I recently noticed that my Samsung T7 Shield external SSD is writing at a painfully slow speed of around 2MB/s. I've tried switching out cables and using different ports, and I even tested another portable SSD that works fine with the same setup. This leads me to think the issue lies with the Samsung SSD itself. I attempted to use Samsung Magician to troubleshoot, but since I'm on a Mac, some features are unavailable. I've done the firmware update, reformatted the drive, and run various speed tests, yet Samsung support hasn't provided any helpful solutions. Has anyone encountered this problem and found a fix? I've read that this could be a common issue with these SSDs. Unfortunately, both Samsung and Amazon have said there's no warranty since it was sold by Amazon US and imported.
3 Answers
Could the SSD be nearing full capacity? That can sometimes cause write speeds to plummet due to wear-leveling. It's generally a good idea to keep at least 10% of the SSD free. You might want to try to free up some space if that’s the case.
It sounds like your drive might be failing. I’d recommend backing up your data and running a diagnostic just to be safe. I did that before and it turned out my drive was on its last legs!
I already backed it up and reformatted. It was pretty full before, but I'm hoping the reset helps.
Have you checked the read speeds? Sometimes the write speed issues can be a temporary glitch. I found that my SSD had weird write speeds at times but read speeds were still normal. If your read speeds are fine, it might just need some quick troubleshooting.
Yeah, read speeds are totally normal at about 700MB/s, so that's reassuring!
It's actually empty now; I reformatted it. Before, it was about 3/4 full, though.