SSD running slow after an excessive usage
When you used your solid state drive (SSD) for the first time, the speed was fast as
what you had been told. However, after a running it a long time, you certainly will
notice that the performance is low. Some people find their SSD’s write speed is as
low as 1/4 of the original speed after 18 months of usage. In that case, you may
wonder how you can restore SSD to peak performance.
Why did SSD performance decrease?
When you delete a file from your SSD, it only delete the table of contents entry, but
leave the actual data blocks on your SSD. Due to the properties of NAND flash
memory, formerly written blocks in SSD have to be erased before you can store new
data.
Otherwise, the performance will degrade. Modern SSDs has avoid this problem by using
a few tricks including garbage collection (identifies the unneeded data blocks and
delete them during idle time), over-provisioning and TRIM command (known as TRIM in
the ATA command set).
However, garbage collection may not run constantly, and some operating system (OS)
may not work well with TRIM command. What’s worse, Windows XP does not even support
the TRIM command. If you are using Windows 10/8/7, you do not need to care about
this problem.
As you know, simply wipe everything from your SSD
and repartitioning will not work. Actually, even without the utility to force
garbage collection, you can restore SSD to factory condition by doing a Secure
Erase.
How to perform Secure Erase?
Some SSDs provides a tool to help your maintain the SSD best performance, like
Samsung Magician Software. However, Samsung Magician can only do Secure Erase for
Samsung SSDs. If you does not have Samsung SSD or have other SSDs besides
Samsung SSD, you probably want to have a software that is able to securely erase all
types of SSDs.
Luckily, you can use free software AOMEI Partition Assistant to perform Secure Erase
SSD and restore performance. It only takes a few minutes to complete a full Secure
Erase.
As you know, secure erase will delete everything on your SSD, leaving your SSD as
unallocated space. If you do not want to reinstall system, you can create
a SSD backup and then restore to it after the Secure Erase. You can follow
the steps below to securely erase your SSD.
1. Download and install
AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard (free edition).
2. In the main interface, click on the Secure Erase SSD
button from the left panel. If it is the system drive that you want to erase, then
you can click Make Bootable
Media and follow the wizard to create a bootable disk with USB flash
drive or CD/DVD. After that, boot your computer from the bootable media and then go
through the following process.

3. Select your SSD that you want to restore performance.
This feature works with all brands of SSDs, but it will not work with hard disk
drive (HDD).

4. Then you will see the SSD identification information.
Confirm it and click Next to continue.

5. Because your SSD is in Frozen state, you need to do hot
swap for this SSD. Just unplug off the power cable and data cable and then plug then
in.

6. After hot swap, click OK to start SSD Secure Erase. In a
few seconds, your SSD will be erased securely. Then you can create new partition and
format SSD to restore performance.

Then you can create new
partition and format SSD just using this free tool. In most of cases, your SSD
will restore to its peak performance. However, there are also other issues that can
cause SSD
running slow, like outdated BIOS drivers, wrong SATA Port/Controller, cable
issue, etc.