M.2 SSD becomes fully worn out at 100% during gameplay and causes PC crashes
M.2 SSD becomes fully worn out at 100% during gameplay and causes PC crashes
Hi, I’m dealing with a persistent issue. My main boot device is a M.2 SSD (970Evo), and I also have a secondary 1TB Samsung Evo Plus. After updating to the original Fortnite version a few weeks back, the game became very unstable—mid-match textures would fail and then my drive would spike to full usage. Eventually, I had to power off the PC because it wouldn’t shut down properly. This has only happened once or twice over the past three years, and it doesn’t occur when I switch games onto the secondary drive. I’ve run diagnostics like crystaldiskinfo, checked the system file integrity, performed a chkdsk on both drives, updated drivers/firmware, even reinstalled Windows, but nothing resolves the problem. I can transfer large amounts of data between drives without issues, and the only errors appear in the event viewer or during Windows error checks. Memtest86 on RAM came back clean. The drive itself never reports any faults, yet it keeps failing to boot correctly. I’m unsure if this is within warranty, but since it’s not returning any errors, I’m wondering if formatting the drive might help.
Are you sure the storage is within the GPU's area, maybe? Does your graphics card expose vents that release air onto the motherboard? With the temperature already high in the yellow, it’s possible the drive is entering a protective state to guard against heat from the graphics card. That makes sense if it functions normally outside of games. Would you have another slot available for swapping the drive or GPU temporarily?
The firmware is up-to-date. I ran Sentinel and attached the results below. The board has two slots, both occupied. The drive is positioned below the GPU. This hasn't occurred before, but it does have heat protection features that cap performance. I can attempt to swap the drives to compare results.