[(Some kind of) Solved] SSD 510: Track down huge Host Writes value

[idata]

After many test, here are the programs with most bytes written:

- Antivirus Software

- Firewall log file

- Some files belonging to my Firefox Profile are constantly written to

- C:\$LogFile

- Windows Temp Directory

After sym-linking some of those directories mentioned above to another hard drive, I did another test. In this test, I let Process Monitor record for 12 hours. I was not using the computer at all. Total Written Bytes where approx. 1.5GiB, Intel Toolbox recorded 4,44GiB. This might be due to physical disk sector size.

Now, the two Folders taking most written bytes to are Virus Scanner and Windows Temp directory. I thought about redirecting the Virus Scanner folder but need to measure the system impact before I'll do that.

Jens

Original Post for reference:

Owning two 128GB SSDs, both suffer the same phenomenon: Even if I do nothing, the host writes value increases very fast.

Both SSDs are in different computers (both Win 7 x64). One computer is switched on 24x7. After 150 hours my host writes value is at about 0.5 TB. What I tried to track the issue down:- relocate database writes to another harddrive (with junction points)- ended all running programs- ended some services (like firewall and virus scanning) With Process Monitor and a filter for "Operation contains Write" and "Path start with C:\" many events are captured, but data written from all events is not even close to some megabytes per minute. Do I have to worry about this? Warranty is for about 35TB I read, so I might be there very soon.... Can someone help me, please? Jens Edit: Host Writes seems to increase in minimum steps of 60MB. And only once a minute.

[idata]

I just checked the 510 Product Spec and the update frequency is 32 MB. I write around 0.65 GB of host writes per power on hour. (E1 Host writes / 09 Power-On Hours Count). I don't often copy large files, so that is mostly OS and app generated writes.

You are writing 0.5 TB/ 150 hours = 3.41 GB per power on hour, which seems quite high.

If you are feeling adventurous you could try hIOmon to find out exactly where the writes are being generated.

http://www.hyperio.com/hIOmon/Download/hIOmonDownloadInfo.htm http://www.hyperio.com/hIOmon/Download/hIOmonDownloadInfo.htm

[idata]

H redux!Started into the weekend already. Will try your tip tomorrow. Regarding Intel specs: 64 mb increments is just the value my counter increases. Did not have one smaller value. Thanks againJens

[idata]

I belive this is in fact an issue within the SMART's Host Writes algoritm because I also noticed host writes value being to high compared to the drive usage. When I first received my 510 120 GB drive , and written the first 60-70 GB of data the Intel SSD toolbox reported something above 500GB. After it went through the 1 TB, I decided to disable page file, but despite very few writes which mostly consists of browser cache I am now at almost 2TB.

It could be an error in the reporting mecanism, especially knowing Intel's late track with their products.

[idata]

Carved, I have a similar experience with my 510, which is noticeable in contrast to my G2 80GB SSDs, which I have used for a much longer time. The 510 shows nearly twice the amount of writes than any of my G2's do, which are more than a year older than the 510. My usage of each should be virtually identical, except for the length of time. Of course, the rest of the PCs they've been used on are not identical, but all use Window 7. The software used on the PCs has evolved over time, and newer versions could be contributing to the difference. I've wondered about the SMART data reporting on the 510 as you mentioned, which could be what we are seeing here.

[idata]

My 510 seemed to be writing quite a few GB per hour as well. I have the same OS image on several drives, and when I swapped the 510 for an X25-E I dropped to only about .9GB a day of host writes. The good news is you can use the Windows task manager and add host writes (In bytes) so you can figure out what's writing the most. My worst offenders were google chrome and windows live mesh. If you look at the first entry in my taskmgr shot, you'll see that Anvil Storage Utilities had written over 4TB since I opened the program 10 hours ago... but it's writing to a second SSD, and I wanted it to do that.

All you have to do is add the colums you want to see, and pick the IO's.

You can use this to track how many writes and reads each program makes since your windows session started.