Ok here's the answer - one sata connection on the motherboard (the one that the SSD OS was connected to) was either loose or had a short. It would start working normally and then lose connectivity and freeze. Since this drive was the OS drive, even if it would regain connectivity it couldn't continue from where it left off in windows and the only solution was to force power it off.
The way I figured this out was when I ran hardware diagnostics it would freeze in middle of the SSD test. That told me its not a software issue. When I tried again and it froze at a dif part of the SSD test I figured its not an issue on the drive, so I tried switching sata channels and walla! Everything worked!!!