SSD Usage at 100% - Dying?

[bickerdykee]

Hello,

In the past few days, my SSD has bottlenecked badly. At first, I was unsure what the issue was, but I eventually found my SSD at a constant 100% active time. Occasionally this would dip down, and I thought at first that perhaps it was my browser, Opera, as when I use Pale Moon, it works flawlessly. However, I realize now Opera is installed on the SSD where Pale Moon is on my HDD.

I've run a couple tests, and found this is what results if I scan it.

For comparison, this is another SSD I own.

I just want to be absolutely certain that it actually is dying before I replace it. Are my suspicions correct?

 

[Sedivy]

There is an issue with ssds, where if you don't do maintenance, they can slow down considerably. Now I don't know how the slowdown manifests and if it's only write and not so much read, as it is with yours, but try and see if this helps you at all:
http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/My-SSD-used-to-be-so-much-faster-but-has-recently-slowed-down/ta-p/118310
It's from a specific company but applies to all ssds. If this doesn't help, then yes, contact your manufacturer and see what can be done. You manufacturer may have a different utility or procedure to help you out with this, check on their support page.

 

[SkyNetRising]

HI eventually found my SSD at a constant 100% active time.

Use Resource Monitor to find out process, that causes disk usage.
Open Resource Monitor, switch to Disk Tab, open Disk Activity section, adjust File name column to be fully visible, order by column Total and post screenshot.

Spoiler

It should look similar to this (ordering is not done right there)

 

[bickerdykee]

HI eventually found my SSD at a constant 100% active time.

Use Resource Monitor to find out process, that causes disk usage.
Open Resource Monitor, switch to Disk Tab, open Disk Activity section, adjust File name column to be fully visible, order by column Total and post screenshot.

Spoiler

It should look similar to this (ordering is not done right there)

It seems to be Opera still, as it was running fine until I opened it. However, it hasn't exclusively happened with Opera, I just haven't captured other examples. I disabled all extensions and let it sit for a while, just to ensure it wasn't those as the filenames say, however it never really changed in performance.

Spoiler

There is an issue with ssds, where if you don't do maintenance, they can slow down considerably. Now I don't know how the slowdown manifests and if it's only write and not so much read, as it is with yours, but try and see if this helps you at all:
http://forums.crucial.com/t5/Crucial-SSDs/My-SSD-used-to-be-so-much-faster-but-has-recently-slowed-down/ta-p/118310
It's from a specific company but applies to all ssds. If this doesn't help, then yes, contact your manufacturer and see what can be done. You manufacturer may have a different utility or procedure to help you out with this, check on their support page.

I'll try leaving my computer on sleep mode for a few hours today to give it a chance to clean itself out. It is possible, as my computer's power settings were set to stop giving power after only 20 minutes, rather than never as your link stated. I'll report back later if it's helped at all.

 

[Sedivy]

Let it clean itself a few hours if you get a chance, but get whatever utility your manufacturer makes for their ssds, and run it. It'll be like a cleaning/disc check. You can run the windows one too but better do the manufacturer's one. Depending on how good it is, it may also tell you if your disc is in dire need of maintenance, so you know if it's a disc issue or if you should focus on your windows instead.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Opera is doing some crazy writing there. Not good for life of SSD.
Well - don't use Opera.

 

[Solandri]

How full is the SSD? Slow write speeds usually occur when the SSD is nearly full. Flash memory (NAND) cannot overwrite a 0 with a 1 or a 1 with a 0. The NAND cells need to be erased first before they can be loaded with new values. This erase step is very slow, so SSDs normally do it in the background while the drive is not being used. This was what TRIM was about - it's how the OS told the SSD which drive sectors were safe to erase.

If there's very little free space, the drive cannot pre-erase enough space to handle any writes you send it. It will be forced to erase cells just prior to writing to them, causing an extreme slowdown in the drive's performance as well as it showing up as in use 100% of the time.

This can also happen if you have an older SSD and do not have TRIM enabled. Newer SSDs have been programmed to recognize file systems, so are not as reliant on TRIM to determine which sectors are safe to erase. But older SSDs relied on TRIM. If you don't have TRIM enabled, the OS will use the SSD like a HDD, resulting in the SSD eventually using up all its pre-erased sectors. Without TRIM, it cannot pre-erase more sectors. At that point, any new write command results in first erasing the sectors the OS chooses for writing, causing the same extreme slowdown and 100% usage.

OTOH, if you suspect Opera is the cause, try uninstalling it and see if the problem goes away. However, your benchmark result (slow write speeds across all file sizes, extremely long write access time) is consistent with lack of pre-erased NAND cells. If the slowdown were being caused by a program monopolizing the SSD, I'd expect the sequential write speeds to be a lot higher since when a sequential write command does get through to the SSD, the SSD will process that write (and only that write) before going back to the problem program's write requests.

 

[bickerdykee]

I've left my SSD to clean itself for the past eight hours, and haven't really noticed an improvement. I think that any chance to clean itself is long past at this moment, and it's too little too late. Active time is still 100% with only 1.3 MB/s write speed.

 

[Sedivy]

Did you try making some space?
And if as solandri suggested, it's an older model, the trim won't even be enabled in which case leaving it to clean itself won't work.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Just kill the Opera. Use Firefox or something else.

 

[bickerdykee]

Did you try making some space?
And if as solandri suggested, it's an older model, the trim won't even be enabled in which case leaving it to clean itself won't work.

Solandri's response wasn't posted when I put my computer on sleep mode, so I hadn't checked before then. I just now checked, however, and TRIM was already enabled on my system.

Just kill the Opera. Use Firefox or something else.

Opera's already been uninstalled, I've been using Pale Moon instead, it still bottlenecks any time I access my C:\ drive however.

 

[Sedivy]

How much space left on whatever is the OS drive?

 

[bickerdykee]

How much space left on whatever is the OS drive?

There's about 10 GB left. It's a small, 120 GB SSD I've had for several years now. I don't really use it for anything other than my OS and maybe a couple programs.

 

[Sedivy]

Yeah that would be it. Try freeing up some. Move any big files like movies, music, images onto your hdd.
https://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/407552-minimum-free-space-hard-drive.html
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/windows-7-how-much-free-space-should-i-maintain-on-my-os-drive.2030076/

 

[bickerdykee]

Yeah that would be it. Try freeing up some. Move any big files like movies, music, images onto your hdd.
https://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/407552-minimum-free-space-hard-drive.html
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/windows-7-how-much-free-space-should-i-maintain-on-my-os-drive.2030076/

I've cleared some space and am currently sitting at 37.7 GB / 120 GB, and still haven't really noticed any difference.

 

[Sedivy]

Crap. Then yeah, I'd say it's possible it's dying..