[(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]

Very strange of course. What are you using to check the amount of Host Writes? I imagine the SMART data, but what is interpreting it?

I've read about a similar phenomenon in another manufactures forum regarding one of their SSDs, but the issue was not resolved.

Just some suggestions, did you try running Windows in Safe mode, and see if the same thing happens? Have you tried using Resource and Performance monitors, to possibly find what is causing this?

Windows Task Manager, in the Processes tab, allows you to watch the I/O read and writes at the byte level per process. Those columns are not displayed by default, but can be selected with the View button, and Select Options. Scroll down to find six I/O options, among others that can be displayed. You can also change the update speed of the display with the View button. If you've never looked at this data before, I suggest that you do, it just might surprise you.

[idata]

Hi parsec.Thanks for your reply. :-)To check host writes I used Intel SSD Toolbox and CrystalDiskInfo.Did not run in safe mode. I will try that next. Resource and Performance monitoring didn't help me. Even if I accumulate all I/O Write Bytes, the number is still to small. Looks different if I accumulate all I/O Other Bytes. My virus scanner accounts for over 1TB in about 40 minutes. Might test that first. Though I don't feel that good without Virus Scanner... Report back in a couple of hours. Jens

[idata]

SMART write increments are updated every 32MB. 0.5TiB over 150 hours = AVG ~1MiB/s.

An AV scan is primarily a read operation. Do you by any chance have a lot of RAM and do you frequently use hibernation/sleep? If so that can potentiality generate a lot of writes, as any info in memory is transferred to the disk/SSD. I'm not 100% sure if the Resource Monitor, or the Intel Toolbox for that matter, are able to record the writes that occur as the PC goes into hibernation mode.

If host writes are being recorded by SMART/ CDI the Resource Monitor should be able to see the correlating write activity.

Another tool you coudl try would be Process Explorer. You can use the View>Select Columns to select Disk Writes.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

[idata]

Hi redux,thanks for your help.I've looked on the host writes counter for a couple of minutes, must be 64MB increments. Maybe Intel (or whoever) changed that?I have 8GB RAM, but don't use any kind of sleep or hibernation. As I said before: summing up all written bytes per second for a minute (roughly estimate) I get a value around one megabyte.. Over the last hour, I run my home PC in Safe Mode (without touching a key), stats gone up approx. 70MiB. That's much better. But:Just opening Excel and updating my chart with this gave an instant increase for another 60MiB. So two increment step seems to be 130MiB. This without any virus scanner etc. in safe mode. Is that usual? I don't know. As a test I copied a 10GB file to see the host writes counter. But that did increment just as is should. Going on that fast, I reach 35TB "limit" soon. I'll gladly test any new idea! 🙂 Jens