SSD Drive High active time, sluggish launch of programs, right click file slow

Question

I noticed that my Samsung SSD 850 EVO started getting sluggish when I launch any of my programs.

When I check the disk usage I constantly get spikes and my active time is hovering in the 80% range even though I am not running anything in the background. If I launch a program it does not launch instantly it takes 25-50 seconds before the program is launched.

I noticed also if I right click on a file, it takes 15 seconds for the pop up to appear, I just get the windows circle circling for 10-15 seconds beforeIi am to see the pop up. If I try to search a file in explorer I get the windows message "working on it" and it gets stuck.

At random times I also noticed that sometime I can get a micro lag and my mouse does not move for a split second.

So far I have tried:

1. Ran a full virus/malware scan: Everything was clean
2. Made sure i have all update drivers
3. Reindexed my files
4. Use the troubleshooter to auto fix the search issue
5. Scan the disk for errors/corruption: nothing found

Nothing has worked, I am starting to believe the root cause is the SSD itself.

I ran samsung magician benchmark and noticed the sequential write is very low compared to my other samsung drive, please check the screenshot below.

Answer 1

According to this article and to the Samsung website, the nominal endurance for the 850 EVO 500GB is of 150TB written.

According to the test you did, you have already written more than three times as much data to that drive. So, even though your SW classifies drive health as "good", actually at the present state your drive could fail any moment, and should not be used for critical operations any more.

The low sequential write speed probably is connected with this, and for sure is a sign that your drive's health is not really "good". Given the situation, I wouldn't wait to know more details, but backup the drive immediately and get a replacement.

For your quite heavy use, you might want to consider a PRO grade drive, which has a longer endurance.

EDIT: Given that this is your system drive, a possible explanation for the stutters and long write times is that the wear levelling algorithm is freaking out and moving around data, so that pagefile and other frequently accessed files can be written to less-used regions of the drive. The fuller the drive is, the worse the impact.

For a system drive, use PRO grade disks! Win 10 just constantly writes too much data to consider an EVO drive a good option.