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Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

I have a very strange SSD related bug at the moment on that Windows version too:

I've downloaded my Google Takeout Backup, so 74 4GB sized zips. After I was done extracting them and storing them on Dropbox, I tried to delete the zip files, but my machine froze without so much of a bluescreen. After a hard reboot, I could reproduce the behavior. I can still change the focus of apps, but everything that requires the ssd to do anything is waiting for i/o until the system freezes completely.

Unplugging the notebook seems to help, sometimes, but I can't make this work coherently at the moment.

Until this post I thought my SSD (Samsung Evo 970 Plus) was faulty, despite working perfectly for everything else.

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Dropbox

Might that be your problem, or part of it? Not 100% sure, but whenever I access machines with Dropbox all kinds of weird things happen like there's a ghost in the machines. E.g. deleting a directory managed by Dropbox through explorer consistently results in all its subdirectories and files deleted, but the directory itself remaining there, requiring deleting it again.

That directories reappear empty thingie was an sync engine issue, I believe. It was fixed in latest sync engine update (though this issue was never mentioned, it stopped happening).

Regarding the parent poster, on Windows Smart Sync is enabled and, while extremely useful (and better that Onedrive’s equivalent IMO), it did cause issues in the past. Since it seems to work as a file filter, it can cause some issues. That being said, I haven’t seen those in a while.

SATA Link Power Management (LPM) and Device-Initiated Power Management (DIPM) could also be the culprit here with similar symptoms - after using the computer for a while, the SSD will stop responding to I/O activities, leaving you a half-dead system. Existing programs like a browser, taskbar or window manager will still work for a while, until they need I/O too, eventually everything will be progressively dead.

It should be a persistent problem that shows up immediately after you've just installed an incompatible SSD, and it should only affect those who installed Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver. So, if it only appears after a system upgrade, it should not be the problem here. But apparently it's still a possible cause.

So, just in case, the solution follows:

First, try disabling HIPM and DIPM in Windows "Power Options", you can use this tutorial: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/177819-ahci-link-power...

Also, if you are using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology driver, LPM and DIPM can be disabled by making the following registry changes. After making the changes, reboot the system and test.

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port0]
    "LPM"=dword:00000000
    "LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
    "DIPM"=dword:00000000

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port1]
    "LPM"=dword:00000000
    "LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
    "DIPM"=dword:00000000

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port2]
    "LPM"=dword:00000000
    "LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
    "DIPM"=dword:00000000

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port3]
    "LPM"=dword:00000000
    "LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
    "DIPM"=dword:00000000

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port4]
    "LPM"=dword:00000000
    "LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
    "DIPM"=dword:00000000

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\Parameters\Port5]
    "LPM"=dword:00000000
    "LPMDSTATE"=dword:00000000
    "DIPM"=dword:00000000

Note:

1. It disables LPM and DIPM blindly for Port0, Port1, Port2, Port3, Port4, and Port5. It may miss your SSD if you have more ports (unlikely), and if you know the location of your SSD, one entry is enough.

2. I only tested it many years ago on an old version of iaStor, perhaps a new upgrade has made these register keys ineffective. Who knows.

3. Previously, uninstalling iaStor and using the built-in AHCI driver in Windows could be a workaround. But I'm not sure whether it's still a solution.

Thanks, as this is an AMD Notebook with an PCIe NVMe SSD i'm not sure the SATA Link Power Management is applicable. I've turned off the PCIe Link Power Management though, sadly without improvements.

I have to say this problem ONLY appears when DELETING these specific 4gb zip files. I really can't reproduce this in any other way.

Someone suggested on-access-antivirus/Defender being the culprit, those want to take a peek inside the files, and that might take a long time to unpack. Try excluding the folder they are in before deleting.

Okay, it appears not to be your problem then, don't forget to switch the option back to save power when you've finished troubleshooting. I must suspect that the other comment on TRIM might be relevant...

I had a very similar issue. Samsung 860 Pro, system somehow got slower and slower until it froze. After a hard reboot, my partitions on 2 dynamic drives were gone. Easily restored with Testdisk, but that was a weird one. Never had it happen again.

If it happens only on deletion of files, maybe it's something TRIM-related.

Sounds like an anti-virus problem. What happens if you delete it from the command prompt or powershell?

powershell and commandprompt sadly create the same result, but thanks for the suggestion.

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