Excessive writes on C: drive

[ADM-Ntek]

i just looked at my C: drive in aida64 and it says that my samsung 980Pro has written 76TB in 46 days on time. anyone have an idea what could cause this?

[PineyCreek]

Does CrystalDiskInfo or Samsung Magician show the same number?  Moreso Samsung Magician, as that's your drive's main utility for firmware updates and diagnostics.

[ADM-Ntek]

3 minutes ago, PineyCreek said:

Does CrystalDiskInfo or Samsung Magician show the same number?  Moreso Samsung Magician, as that's your drive's main utility for firmware updates and diagnostics.

Samsung magician shows the same number.

[PineyCreek]

Just now, ADM-Ntek said:

Samsung magician shows the same number.

Oof. Ok, try checking resmon (Resource monitor) or task manager and watch disk writes?

[Applefreak]

So unless you bought a used SSD, you probably have something running in the background like a screen recorder or you have set a large Virtual Memory Size. Watch what program does what and check if you in the task scheduler for things that may run quite often. In certain applications like Adobe stuff for example, they create temp files on the primary drive by default. You can change that in the preferences. I have mine moved to a slow 5400 rpm drive to avoid wear on the SSD. Again, check what applications you have installed. Also make sure to set the download folders for browsers etc. to a HDD. In Windows you can right click the default folders like Downloads and set a different location. I have my entire user folder, downloads, etc. on a fast HDD. I've had SSDs fail out of the blue before, so that has become best practice for every system I set up these days. 

[ADM-Ntek]

i already have my Download folder on a HDD. and when i look into Task Manager the only regular activities i see are system registry and chrome and the first to are at 0,1MB/s. and when it comes to background programs there isn't that much

Rainmeter for a clock on my second screen.

dual monitor tools for some functions and it changes wallpapers every 20 minutes.  

Aida64 for monitoring system information.

Logitech gaming software for custom keys and makros.

Asus AI suite 3 for fan control.

 

the virtual memory is set by the system to about 5GB.

 

is there a monitoring tool that i could just run and record the drives activity for maybe a few hours?

[DreamCat04]

1 hour ago, ADM-Ntek said:

i already have my Download folder on a HDD. and when i look into Task Manager the only regular activities i see are system registry and chrome and the first to are at 0,1MB/s. and when it comes to background programs there isn't that much

Rainmeter for a clock on my second screen.

dual monitor tools for some functions and it changes wallpapers every 20 minutes.  

Aida64 for monitoring system information.

Logitech gaming software for custom keys and makros.

Asus AI suite 3 for fan control.

 

the virtual memory is set by the system to about 5GB.

 

is there a monitoring tool that i could just run and record the drives activity for maybe a few hours?

You could get HWInfo to see the hardware-level writes. There you can also see how much has been written since you booted the PC up. That resets on every restart and shutdown. In HWInfo, you also have min, max and avg values, so that might be useful to you. I have never seen that much write activity in that short amount of time. My M.2SSD (512GB) has ~13TB of total writes after around 2.5 years. And I used to do a LOT of speed tests, I don't know why I did that many lol, so I could have like 7-10TB of writes if I hadn't done them

[ADM-Ntek]

10 minutes ago, DreamCat04 said:

You could get HWInfo to see the hardware-level writes. There you can also see how much has been written since you booted the PC up. That resets on every restart and shutdown. In HWInfo, you also have min, max and avg values, so that might be useful to you. I have never seen that much write activity in that short amount of time. My M.2SSD (512GB) has ~13TB of total writes after around 2.5 years. And I used to do a LOT of speed tests, I don't know why I did that many lol, so I could have like 7-10TB of writes if I hadn't done them

I will try that.my 980 pro game drive has only written 1.5TB in the same time hell my fist ssd is 11 years old and still going and has only 11TB. 

according to aida64 my PC has been running for almost 7 days and looking at HWinfo says it has written 6,2TB in that time. and that at only 85GB used. 

[Kilrah]

What's your RAM usage like? hard to imagine anything else than constant swapping writing that much...

[ADM-Ntek]

ok i figured it out it and i could kick myself. it was my damn screensaver everytime it changes images it writes like half a gig of data combine that with it kicking in after 5 minutes and changing images every 10-20 seconds and my PC running 24/7 that escalated quickly.

[Kilrah]

Wow that's one buggy screensaver...

[ADM-Ntek]

13 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Wow that's one buggy screensaver...

i'm not even sure that it is buggy. i think it's just the way it works what i assume what it does is. it takes the images 4per screen each has high resolution then stitches them together into a high quality raw format writes it to C: displays it and rinse and repeat. well i turned it off and send a message to the devs.

[Blue4130]

10 hours ago, ADM-Ntek said:

i'm not even sure that it is buggy. i think it's just the way it works what i assume what it does is. it takes the images 4per screen each has high resolution then stitches them together into a high quality raw format writes it to C: displays it and rinse and repeat. well i turned it off and send a message to the devs.

I'd call that a bug, Why does a screen saver need to write to disk? Should live in RAM.