m.2 ssd issue

Mr Mcgoo · 10 Oct 2021 at 13:56

So for a while i have had 3 m.2 drives fail on me but not fail in the sense i cant use them. the problem is randomly the drive will cause most games i play to freeze for 5 seconds before returning to normal and then freeze again for 5 seconds after a minute and do this for a few minutes. suddenly the games will run fine for a good 30-60 minutes, then sudden start having freezing issues again for another 10-15 mins on and off before returning to normal again.

In event viewer i get mostly event id 154 failed due to hardware error (only get this message 2-3 times during a gaming session even if my game freezes 5-10 times with in the hour) and on one occasion i had the drive retired error. how chkdsk finds no error, sfc /scannow finds nothing and the smart status is fine and showing 98% healthy with 16000gb writes and 13000gb nand writes. quite small for a 6 month old drive. also the last 2 drives did the same thing after 6 months each.

Could this be a motherboard issue?

Mr Mcgoo · 11 Oct 2021 at 09:25

reset to factory and did a clean boot and still having the same issues

Mr Mcgoo · 11 Oct 2021 at 09:46

nothing. disk usage is as expected in task manager. all drivers and firmware up to date. tempted to buy a gigabyte aorus pro z390 on here for £120 b grade

Mr Mcgoo · 11 Oct 2021 at 11:04

how would i go about seeing if i can get it cheaper from ocuk

Mr Mcgoo · 11 Oct 2021 at 11:35

mickyflinn said:
Call them or post in the customer service section of the forum.

so i have messaged them and waiting a response. but i did just have this, A corruption was discovered in the file system structure on volume C:. check disk fixed this but smart status still shows nothing.

Mr Mcgoo · 11 Oct 2021 at 11:55

mickyflinn said:
I wonder if windows is the cause maybe formatt your pc and start a fresh but im not to sure.

i did that when installing windows 11 last week. the issue is still here. all though i didn't have any issues for 2 weeks.

Mr Mcgoo · 11 Oct 2021 at 12:09

mickyflinn said:
A new motherboard seems a bit drastic but it could be some sort of software/hardware fault.

I agree it is a bit drastic but i have nothing else to go on.

The only thing that has not been upgraded or changed in this system since i built 2.5 years ago is the mobo. i still have the same issue. i just realised the first ssd (sandisk 500gb 2.5") that had this same issue 2 years ago, is still being used by my wife in her system right now and has been going strong since i built it last year. the intel 660p 2tb nvme i had before this wd m.2 ssd had the same issues but is working in a friends pc fine right now and has been for the last year. thinking about it, it's likely the mobo, maybe?

Mr Mcgoo · 11 Oct 2021 at 16:29

Tetras said:
Is the slot that you use them in a bit toasty?

Does the PC spend much time in idle (like true idle)?

the ssd has not gone above 40c and that was during the summer. also the pc spends around 60% of its time idle and by idle i mean browsing the web and listening to music while doing so. so i would say yes. right now the ssd is sat at 29c

Mr Mcgoo · 13 Oct 2021 at 16:53

Mcnumpty2323 said:
Tried a different m2 slot?
Assuming you have a 2nd slot available
A pcie m2 card would be much cheaper to test than replacement motherboard
And much less hassle than motherboard replacement too
Assuming you have spare pcie slot of required speed

i have tried both m.2 slots and both have same issue. the odd thing switching to another slot stops the issues for a couple hours then resumes same issue again.

Mr Mcgoo · 14 Oct 2021 at 13:19

so after 5 solid hours of trying to find the route of my ssd errors i found the culprit. ark survival evolved was the one game that would freeze regardless of what i did. after 3 hours i found that anything above 160 watts of gpu power usage would cause ark to start stuttering and then freeze more frequently the high my power above 160 watts would be. the same happened in fortnite and bfv. lowering my gpu usage to keep it under 160 watts in all games solved my problems. oh dear was my gpu on its way out? i then realised nvidia had a beta windows 11 driver (471.68) that i was still using and one other person reported the same issues as me. updated to latest driver (496.13) and all my issues have gone. even my ssd issues have been fixed. i turns out that my gpu driver was causing the freezes that in turn caused windows to believe that the freeze was an ssd issue. the driver was hanging my system up including cpu and gpu hence the false negative. so anyone else having a similar issue on windows 11 update to latest nvidia driver

Mr Mcgoo · 23 Oct 2021 at 00:06

So this issue raised again only this time my pc was having random issues even at the desktop. what struck me was that i was still getting the same 150-160 watts of power pull from the gpu would trigger the issues. after spending an entire day draining and rebuilding my entire pc i found my issue. when i powered my pc on and played resident evil village that is very demanding with rtx of course my system stuttered again. so i turned my attention to my psu cables. i changed my corsair custom cables for gpu and my games suddenly started working again, but i was still having issues with random desktop crashes and my corsair 24 pin atx cable had become damaged somehow. no physical damage. reseating it still gave me the same issue. so i changed the cable around with the stock cable and all is fine. can't believe a psu cable could be faulty without any signs of damage. low and behold my system is way more snappier than ever. this has been a nearly 2 year struggle that re-occurred once in a while and finally it's all fixed.