SSD Writing/blinking Every Couple Seconds eve

hel1011

Honorable
Jul 31, 2012
25
0
10,530
My ssd is writing every few seconds. I know this by looking at the HW monitor (through control alt delete in windows 8.1) and the blinking HD light. It is difficult to perceive. I want to know why this happening at idle and while I am in the middle of playing a game. I have removed the page file, turned of indexing, turned off hibernating,, disabled optical drives AND it still blinks and writes intermitted. I sometimes notice spikes in games where it may write or read and I get a single frame lag spike. I am curious why this happening or how I can fix this.

Specs,
Intel SSD 160gb
8gb ddr 1600
intel 3770k at 4.5ghz
670 gtx sli
asus p8z77 v-pro

 
Solution
If the game is on a different drive, then the SSD ís idling. If the game is on the SSD then it's either being used to load game files (ie in use so the light lights up anyway), or it is idle because all the necessary files are in the RAM.

It doesn't matter if your system is idle, it's about your SSD being idle.
This is normal behaviour for a SSD. It's the garbage collection algorithm working.

SSDs clean up 'deleted' blocks through a process called garbage collection. If they didn't SSD performance would degrade quite rapidly. The end result is that an 'idle' SSD seems to be working. It's nothing to worry about, in fact it's a sign that your SSD is working correctly.

EDIT: Some more information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write_amplification#BG-GC
 


but why does this also happen while I am playing games. I am not idling then
 
If the game is on a different drive, then the SSD ís idling. If the game is on the SSD then it's either being used to load game files (ie in use so the light lights up anyway), or it is idle because all the necessary files are in the RAM.

It doesn't matter if your system is idle, it's about your SSD being idle.
 
Solution