96GB of writes, 8 hours use of new SSD.

[R0H1T]

What make/model do you have ? If it's rated for something like 3K P/E cycles (or more) then you have very little to worry about, btw you could try disabling system restore if you have regular backups. Also did you try this link, it'll help in case you;re stuck at a particular update that's stopping all others, later in the queue, from installation ~ https://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058

 

[William Gaatjes]

What make/model do you have ? If it's rated for something like 3K P/E cycles (or more) then you have very little to worry about, btw you could try disabling system restore if you have regular backups. Also did you try this link, it'll help in case you;re stuck at a particular update that's stopping all others, later in the queue, from installation ~ https://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058

I have a crucial M550 256GB SDD.

Thank you. I checked the link. But i am trying to figure out which update should go first. Why do they not add a date to those updates ? If i just randomly update, i know it is going to go wrong. I am sure some updates depend on others.

 

[William Gaatjes]

But i thought windows 7 was optimized for SSD, why would it do so much system restore points on an SSD when a HDD is present ?

 

[William Gaatjes]

I will just start with the lowest KB number and do the updates in batches of 10.
After doing all the updates i will be disabling system restore and test if that is the cause of the high write counts.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I found where the date of the update is shown. Now i can group the updates by date.

 

[William Gaatjes]

For the record, the update process microsoft cooked up is still crap.

 

[William Gaatjes]

There is no way to present those updates chronologically to see which came first. Now updates from 2013 are mixed in between with updates from end 2014. No wonder, if these patches need to be applied chronologically to prevent one braking the other, there is no way to find out. What a mess.
I will just install all security updates and be done with it. Do not want IE or those "recommended" updates.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I looked through those recommended updates what they were for. I installed them anyway and after installing the last few updates and restarting, my pc did not produce an image anymore on my monitor, just random pixel noise. After a reset it still configured updates and all seems to work. It took me two hours (with aid of the ssd) to do all these updates by hand. IE updates i never installed except the security updates.

I did notice that since i have my ssd, my cpu has less idle time now so my cpufan is spinning up more often. That is a positive. I will leave the system restore enabled for now. I made a backup yesterday before installing all updates. If anything goes wrong i can revert back. But microsoft should really improve their managing of updates. Very time consuming to figure out what update came before the other.

Total host writes are now 174GB. It is definitely windows itself doing so much writes. About 500MB of updates and 19GB of writes. I guess this is normal behavior.

 

[R0H1T]

Total host writes are now 174GB. It is definitely windows itself doing so much writes. About 500MB of updates and 19GB of writes. I guess this is normal behavior.

Yes it is, if you're somewhat paranoid, like many including me, about the quantum of drive writes then disable ~ prefetch, superfetch, indexing, hibernation, pagefile (only if you have 8GB or more of RAM) et al.

As for the windows updates, try something like this ~ www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Signatures-Updates/ct-Offline-Update.shtml

Download the updates to your hard drive or an external drive & install them as & when you feel appropriate.

 

[Ketchup]

Yes it is, if you're somewhat paranoid, like many including me, about the quantum of drive writes then disable ~ prefetch, superfetch, indexing, hibernation, pagefile (only if you have 8GB or more of RAM) et al.

As for the windows updates, try something like this ~ www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Signatures-Updates/ct-Offline-Update.shtml

Download the updates to your hard drive or an external drive & install them as & when you feel appropriate.

I gave him similar advice in his other thread, so I can't help but wonder if the two threads should be combined. Both threads seem to be covering the same things.

 

[R0H1T]

I gave him similar advice in his other thread, so I can't help but wonder if the two threads should be combined. Both threads seem to be covering the same things.

Well the thing is it's MS & Windows, just the way they are. The modern OS, even on a smartphone, can break with the slightest of tweaks & then there's compatibility problems (software/hardware) so many of them that one cannot imagine their numbers or just how easily things break, we all have to deal with'em pretty much in our own way.

 

[john3850]

I use a small 2gb ramdisk caching chrome and ie cache files as well as tempfiles to reduce writes.
My 64Gb boot windows ssd has written 900 GB in 4 months when I switched to a 240 gb ssd.
Now another ssd that is used for game data has only written 0.31 TB with power on time of 450 days and those few games get used daily.
These ssd are never ever going to die from writes.

 

[imagoon]

I'm not sure why you are concerned with writes. Be cranky about something that is worth being cranky about.

The MS updates thing can be annoying but don't waste time doing them in batches of 10. If I am going to have issues (which is rare, I have several machines that I have patched with over 190 updates needed patch all the way up with no issue including this laptop I am on.) it is normally safe to break them down in to batches of 50.

Also there is nothing wrong with automatic download. That will make windows notify you that patches are available. Disabled is silly and should never be set that way unless you prefer you computer being used as a botnet member.

Install your apps. Uninstall crystal disk, live happy. Your SSD will not die from write death before you have installed your brand new 4TB SSD in 5+ years. Around the time you are wondering how you got by with such a tiny 256GB SSD drive.

 

[Coup27]

No wonder you have 8,996 posts.

 

[CoPhotoGuy]

I don't understand what the problem is. Windows Update is annoying on a fresh install, but I always just set it to do all of them (I hide IE stuff) and then walk away. Never any issues.

 

[Piroko]

But i thought windows 7 was optimized for SSD, why would it do so much system restore points on an SSD when a HDD is present ?

Windows 7 was built around the concept of hybrid HDDs. It's over five years old now and there have been quite a lot of improvements in Win8 / Win8.1 and now Win10 preview.

But yes, Windows Update is annoying.

 

[Cerb]

Not only is that not the case, but it could not be. Hybrid HDDs are newer than Windows 7.

