I've been experiencing a weird issue with my SSD. Whenever I download files, it usually starts out fine, but then the usage shoots up to 100%, and I'm seeing really high response times—like 5000 ms at times. The write speed is quite slow as well. I checked the temperature of the SSD, and it's around 53°C with a health rating of 99%. I even reinstalled Windows, but that didn't solve the problem. I'm using a Lexar NQ790 1TB PCI Express 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 drive. Anyone know what might be causing this?
4 Answers
It sounds like your SSD might be slowing down because it's full or close to full, especially since the Lexar NQ790 is a QLC drive. Those drives can hit really low speeds once their cache fills up, which generally happens when the drive is getting close to capacity—about 75GB of cache when it's around 75% full. Also, almost all SSDs slow down when they’re nearly full. It’s good to keep at least 10-20% of the space free! Just a thought, but also keep an eye out for possible malware that could be taxing your system.
A screenshot from CrystalDiskInfo would be useful here. Make sure to maximize the window so all your diagnostic info is visible. CrystalDiskInfo and CrystalDiskMark are different; we need the former for detailed health checks, as sometimes failures won’t reflect bad health status.
Here's a screenshot of my CrystalDiskInfo: . What do you think?
How’s your internet connection? Sometimes Windows throws off confusing speed stats. If your SSD is writing at 100 MiB/s, it could just be that your 1 Gbps internet is bottlenecking your downloads. If you're looking for quicker speeds, you might want to consider upgrading your internet.
I ran an SSD speed test, and the results seemed normal. My internet connection is indeed 1 Gbps, but sometimes it drops to 0. Is that something I should be worried about?
I just reinstalled Windows, so it's definitely not full. I'm downloading files that range from 10-100GB, but I doubt that’s the issue.