[SOLVED] New laptop has more writes than I believe I have written?

[_dawn_chorus_]

I got a new laptop a couple weeks ago that has 894 host writes on it according to HWinfo.
This is odd because it is only a 512 Gb drive and I have filled up 416Gb.
I also test ran Doom Eternal (~90Gb) and deleted the Keyscape installer (~75Gb), so that is a total of 581Gb.

What else could cause so many extra writes and is that normal? I created an image of the drive on another SSD but wouldn't that only create writes on the external SSD?

I checked back through Event Viewer for possible use before my purchase and there are only some entries on one day in Dec 2022 over a few hours then nothing until the day I purchased it. It was manufactured in Dec 2022 so I assume those entries are just the OS and software install.

It just went up another Gb in the last 30 min or so while I am runing FL Studio and browsing the internet.
Should I be concerned?

 

[Lafong]

No.

You might tell us what specific drive?

Did you install it 2 days ago? 2 weeks? 9 months?

What's the general purpose of the drive?

Is Windows on it? Windows is constantly housekeeping and writing stuff you wouldn't be aware of.

You say 894 on it. I assume you mean 894 GB. Less than 1 TB.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

No.

You might tell us what specific drive?

Did you install it 2 days ago? 2 weeks? 9 months?

What's the general purpose of the drive?

Is Windows on it? Windows is constantly housekeeping and writing stuff you wouldn't be aware of.

You say 894 on it. I assume you mean 894 GB. Less than 1 TB.

SAMSUNG MZVLQ512HBLU-00B00

It came with the laptop.

So far I have just installed all of my FL Studio projects and VST instruments, about 10 light games and some wallpapers. I run Fl studio which makes backup saves but they are only around 183mb total since I bought it on 2/10/2023.

Windows 11 installed

Yes 987Gb actually -my bad.

 

[Lafong]

Its less than 3 weeks old.

About 1 TB written. Windows on the drive.

I wouldn't worry at all.

Check it once a month or so. Maybe raise your eyebrows a little if it has 20 TB written after 6 months or something like that.

The amount of writes early in the life of a Windows installation is NOT representative of longer time spans.

The average person writes maybe 10 or 15 TB a year. I write maybe 5.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

Its less than 3 weeks old.

About 1 TB written. Windows on the drive.

I wouldn't worry at all.

Check it once a month or so. Maybe raise your eyebrows a little if it has 20 TB written after 6 months or something like that.

The amount of writes early in the life of a Windows installation is NOT representative of longer time spans.

The average person writes maybe 10 or 15 TB a year. I write maybe 5.

Hmm. It has gone up another Gb since I made this post. 2 since I opened HWinfo a few hours ago.
Just seems like so much. You don't think it could be some kind of malware or telemetry garbage?

 

[Lafong]

Hmm. It has gone up another Gb since I made this post. 2 since I opened HWinfo a few hours ago.
Just seems like so much. You don't think it could be some kind of malware or telemetry garbage?

Unlikely its malware, but you should certainly have at least Windows Defender running to prevent that.

Windows is full of telemetry. You can turn off a lot of it if you care to.

You've written about 1 TB in about 17 days. That includes whatever you've deliberately put on the drive as well as Windows doing some housekeeping.

All you can do is monitor it. Knowing only what you've said, I don't see any reason at all for concern. If you were to write say 5 TB a month for the next 6 months, that might be worth a second look.

SSDs are a tool meant to be used. Use it as you wish unless you have an over-riding reason to do otherwise.

It could of course fail at any minute for no particular reason. Know what you will do if that were to happen. Backups?

 

[Nighthawk117]

I got a new laptop a couple weeks ago that has 894 host writes on it according to HWinfo.
This is odd because it is only a 512 Gb drive and I have filled up 416Gb.
I also test ran Doom Eternal (~90Gb) and deleted the Keyscape installer (~75Gb), so that is a total of 581Gb.

What else could cause so many extra writes and is that normal? I created an image of the drive on another SSD but wouldn't that only create writes on the external SSD?

I checked back through Event Viewer for possible use before my purchase and there are only some entries on one day in Dec 2022 over a few hours then nothing until the day I purchased it. It was manufactured in Dec 2022 so I assume those entries are just the OS and software install.