Windows 7 has SSD tweaks out of the box. Windows Update is annoying. Do all the updates, take a snapshot of your writes, then see how it goes over time. Initial installs should use lots of writes, while daily use should use relatively little.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Hello all.

To address all the replies :

* I was cranky not because of the many writes to my SSD but because my pc constantly rolled back all updates when i tried to install them all at once and because i was tired.


*With exception of IE 10 and IE 11, i installed all security updates and recommended updates. in batches, grouped by date. And it did work all though the last batch of recommended updates cuased my pc to refuse to give a picture only random pixel noise. But after a reset the updates did get configured and windows started out fine.

*I have set windows updates to notify me about updates to manually install them. I like it that way, i can read about what is getting installed.

*I have disabled superfetch and prefetch and windows search and indexing for my ssd drive. Easy registry edit.

*I have installed acronis imaging software (WD edition) because i have a WD drive. when i have installed all my programs and modified settings, i am going to make an image of my SSD partition and make an acronis boot disk.

*CDI , total writes is at 183GB now.

All with all, it seems to work. But i just wish microsoft would just make SP2 for windows 7. That would make life a lot easier. I always updated my fresh installs with service packs and i almost never have any issue.

 

[ViRGE]

There is no way to present those updates chronologically to see which came first. Now updates from 2013 are mixed in between with updates from end 2014. No wonder, if these patches need to be applied chronologically to prevent one braking the other, there is no way to find out. What a mess.
I will just install all security updates and be done with it. Do not want IE or those "recommended" updates.

Certain patches supplant other patches over time, so a chronological order isn't nearly as useful as it sounds. For example MS may patch the TCP stack, and then patch it again a year later. Rather than having new installs download both patches, the later patch supplants the earlier patch since it contains the earlier fix as well.

As someone else has noted, the best thing to do in these situations is to install updates in medium sized batches.

Total host writes are now 174GB. It is definitely windows itself doing so much writes. About 500MB of updates and 19GB of writes. I guess this is normal behavior.

Correct. For a fresh install of Windows 7 you're going to be doing a ton of writing. Once you're caught up your system will settle down.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Meh. When I pulled my 2.5-yo 128GB Crucial M4s from OS drive duties, they had anywhere from 20TB to 41TB of total writes; CrystalDiskInfo still reported good health.

I bet you'll retire the thing long before it reaches anywhere near the end of its life.

 

[blankslate]

It's probably too late now, but for future reference maybe you should look into WSUS offline in case you install windows on another SSD.

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

Basically it contacts the MS update servers and downloads the updates for the selected OSes to a local disk.

After setting it to get the 64-bit and 32 bit updates for Windows 7 (I could also have chosen to get the 8.1 updates as well) the total size of the WSUS file on my local disk is about 4.25 GB.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXAOvbNJYyE
^video introduction meant for more of a novice computer use but it does show the basics of the program.

Once you have the files you can go back after a month or two and run the update generator executable and it will check the current update files stored in the WSUS folder and only download updates that aren't present and update older files if is revised version is present on the MS update servers.


I'm planning to install an SSD and into a laptop that has 2 drive bays so the current OS drive will be the data drive.

Before I update the OS with the WSUS offline program from an external HD I'll use the tips at the bottom of this link
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/3-top-tips-maintain-performance-extend-life-ssd-si/

Move Temporary Files
Go to Start, right-click on Computer and select Properties. Go to Advanced system settings, switch to Advanced tab and click Environment variables. Select TEMP, click Edit… and set a new Variable value, i.e. storage location. Repeat this step for TMP files.
Move Internet Explorer Temporary Internet Files
In IE, go to > Tools > Internet Options > General tab and under > Browsing History select > Settings and click > Move folder to direct it to another location.

Use Firefox Memory (RAM) Cache
In Firefox, type about:config in address bar and hit Enter. Promise to be careful, then search and double-click browser.cache.disk.enable and set value to False. Right-click anywhere and select > New > Integer and set the Preference Name to disk.cache.memory.capacity with a value of 32768 for 32MB and 65536 for 64MB etc., depending on the size in MB you want to reserve for the browser cache. Restart Firefox for changes to come into effect.

Disable, Move or Reduce Page File
Click Start, right-click Computer and select Properties. On the left, click Advanced system settings and click Settings… under Performance. Switch to Advanced tab, and click Change… under Virtual memory. Unselect Automatically manage paging file size for all drives to set a Custom size or to disable paging by selecting No paging file.

Change System Restore
Go to Start, right-click Computer, select Properties, click Advanced system settings on the left, switch to the System Protection tab, select your SSD, click Configure… and either select Turn off system protection or reduce Max Usage. Click OK to save changes. Note that this will reduce or eliminate your ability to fix Windows issues by reverting changes made to the system.

to move have the OS write temp files to the HDD instead of the SSD and perhaps turn off system restore hopefully this will reduce writes on the SSD during the OS and program install process.


....

 

[Cerb]

Or, you could realize that you probably still haven't written over the SSD once (not yet as of the posted CDI pic), out of the 3,000 times it's rated for, and daily use will probably average under 20GB/day afterwards.

If you keep your current pace up, reinstalling the OS daily, you should be able to get 5-10 years from the flash (and you won't, once all is up and running).

 

[hhhd1]

Writing 100gb+ on OS install with updates and restore is not a big deal, considering the way setup on windows run, some time they involve multiple steps of extracting and then copying files, and then applying settings with some moving of files around.

And system restore also involves compressing some old files and and then copying them over.

 

[William Gaatjes]

That WSUS offline update is very interesting.

Thanks, R0H1T ,ketchup79 and blankslate.

and thanks to all posters for posting and helping me out.

 

[natto fire]

4,416GB writes, 6,720GB reads, 9,274 hours on an OCZ Vertex2 here.