Windows 8: 100% SSD Activity, 0 R/W Speed: System Hang Issue

Verify trim: fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify (look for result = 0) and run windows 10 drive "OPTIMIZE"

or

Corrupt System or Application files = Reinstall Windows after deleting and recreating partition or Secure erase.

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SSD Gone bad/haywire?

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The usual suspects: Power supply, Motherboard/Disk controller, memtest, CPU (probably not but could be....)

Replace sata cable, swap to a different power cable, try different port on sata controller and/or swap drive to a known working computer and do chkdsk /f or other diags.

Best of luck!

Please try to boot in Safe mode and see if the issue persists.

If it does not, that means a program or service from startup is using the disk.

This could either be a malicious program or an antivirus/antimalware program such as Malwarebytes. Next steps would be to go to:

• task manager -> startup -> check for dubious programs and then antiviruses
• msconfig -> services -> hide all microsoft services -> check for dubious services and disable them.

If you cannot figure it out, just disable everything in both settings then start enabling them one by one and restart. When the issue comes back, you found the culprit.

Incorrect cable connection or faulty cable does not cause 100% disk usage, it causes disk errors (first hand experience with this) and windows explorer hanging while accessing files / writing to disk.

A few other options to try is to:

• disable windows defragmenter
• disable indexing service
• disable system restore or decrease the size allocated to it
• enable write caching from device manager

Such symptoms can also appear when the SATA connector/cable is faulty and works intermittently. However, in that case, the SMART status should show an increase in "Ultra-DMA CRC Error Count". Which is clearly not the case for the OP. However, there have been reports of drives which do not report Ultra-DMA CRC Error Counts.

Note that if your drive reports Ultra-DMA CRC Error Counts, you will see a cumulative number of errors over the lifetime of the drive. It will never go down. When it stays at the same value, it means that no new errors occur. When it increases, errors are present. So be sure to write down the current value when you wish to check whether a new cable makes any difference.

I have had these issues on and off on my laptop. Figured some windows services were putting some extra burden on the SSD (OS task management issues IMO). One thing that helped was disabling Windows Search and/or Superfetch.

Run CMD as administrator and type in the following:

net stop superfetch
net stop "windows search"

If you observe the usage plummeting, and like it that way, you could go to services (run services.msc) and stop these services for good.

Superfetch is the windows service to ensure a faster experience by putting the frequently used data from the drive to RAM. But since it has to copy the data to RAM first, it can cause enormous lags. (I observed my PC hanging when I left it idle for sometime. Maybe that's when the Superfetch kicks in.)

Windows Search is the search manager that is responsible for indexing and such functions. Sometimes building indexes can use a lot of drive resources. But usually it runs fine and is very helpful.

None of these tweaks is very recommended - but if they help that's good. Disabling windows search will - well, disable windows search. You can start it again by typing in the following.

net start 'Windows Search'

In most cases, I reckon, disabling Superfetch would be enough. Your call. Best of luck.

I had exactly the same issue on my notebook with SSD Crucial MX100 256GB. I didn't manage to find a solution or at least a reason of these very annoying freezes. When I inserted this drive to desktop PC it worked just fine without any freezes. When I was researching this problem I was finding only more and more people reporting the same problem but without any working solution. After that I inserted another SSD to my notebook - Samsung SSD 840 Evo and it worked fine. That's why I think there was a problem with power.

I didn't see if you use notebook or desktop PC, sorry if I missed it. As I mentioned above, the possible reason of SSD freezes is that this SSD requires abnormal power supply. Another possible reason is that the procudent of notebook limited power for mass storage devices because they didn't predicted that consumer might replace original components.

If you are on desktop PC I think the problem could be with power line as Jamie Willetts said in comment. Replace it and check again.

I felt very disappointed when I saw that another SSD works fine. In my opinion, a hardware maintainer should inform consumers that their device requires higher power because it is obvious that there could be problems on devices like notebooks with limited power. I would replace it or return to a resseler if I could.