Non-OS SSD 100% Disk Usage

[Firedrops]

I have a local sata SSD hosting my OneDrive (with stuff like Documents, Desktop... etc also synced here) and as storage for downloads, including torrents through qBittorrent.

 

It is a Fanxiang S101 2TB. Not a T1 manufacturer by any means, but by most reports they are reliable enough. I've had it for a year so far without other issues, and have done full block scanning to verify true capacity and read/write speeds are as advertised.

 

Since 2 weeks ago it has started acting up. My system started stuttering frequently, including in games where I'm otherwise maintaining smooth 200 FPS before. I think I've tracked it down to this SSD.

 

This SSD is not storing my games, nor any other software/apps, but it might be interfering with Windows itself since Desktop etc are on it.

 

It frequently jumps to 100% disk usage, every few milliseconds. Sometimes it ramps back down straight away, other times it stays up for minutes. Even at 100% usage, the read/write speed in task manager are in the 2-digit KB/s range.

 

It also seems to be throttling my qBittorrent downloads - popular linux ISOs with hundreds of seeders are now stuck in 5-50 KiB/s, where I used to easily do 50 MiB/s.

 

I've done a full chkdsk f x r, took 4 hours, absolutely no bad sectors were discovered. It is at about 1 TB usage (out of 2 TB capacity).

 

Would anyone have any ideas on how to further troubleshoot? Could the problem be originating elsewhere that's cascading into this SSD activity? Does this behaviour seem like malware?

 

[SImoHayha]

15 minutes ago, Firedrops said:

 

Had a similar issue but in my case I had SAS drives, for some reason a HDD would go to 100%, then fail to be seen in explorer, figured out the issue wasn't the drive failing but the RAID controller overheating.

Perhaps something similar is happening to you? It could be that your NVME drive is overheating quite badly. Where is your NVME located? Is it getting enough airflow? Or passive airflow via the GPU? 

[Firedrops]

Thanks, I went to have a look, HWInfo reports all my drives (including my main OS NVME drive that's (probably) not the one being problematic) are between 35-45 C, which seem fine.

 

My NVME is tucked on the mobo with some integrated heatsink, and is getting very little airflow since both GPU and CPU are WC-ed. The problematic SSD in OP is bolted onto the back of the mobo tray, also presumably getting no airflow. But with those temps they're probably both fine.

 

However, the problem seems to have gone away (for now). Things I've done:

1. A MalwareBytes then ADWCleaner scans, turned out some sussy stuff including a "Trojan.BitcoinStealer" and some weird registry stuff, just clicked Quarantine on those. Maybe the bitcoinstealer has been endlessly scanning this one particular drive??
2. A new Windows update has finished downloading and is prompting me to install at next restart. No idea if this has been background downloading and somehow saturating this random drive it's not supposed to be in, but Windows does the weirdest things so I won't rule it out completely.

 

Past few hours drive activity has been back down to ~1-5%, with task manager reporting read/write speeds of ~500 KB/s, which seem much more in line with expectations. Will continue monitoring.

 

Update: It's been a few days and it's all good. I'm 99% sure it was the malware. Surprising, given how much praise Windows Defender gets nowadays.

[Firedrops]

I am back. It's been a few more days and it is not good. It happened again.

 

This time, Malwarebytes scan did not turn up anything. ADWCleaner turned up a sogou chrome extension. I can't find anything in my extensions related to sogou, so I just relied on ADWCleaner to quarantine it.

 

So far, it has not come back yet. I'm waiting a few more days for it to pop up again, and if sogou's back, that's definitely it. Again, it's bizarre that neither my OS nor my browsers (including chrome/opera) are installed on this SSD that it's targeting. The malware is just like "F*** this drive in particular".