Extremely slow SSD speeds

Question

I’m ripping my hair out over this one. Over the past few weeks my system has randomly been having moments where it’s unbearably slow! I’ve been trying to work out why and today I think I’ve found out but can’t pinpoint the cause

So for some reason my SSD speeds when running hdparm is in the kb/s!

I’ve stopped anything running that may be causing issues, ran iotop and there’s nothing really running that stands out as an issue

I’ve tried updating and that was a mistake. I do keep this thing updated regularly, so it’s only a couple of standard security updates etc to be done. I’m 45 minutes in and we’re up to 11%

I’ve ran smartctl and the drive is perfectly fine.

CPU load is around 10% and I’ve still got around 5GB of RAM left (there’s only 16GB in it anyway)

It’s been absolutely fine up until recently. I can’t think of anything I’ve changed that would cause an issue like this.

What else could it be? Virus/Malware?

Please help!

If it helps I've added the results of smartctl below

    === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:

Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity was never started.

Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.

Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run.

Total time to complete Offline

data collection: ( 120) seconds.

Offline data collection

capabilities: (0x51) SMART execute Offline immediate.

No Auto Offline data collection support.

Suspend Offline collection upon new command.

No Offline surface scan supported.

Self-test supported.

No Conveyance Self-test supported.

Selective Self-test supported.

SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode.

Supports SMART auto save timer.

Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.

General Purpose Logging supported.

Short self-test routine

recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.

Extended self-test routine

recommended polling time: ( 24) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1

Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE

5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

9 Power_On_Hours 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 30412

12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 3403

171 Program_Fail_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

172 Erase_Fail_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

173 Avg_Write/Erase_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 881

174 Unexpect_Power_Loss_Ct 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 913

187 Reported_Uncorrect 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0

230 Perc_Write/Erase_Count 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 2936

232 Perc_Avail_Resrvd_Space 0x0003 100 100 005 Pre-fail Always - 0

234 Perc_Write/Erase_Ct_BC 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 5454

241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 115622983215

242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0002 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 174362820453

SMART Error Log Version: 1

No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1

Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error

# 1 Short captive Completed without error 00% 30410 -

# 2 Short captive Completed without error 00% 30314 -

# 3 Short offline Aborted by host 90% 18226 -

# 4 Short offline Aborted by host 00% 14584 -

# 5 Short offline Aborted by host 90% 1198 -

# 6 Short offline Aborted by host 90% 1167 -

# 7 Short offline Aborted by host 90% 123 -

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1

SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS

1 0 0 Not_testing

2 0 0 Not_testing

3 0 0 Not_testing

4 0 0 Not_testing

5 0 0 Not_testing

Selective self-test flags (0x0):

After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.

If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.