SSD Anomoly

I have an Apacer A350 120GB SSD that I use for backups of my Core2Duo using Linux. Last couple of weeks it has been slowing down when I run a backup of the main Samsung drive which is 250gb. I know what your thinking how do I backup 250gb onto 120gb SSD. Foxclone that I use only backs up the used space, but going off topic now.

Anyway the Apacer was formatted with EXT4 FS and has been fine up to now. I ran a backup today and it was so slow I gave up and backed up to another spinny HDD. So I booted into my Linux Distro and tried copying the backup files from the spinny HDD to the Apacer SSD - again slow, about 5 kb/s copying speed. So I deleted the partition and re-formattted with NTFS. This failed.

Shutdown PC ready to swap the Apacer with a Crucial drive. Unplugged the Apacer from the SATA port and in a flash of inspiration decided to blow on the connector and plug the Apacer back in. Booted back into the OS and the partition program indicated no Partition Table - so I created a GPT Table and NTFS partition and this time it worked without error.

I copied the 3 folders on the spinny HDD over to the Apacer SSD and this time the speed was about 50 mb/s and finished in 20 minutes. The SSD is over 3 years old and has been regularly trimmed but unplugging the SATA port seems to have cured it.

Is it time to replace it with the Crucial or run it til I can access it anymore?

If you have access to a machine that can boot into DOS (your Core2Duo might) then trying Steve Gibson's SpinRite might help (but its not free). There is also Validrive that runs on Windows or Linux with WINE that might be worth trying.

Does Apacer have any diagnostic software? Crucial and Samsung do.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

If you have access to a machine that can boot into DOS (your Core2Duo might) then trying Steve Gibson's SpinRite might help (but its not free). There is also Validrive that runs on Windows or Linux with WINE that might be worth trying.

Does Apacer have any diagnostic software? Crucial and Samsung do.

I have looked at the Apacer site and cant see anything other than an info utility. Seems ok now but as I say its just for backups.

Edited by Banger (Sun 23-Aug-26 12:54:14)

In reply to a post by Banger:

I have looked at the Apacer site and cant see anything other than an info utility.

Maybe try something like Crystal Disk Info but interpreting the numbers isn't obvious.

SMART is perfect no problems there I was more leaning towards the SATA cable but is fine now.

In reply to a post by Banger:

SMART is perfect no problems there I was more leaning towards the SATA cable but is fine now.

Good news, as the drive controller itself is in charge.

120GB SSDs cost about £20 nowadays. I’d dump it. You say it’s “just for backups” but an unreliable backup is worse than no backup.