SATA SSD Fluctuating Download Speeds - What's Going On?

Hey everyone,

I’m experiencing a weird issue with my older SATA SSD and wanted to get some input. I recently upgraded to an NVMe SSD, and everything’s been running great with that one—no problems at all. However, what drove me to do this is that my old SATA SSD has had some unusual behavior when downloading or transferring files.

The issue: Download speeds on the SATA SSD fluctuate quite a bit. They’ll hit up to 40MB/s (which is normal for it), but then suddenly drop to around 100KB/s, stay there for a bit, and then slowly rise back up to 40MB/s. This cycle seems to repeat during large downloads.

What’s odd is that the health of the SATA SSD checks out fine using diagnostic tools (no errors or bad sectors reported).

Does anyone have any ideas on why this might be happening? Is this an early sign of failure even though the health report looks fine? Could it be a software or driver issue, or something with thermal throttling?

Any advice or suggestions would be really appreciated! Thanks in advance!

Auditormadness9 said:

Does anyone have any ideas on why this might be happening?

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Well, for transfer speeds... that's pretty much the SSD's speed.

For downloads though... remember that the site you're downloading from, may be affecting the download speed.
Some sites have download speed caps. Some sites don't have a lot of bandwidth, so if more people are downloading, that may affect the download speed.

It might also depend on how your Internet Service Provider deals with download bandwidth.

So the type of SSD, doesn't really affect the file download speed.

This is all standard stuff when you download a large game. Initially the main part is downloaded and installed, followed by content that will not be used initially, this maybe chunks of data for levels, characters, scenery and so forth.
It may appear to stop or go slower but this will just be how the download is organised.

The server capacity is limited as it costs them money. So speeds may fluctuate according to demands at the time, also depending on where you are in the world capacity of the internet byways will fluctuate over time.

All your video shows is the download more or less stopping(blue bars), the SSD still working installing stuff, and other tasks(green line), later the download will resume. This will likely be repeated many times in a 90 GB download.

It has nothing to do with your SSD, software or drivers.

Ghot said:

Well, for transfer speeds... that's pretty much the SSD's speed.

For downloads though... remember that the site you're downloading from, may be affecting the download speed.
Some sites have download speed caps. Some sites don't have a lot of bandwidth, so if more people are downloading, that may affect the download speed.

It might also depend on how your Internet Service Provider deals with download bandwidth.

So the type of SSD, doesn't really affect the file download speed.

Click to expand...

But I did say that on my m2 ssd it's always stable while on the sata one it's always like this, no matter the platform I'm downloading from.

Helmut said:

This is all standard stuff when you download a large game. Initially the main part is downloaded and installed, followed by content that will not be used initially, this maybe chunks of data for levels, characters, scenery and so forth.
It may appear to stop or go slower but this will just be how the download is organised.

The server capacity is limited as it costs them money. So speeds may fluctuate according to demands at the time, also depending on where you are in the world capacity of the internet byways will fluctuate over time.

All your video shows is the download more or less stopping(blue bars), the SSD still working installing stuff, and other tasks(green line), later the download will resume. This will likely be repeated many times in a 90 GB download.

It has nothing to do with your SSD, software or drivers.

Click to expand...

but why does it not fluctuate with my other SSD? I initiated a download from battlenet on my m.2 ssd and it stayed at solid 40mb/s, and its minimum peak was 36mb/s, while using my sata ssd to download from battlenet it went to 40, then after a minute to 0, then after a minute to 40, and so on. It feels like it's getting throttled and the sata ssd can't handle such download speeds for prolonged time or something, while the m2 can?

And at peak, the time remaining shows 30mins, and i counted and it took exactly 30mins with the m.2 (since it never flutuates) while with the sata one, it also said 30mins at peak speed but went longer than an hour. So basically, on m.2 speed is constant while on the sata it fluctuates. But I don't think that's how these two different SSDs should differ from each other, I feel like something's wrong with my sata one.

I guess there is no fix, that's just how that specific SSD operates?

It is up to you to lookup the function of SSD controllers, buffering/caching methods both on and off the SSD, and so on.

Your source of a game download is not consistent enough to draw any conclusion that something is wrong.

Any sort of remaining time counter will tend to be inaccurate depending on what assumptions are made, most people take these times with a large pinch of salt.

The rest of the many variables have already been mentioned by several people. Almost none of these variables do you have any control over.