It just went up another Gb in the last 30 min or so while I am runing FL Studio and browsing the internet.
Should I be concerned?

I had this issue about a year ago. I was writing around 1TB a day, I discovered it was the anti virus causing this with it's background scans. Unforuntately it's just the way it works and there was no fix, I was using Kaspersky. I found high writes on my laptop as well but much less extreme than the desktop, but the latter has a lot of drives with TB's of data on them which makes things a lot worse. I tried a number of new AV programs, none were as extreme but heavy SSD writes does seem common with AV programs. Norton however was very light on writes so I went with that and it's solved my issue.

Your writes aren't anywhere near as extreme as what I've experienced. However to see what's doing it, open Task Manager, go to the details tab, right click the column headers and click 'select columns'. Make sure I/O Write Bytes is checked and just leave Task Manager open all day then order it by I/O Write Bytes descending and see what processes are causing the most writes.

It just went up another Gb in the last 30 min or so while I am runing FL Studio and browsing the internet.
Should I be concerned?

Browsing the internet for me is one of the main contributors to writes on my machine. Chrome is usually the top process for it.

 

[Lafong]

Your writes aren't anywhere near as extreme as what I've experienced. However to see what's doing it, open Task Manager, go to the details tab, right click the column headers and click 'select columns'. Make sure I/O Write Bytes is checked and just leave Task Manager open all day then order it by I/O Write Bytes descending and see what processes are causing the most writes.

Thanks for that Nighthawk.

I just checked my own Task Manager. I assume the figures shown in the I/O write column are since the last boot?

My totals; about 17 GB written in the last 15 hours. The way I use a PC, that would amount to about 6 TB a year...about what I would have guessed.

Of that about 60 percent is Malwarebytes, about 20 percent capturegen.exe, which is related to watching TV on my monitor, and about 5 percent is msmpeng.exe, which I think is Microsoft's antivirus thingy. A couple of others are around 1 percent. Then 50 or 100 others that write very little.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I just checked my own Task Manager. I assume the figures shown in the I/O write column are since the last boot?

Yes that's since boot.

My totals; about 17 GB written in the last 15 hours. The way I use a PC, that would amount to about 6 TB a year...about what I would have guessed.

I'm not sure if those figures include write amplification caused by the fact that if you have 3 bits per NAND cell and you want to change 1 bit it will first erase everything in the cell and then write all 3 bits again. If it doesn't then you could be writing more than that. Wear levelling will also increase write amplification as it shuffles everything around the disk. However even if it were 2 or 3 times higher you are probably still looking at several years of use before this becomes an issue assuming an average endurance rating.

In my case my SSD would have exceeded it's 600 TBW endurance rating within less than 2 years.

Of that about 60 percent is Malwarebytes, about 20 percent capturegen.exe, which is related to watching TV on my monitor, and about 5 percent is msmpeng.exe, which I think is Microsoft's antivirus thingy. A couple of others are around 1 percent. Then 50 or 100 others that write very little.

Not surprised at Malwarebytes being high. msmpeng.exe is quite light, it's nothing like some of the after market AV programs. On my laptop which has just a single 1TB drive and much less on it I was writing 90GB a day. Now I'm just using Microsoft Defender and it writes very little.

I don't think your writes are that concerning but if you wanted to lower them then a different anti malware program would probably be the best solution.

 

[Nighthawk117]

I thought you were the OP then @Lafong

Will be interesting to see what their stats are. From the look of my stats, I think I'm writing about 15TB a year.

 

[_dawn_chorus_]

Thanks for the help to you both. I found on my desktop with bitdefender I was writing about 7gb in 12 hours but only on the C: drive. Seemed rather similar on my laptop which only has windows defender.
Good to know this is just the AV and windows processes. Seemed like a red flag for sure at first. Thanks for helping me sort it out.

 

[Nighthawk117]

Your welcome, 7GB doesn't seem that much to me. My biggest daily writer is actually Chrome at about 10GB today. Norton is at 2.8GB but I did find Bitdefender writes more which is why I settled on Norton.