I've been using two identical SSDs - one for the OS and the other for storage - without any issues for years. Recently, however, my system started experiencing stuttering, and I noticed that the disk usage on the OS SSD spikes to 100% even when I'm gaming off the other SSD. I ran some benchmarks and found that while both SSDs have good health, one's write speed is only 50 MB/s compared to the other's 500 MB/s. I also checked the resource monitor during these spikes and saw that Microsoft processes, like Defender and Office, are heavily using the page file instead of RAM. Can anyone explain why this significant speed difference is happening now and if it could be linked to a recent AMD driver update I installed?
3 Answers
One possible reason for the differing speeds is that the OS SSD is more heavily loaded with processes, which can definitely slow it down. The fact that it's dying could also explain the recent performance drop after years of use. But not all slow SSDs are dead—sometimes they just get bogged down under heavy loads, especially if they're DRAM-less models.
Yeah, I think it really comes down to how each SSD is being used. The OS drive is working harder than the storage SSD. And while some folks are quick to say a slow SSD is dying, that isn’t always the case! Still, it's odd this issue popped up out of nowhere after so long. Have you checked your configurations after the driver update?
It sounds like that slower SSD might be on its last legs. I've seen similar situations where SSDs max out at 100% usage with minimal load, which usually indicates they're failing. Make sure to back up everything on that drive just in case!
Yeah, if that's happening, I'd be worried too. It's frustrating since these drives should last longer. Hope you have a backup!
Good point! Sometimes updates can mess with settings that affect performance.