blown cap or storage chip on-board.


TL;DR: Is it useless? Should I microwave it and toss it? (I kind of want to microwave it)

 

[Lutfij]

Microwave it and do what? Reflowing doesn't do anything unless you're a skilled engineer where you know what is the cause of the issue. In hindsight it's possible that the SSD's controller is failing at it's job. Though we also need to know what your full system's specs are. List them like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
OS:

Often times a BIOS update fixed the issue while the device wasn't operating properly due to a faulty cable.
My Crucial M4 128GB SSD died on my 6 months ago and I'd purchased it 34 years prior...which is about the same time where good SSD's were too expensive and had to settle for cheaper alternatives. That cheaper alternative resulted in the sudden demise of the SSD.

 

[Awinn17]

Microwave it and do what? Reflowing doesn't do anything unless you're a skilled engineer where you know what is the cause of the issue. In hindsight it's possible that the SSD's controller is failing at it's job. Though we also need to know what your full system's specs are. List them like so:
CPU: i7 3770k OC @ 4.2
Motherboard: MSI Z77 Big Bang
Ram: 4X4GB (16GB) Corsair Vengeance
SSD/HDD: (WAS) PNY XLR8 PRO 120GB, WD Black 1TB Aux
GPU: Sapphire Nitro R9 390, 8gb onboard RAM
PSU: 850W Thermaltake
OS: W10 (Upgraded from W7)

Often times a BIOS update fixed the issue while the device wasn't operating properly due to a faulty cable.
My Crucial M4 128GB SSD died on my 6 months ago and I'd purchased it 34 years prior...which is about the same time where good SSD's were too expensive and had to settle for cheaper alternatives. That cheaper alternative resulted in the sudden demise of the SSD.

Specs in bold in quoted post. I was asking about microwaving just to toast it and throw it away as a secure purge. Is there a method of using a microwave to do something functional to them? Is that what you meant by "reflow"?

I think it's junked I just wanted to check because if not, it would make a great scratch drive for rendering programs and pagefile.