Is there anyway to monitor what is being written on the SSD? For the past 4 days, I've noticed 69gb has been written onto the SSD, I only have programs and Windows installed onto the SSD.
The only programs that I use often are Firefox and Photoshop.
Is that 69 GB per day or total for the 4 days? How big is the SSD?
On Win 10 you have at least 3 huge files that are rewritten on every boot.
- pagefile.sys = Virtual Memory (around size of total memory)
- swapfile.sys =virtual memory used for those new “universal” apps
- Hiberfil.sys = Hibernate file (Same size of total memory)
Last edited by Megahertz; 25 Dec 2020 at 09:37.
- Hiberfil.sys = Hibernate file (Same size of total memory)
Optional, if you use Hibernation.
Total for the 4 days, the SSD is about 250gb, rated tbw is 150.
Saw Firefox, Skype, and my VPN all writing about 900mb to 400mb. I don't think that should be a problem right?
I do sometimes put my laptop to sleep, is that the same as hibernation? Not sure if I actually use hibernation.
That makes sense, in the past, I disabled hibernation and moved the pagefile to my D drive and I had 6.7tb written in 1.5 years.
@Megahertz loves to make this false claim, and I don't know why. The entire contents of pagefile.sys, swapfile.sys and hiberfil.sys are NOT rewritten on every boot. These files are created - which is an entirely different process than writing the files. At boot time, these file are created in the Master File Table to reserve space for them. That takes less than 1 MB of writes to the SSD to do. You are NOT getting massive, multi-GB writes to the SSD at boot to create these files, you are getting less than 1 MB writes to the MFT only.
1. Run powercfg -h off to get rid of hiberfil.sys. I do this on all my computers. Is it to save writes? No. I only do it because with an SSD I have no need for it. I don't hibernate my computer, I turn if off. And I don't need Windows 10 fast startup because it really saves me only 1 or 2 seconds over cold booting with an SSD and fast startup causes lots of problems when dual booting.
2. pagefile.sys should be on the fastest drive on your computer. Depending on how little memory you have and how memory intensive your programs are, Windows 10 is going to use this file when memory gets low to offload programs, apps and services that don't need the memory. This is going to occur at random times when your available physical RAM gets low. Putting this file on a slow HDD rather than the fast SSD will cause the system to lag during this operation, and you want to minimize that lag time. Now if you have lots of memory and you only do email on your computer, than what harm is it going to do to the SSD to leave it there since the computer is not going to write to it anyway? And it only takes less than 1 MB write to the SSD to create it. But if it floats your boat to move the file to the slower HDD, have at it.
3. Now your "insane" writes to your SSD of 18 GB per day on a 75 TBW rated SSD means that you are using an incredible .02% of it's life every day. Oh my God! That is 2/100 of 1%! That means you are going to hit the rated 75 TBW on the ssd in only 23 years! And will the SSD just die in 23 years and refuse to be written to? No. It's likely to last way beyond that.
I don't know, maybe watching .02% of your SSD rated life getting eaten up every day is a way to distract from the thousands of other real things to worry about in 2020 and 2021.....
I would "blame" Photoshop, it uses huge amounts of data. Check I/O writes before turning off computer.
I have 12TB written within a year and I do not worry about it, it is about Health, mine is 97%. What is yours?
It is most likely, that you will replace your SSD within 5-10 years anyway, way beyond its lifespan.
Sleep by default saves all content of the RAM onto the disk (SSD), but disabling hibernation takes care of that.
Enable or Disable Hibernate in Windows 10
Using VPN, basically all your written data can double automatically, unless it routes them via RAM.
As for the browser, that depends, what you are browsing, I got 2GB within 30 mins on YouTube.
That's about 6.3 TB per year. The horror.
Averages seen on this forum seem to be in the 5 to 10 range.
The SSD is warranted for somewhere between 30 and 50 per year, depending on whether it's a 3 or 5 year warranty.
Panic if you must.
Per Humpty Dumpty, "insane" means whatever you choose it to mean, neither more nor less.
I have a 6 year old SSD with a TBW of 72; still rated at 80 percent. Long out of warranty. 30 TB written; 35,000 hours operation.
Note on the hiberfil.sys. It is not the total amount of memory. It's approximately what's in use, at hibernate or shutdown time.
I have 32GB installed.
II temporarily turned it on, then back off cause I don't use/need it.
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