I recently upgraded to a 2TB SATA SSD to help manage the load of my 1TB NVMe drive and move some games over. Initially, it performed great, handling massive titles like Call of Duty and STALKER 2 without a hitch. However, I've hit a snag. Now, even the slightest write operation causes the drive to ramp up to 100% usage in Task Manager, and my write speeds have plummeted to kilobytes. I'm unable to install anything through Steam without running into errors. I did manage to download a 60GB game via GOG Galaxy, but it took a weekend on a fast wired connection! The installed games work fine, but I'm confused about why the write speeds have dropped so dramatically. Is there something wrong with the drive, like a bad controller, or have I misused it somehow? I purchased the Team Group T-Force Vulcan Z 2TB.
1 Answer
It sounds like your SSD is experiencing some classic issues. The Team Group T-Force Vulcan Z, particularly the TLC model, can slow down significantly once the SLC cache fills up, usually after around 660GB of data is used. While it should still function, hitting kilobyte speeds is definitely off. Just to double-check, did you accidentally get the QLC version, which is even slower?
I double-checked my receipt, and it turns out I did get the TLC model. I don’t mind slower write speeds, but this is just too much. Is there any way to reset the cache or should I format the SSD and ensure I keep the storage under that 660GB mark?