Whats been writting to my SSD?

[nekrosoft13]

On one PC in the house, chews up through SSDs quickly.

 

Just now 2 days ago, I installed a new 512GB SSD, I cloned the drive from the old drive, in two days it already has 2TB of written data to it.

 

What tool would you use to track what is writing data and how much?

[SnoopZ]

2TB of written data, is that a typo?

[Nick H. Supervisor]

If you use Task Manager DeLuxe, or even the normal task manager, you can see realtime I/O writes. Task Manager Deluxe gives you some further details over the regular task manager. Chewing through 2TB in a couple of days, I'd wager you could probably spot something out of the ordinary there.

 

I would also suggest installing SSDLife and running it a couple of times over the next week. It won't tell you what is doing the writing, but it will possibly help to give you an idea of the estimated lifespan of the drive.

 

And finally, a suggestion that you're not going to like. Since you said that you cloned your previous drive to the new one, I'm guessing that whatever chewed through the previous drive is chewing through the current one. I would backup any important data and wipe the drive, starting fresh.

[Elliot B.]

Everything.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

8 minutes ago, Elliot B. said:

Everything.

I took a look, but only linking to the installer doesn't help me much. Do I need to run a particular search to see what has been doing the writing?

 

Bear in mind he wants to know what has been writing so much data to the drive, he doesn't want to know what the largest files are on the SSD.

[nekrosoft13]

1 hour ago, SnoopZ said:

2TB of written data, is that a typo?

last drive I replaced, because in span of 3 months it wrote 36tb to 512gb drive, life % fell to 80%.

 

Now put in a new drive and it already did 2TB... out of nowhere.

[Jim K Global Moderator]

I think the task manager route Nick mentioned would work ... 

 

In task manager ... click the "Details" tab ... right click on the columns and select I/O Read bytes and I/O write bytes.  

 

These numbers do clear after a reboot/shutdown.  Example from my notebook after 2 days uptime....

 

 

If you have something that is constantly thrashing your SSD ... it should show up here with really huge numbers (as you can see it is displayed in bytes).

 

Resource Monitor will also show you real-time data being written...

 

 

[Nick H. Supervisor]

5 minutes ago, Jim K said:

I think the task manager route Nick mentioned would work ... 

 

In task manager ... click the "Details" tab ... right click on the columns and select I/O Read bytes and I/O write bytes. 

I didn't even think of the details tab.

 

Yeah, that would probably give you the answer you need.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

The Microsoft Sysinternals Process Explorer utility might be helpful.  In particular, go to View | Select Columns, then the Process I/O tab.  On a semi-related issue, programs like WinDirStat and WizTree can help you visualize how the space on the drive is being allocated.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky