Watching YouTube increases "Total Host Writes" on SSD

[Theliel]

Watching YouTube increases "Total Host Writes" on my system SSD. Yesterday it was 2,209 GB, I watched a few videos on YT during the day, and now it is 2,310 GB. Explanation please?

 

[freeagent]

Page file turned off?

 

[Steevo]

100Mb may be the OS paging to the SSD other active programs trying to make sure nothing stalls. Nothing to worry about, if it went from 2Gb to 3Gb I would worry.

 

[newtekie1]

I mean, where did you think the video data that you were downloading to watch was going?

 

[mapnam charun]

It must be Cache from web browser,i thinks it normal.

 

[Easy Rhino]

The explaination is that you used your PC... This would be a more interesting post if you had your PC off and saw those writes increase.

 

[Theliel]

100Mb may be the OS paging to the SSD other active programs trying to make sure nothing stalls. Nothing to worry about, if it went from 2Gb to 3Gb I would worry.

Thanks but it's not MB it's GB. It went 101 GB up! I know because before when the number was smaller, earlier this year, it was around 500 GB after a few setups, and then 999 GB. and then 1,100 GB, ETC, and right now it is 2,312 GB.

Sorry in my first post I should have written "," instead of "." I corrected that now.

Page file turned off?

I mean, where did you think the video data that you were downloading to watch was going?

It must be Cache from web browser,i thinks it normal.

The explaination is that you used your PC... This would be a more interesting post if you had your PC off and saw those writes increase.

Did I mention my SSD capacity is 120 GB.

 

[newtekie1]

Thanks but it's not MB it's GB. It went 101 GB up! I know because before when the number was smaller, earlier this year, it was around 500 GB after a few setups, and then 999 GB. and then 1,100 GB, ETC, and right now it is 2,312 GB.

Sorry in my first post I should have written "," instead of "." I corrected that now.

Did I mention my SSD capacity is 120 GB.

Literally almost everything you do will write to your SSD. Just opening a program will cause Windows to shuffle a little bit of data out of RAM an into the page file. Every single page that you view on the internet is downloaded to your SSD and then displayed by your browser. Every video in youtube is downloaded to your SSD and then played from there. Most of this data is written and then almost immediately deleted when you move on to the next webpage/video.

 

[Kapone33]

Watching YouTube increases "Total Host Writes" on my system SSD. Yesterday it was 2,209 GB, I watched a few videos on YT during the day, and now it is 2,310 GB. Explanation please?

When you watch Youtube, DC universe or Disney Plus you are streaming (that means that you are "temporarily" downloading the video you are watching to your PC) the CPU still has to send the data from the Internet adapter to the GPU. It is concurrent with your Internet usage.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Watching YouTube increases "Total Host Writes" on my system SSD. Yesterday it was 2,209 GB, I watched a few videos on YT during the day, and now it is 2,310 GB.

Thanks but it's not MB it's GB. It went 101 GB up!

Did I mention my SSD capacity is 120 GB.

I don't see a problem - other than the label name, "Total Host Writes" is misleading. That is not the number of writes, but the amount of data that has been written over time. That 101GB was simply the amount of data your "few" videos "temporarily" took up.

Let's say "few" in this case means 5 videos. That really means, at most, just 5 writes to storage locations on the SSD. I say "at most" because "wear leveling" most probably distributed those writes evenly across the SSD so the individual storage locations where data was temporarily put probably only saw 1 write. 5 writes is no big deal. Clearly 1 write is no big deal at all!

That label should be "Total Amount of Data Written to Host".

Is that 120GB SSD your only drive? If not, you can move your temp folder location to a secondary drive. This is NOT to reduce the number of writes. That's no longer a problem for normal home users with current generation SSDs. But because 120GB is relatively small for the boot drive, you could be running low on free disk space. Windows itself and SSDs like a big chunk of free disk. Windows needs it to operate in, and SSDs need it for TRIM and wear leveling features. You can also move your Documents folder to another drive too. If nothing else you should probably run Windows Disk Cleanup (or CCleaner) to keep the amount of clutter down.

Leave the page file on the SSD and let Windows manage it however. Page files and SSDs are ideally suited for each other.

If that is your only drive, you might want to consider getting another, or replacing that one with a bigger one.

 

[EarthDog]

Watching YouTube increases "Total Host Writes" on my system SSD. Yesterday it was 2,209 GB, I watched a few videos on YT during the day, and now it is 2,310 GB. Explanation please?

Are you sure that was it?

IIRC, YT, buffers everything in GPU/System RAM. It would only make SIGNIFICANT writes if you ran out of those buffers.

Every single page that you view on the internet is downloaded to your SSD and then displayed by your browser.

Did you mean RAM? That doesn't make sense to me that it writes to your slow storage when RAM is there...


I almost constantly have twitch up... I watch live and videos from there and my writes use does not go up. A few videos on YT shouldn't be 100GB worth of writes... I do the same there (watch streams and vids). If that were remotely true, my SSD would be toast by now........(it isn't close, still 99% after a year of use).

 

[Theliel]

Are you sure that was it?

IIRC, YT, buffers everything in GPU/System RAM. It would only make SIGNIFICANT writes if you ran out of those buffers.

I almost constantly have twitch up... I watch live and videos from there and my writes use does not go up. A few videos on YT shouldn't be 100GB worth of writes... I do the same there (watch streams and vids). If that were remotely true, my SSD would be toast by now........(it isn't close, still 99% after a year of use).

Yes, pretty sure. My SSD is /correction - WAS 97% in HWINFO and 96% in official Kingston SSD program. Who is correct?

I don't see a problem - other than the label name, "Total Host Writes" is misleading. That is not the number of writes, but the amount of data that has been written over time. That 101GB was simply the amount of data your "few" videos "temporarily" took up.

I didn't make that up, it's what HWINFO has in S.M.A.R.T. data, I had no idea it was the wrong way to say it.

Also today it is 2,402 GB. Then it must be the pagefile this time - I have been playing during the night.

Is that 120GB SSD your only drive? If not, you can move your temp folder location to a secondary drive. This is NOT to reduce the number of writes. That's no longer a problem for normal home users with current generation SSDs. But because 120GB is relatively small for the boot drive, you could be running low on free disk space. Windows itself and SSDs like a big chunk of free disk. Windows needs it to operate in, and SSDs need it for TRIM and wear leveling features. You can also move your Documents folder to another drive too. If nothing else you should probably run Windows Disk Cleanup (or CCleaner) to keep the amount of clutter down.

Leave the page file on the SSD and let Windows manage it however. Page files and SSDs are ideally suited for each other.

Yes, I have other drives but all are only for storage so they are off most of the day. Yes, my pagefile if always on my system drive and I am regularly cleaning it with Windows Disc Cleanup, and not installing anything to that drive anymore, got another SSD for running games.

 

[Vayra86]

If its any comfort, I'm still flawlessly running a Samsung 830 SSD and drive health is still good. Was in my gaming rig since 2014 and is now in service as main disk for HTPC downstairs. So that's a looooooooot of Youtube. Service hours... have to be over 30k now.

 

[silentbogo]

Explanation please?

Of course it does. It's called caching.
Either way, not a cause to panic. Even daily 3-4 hour sessions of watching 4K HDR content won't be enough to kill your SSD in a decade.
Oh, $41T, did not notice that it's 100GB in 1 day. You might wanna monitor your FS usage in resource monitor or some third-party app, cause someting is definitely wrong. Definitely outside the scope of browser cache and pagefile...

 

[Bill_Bright]

I didn't make that up

No one accused you of making it up. I know it is what HWiNFO and other monitors call it. But that feature name is still misleading.

But as the right side panel of your HWiNFO screen shot shows where you outlined in red, the "Description" clearly says, "Data = 2401" and "Data = 4943". That's total data, not total "number" of writes. So again, nothing to worry about.

 

[EarthDog]

Yes, pretty sure. My SSD is /correction - WAS 97% in HWINFO and 96% in official Kingston SSD program. Who is correct?

I don't know what is right or wrong... but the point is, watching a 'few' YT vids, assuming they aren't in 4k/8k, isn't close to the amount you said it took up in the first place. So, again, assuming I understand how YT works and what you are doing, I don't think YT is the culprit... otherwise, you'd see a shed load more threads like this I would imagine. Look elsewhere.

 

[newtekie1]

Are you sure that was it?

IIRC, YT, buffers everything in GPU/System RAM. It would only make SIGNIFICANT writes if you ran out of those buffers.

Nope, the video data is downloaded to disk and played from there. Open resource monitor with a YT video playing and you'll see Chrome writing to the disk pretty consistently. You can even watch the spikes as YT loads a chunk of data because it doesn't constantly stream data once the data buffer that is stored on the drive is full.

Did you mean RAM? That doesn't make sense to me that it writes to your slow storage when RAM is there...


I almost constantly have twitch up... I watch live and videos from there and my writes use does not go up. A few videos on YT shouldn't be 100GB worth of writes... I do the same there (watch streams and vids). If that were remotely true, my SSD would be toast by now........(it isn't close, still 99% after a year of use).

No, I don't mean RAM. Everything is downloaded to the system drive and then played from there. Webpages are downloaded to the hard drive, and then displayed.

 

[silentbogo]

No, I don't mean RAM. Everything is downloaded to the system drive and then played from there. Webpages are downloaded to the hard drive, and then displayed.

But still, it won't explain the excessive usage. My PC is on around 12-16 hours every day, and my SX8200 averages 10-15GB host writes daily. I watch youtube and twitch in highest possible quality (incl. 1080p60 and 4K), I download tons of stuff every day (datasheets, manuals, schematics, big archives off our work servers etc) and it's still ~8-10 times less than OPs daily throughput. My SX8200 is over a year old, and I barely got past 5TBW mark. Pretty sure something fishy is going on with his SSD writes.

 

[newtekie1]

But still, it won't explain the excessive usage. My PC is on around 12-16 hours every day, and my SX8200 averages 10-15GB host writes daily. I watch youtube and twitch in highest possible quality (incl. 1080p60 and 4K), I download tons of stuff every day (datasheets, manuals, schematics, big archives off our work servers etc) and it's still ~8-10 times less than OPs daily throughput. My SX8200 is over a year old, and I barely got past 5TBW mark. Pretty sure something fishy is going on with his SSD writes.

It could be any number of things. Windows could have been downloading updates, limited RAM could be causing Windows to hit the page file a bunch. Hell, if I leave Chrome open it'll use damn near 2GB of RAM. If I run a game with Chrome open, it just dumps Chrome to the page file. Switch out of the game back to chrome and it puts chrome back into RAM, back to game and chrome goes back to the page file, and so on and so on. I mean, who knows, I've seen 100GB written to my SSD in a single day before.

 

[xrror]

This is a fascinating question, I've never actually thought about what a normal amount of Host Writes would be in windows.

How old is your drive? While 100GB a day is surprising, it's probably still nothing to worry about. (edit: at least in terms of drive longevity)

Run CrystalDiskInfo, how many Power On Hours does your drive have?

This is just an example datapoint (from my machine).

~1 1/2 years with 15,000GB written? you're still lower than me.


Edit Add: to clarify (*intoxicated*) what I'm trying to allude to is - if your 120GB drive (OH, KINGSTON - please give exact model and FIRMWARE version from CrystalDiskInfo) is an older drive...

I just realized Kingston 120Gb. We really need to know what the model and firmware version are... ... ... if you're somehow pounding 100GB of writes a day onto a 120GB drive and it's a Kingston..........

....................... .................... ............................ ..............................

I was going to say, depending on how old your drive is, 2,310 GB Host Writes is probably nothing to worry about, unless your drive is like a month old.

 

[Theliel]

If its any comfort, I'm still flawlessly running a Samsung 830 SSD and drive health is still good. Was in my gaming rig since 2014 and is now in service as main disk for HTPC downstairs. So that's a looooooooot of Youtube. Service hours... have to be over 30k now.

It is comfort. Thanks.

This is a fascinating question, I've never actually thought about what a normal amount of Host Writes would be in windows.

How old is your drive? While 100GB a day is surprising, it's probably still nothing to worry about. (edit: at least in terms of drive longevity)

Run CrystalDiskInfo, how many Power On Hours does your drive have?

This is just an example datapoint (from my machine).

~1 1/2 years with 15,000GB written? you're still lower than me.

View attachment 137824
Edit Add: to clarify (*intoxicated*) what I'm trying to allude to is - if your 120GB drive (OH, KINGSTON - please give exact model and FIRMWARE version from CrystalDiskInfo) is an older drive...

I just realized Kingston 120Gb. We really need to know what the model and firmware version are... ... ... if you're somehow pounding 100GB of writes a day onto a 120GB drive and it's a Kingston..........

....................... .................... ............................ ..............................

I was going to say, depending on how old your drive is, 2,310 GB Host Writes is probably nothing to worry about, unless your drive is like a month old.

Here is all the info. Hmm, CrystalDiskInfo deasn't seem to show most stuff. I like these SSDs. The price was amazing and I believe the quality is quite excellent for that price. What is your opinion about Kingston SSDs?