"...I have about 3-4 GB of writes to my SSD. Almost all of those writes are because of the continues writing of Windows Registry hives to the disk. If I use PrimoCache I have total 200 MB Writes/Day..."
JohnB,
Sounds like you've done pretty much everything to minimise writes to the Windows folder then. RegMon may be worth checking out to see which Registry keys are being hit the most, but I think you're at the point of disabling Windows services in order to improve things further - statistic collection services like Performance Logs and Alerts and Windows Indexing (assuming you don't use search often - if you do, consider a third party search tool like Copernic Desktop or the search facilities in Total Commander) may be for the chop.
Registry Corruption
Re: Registry Corruption
For index search you can also check out this freeware:
http://www.voidtools.com/
Extremely resource friendly and fast. Can be on whatever disk you want. Many options. No need to run Windows index service anymore.
http://www.voidtools.com/
Extremely resource friendly and fast. Can be on whatever disk you want. Many options. No need to run Windows index service anymore.
Re: Registry Corruption
Hi, just a note regarding SSD life.
I have been using SSD's for about 4 years now with no problems. I did trial a useful utility called SSD-life, you can google it as I am not sure the web master would allow links. The utility in it's trial form can only record 1 SSD, but from it you can estimate the life of your SSD based on your usage.
In my case, I found using an SSD for my system disk with virtual memory relocated, indexing off, about 15% of the disk space not allocated, in effect all the usual recommendations for using SSD's, I estimated the life to be in excess of 20 years. I now have 4 SSD's in my sytem, and for the system disk I have relocated all the main folders such as Program folders, Pictures, Documents, and I expect it's lif to be far longer than any HD.
I use Primo read/write mode on my system disk and my main media drive, (which contains the relocated folders 3gb cache each), plus an SSD as second level cache on the media drive. I have tested defer writes for up to an hour, but as I feel the real effect on SSD life is not great, I currently am not using it, though I may later.
Bottom line is, I would not worry too much about the life of the SSD, but if you are not convinced, perhaps buy a cheap SSD as the prices are dropping like a stone, and use it as a second level cache, as a day seems very long to me not writing back to the main drive, may well be a bug, but I myself would never risk longer than an hour even with a final version a any cache.
I have been using SSD's for about 4 years now with no problems. I did trial a useful utility called SSD-life, you can google it as I am not sure the web master would allow links. The utility in it's trial form can only record 1 SSD, but from it you can estimate the life of your SSD based on your usage.
In my case, I found using an SSD for my system disk with virtual memory relocated, indexing off, about 15% of the disk space not allocated, in effect all the usual recommendations for using SSD's, I estimated the life to be in excess of 20 years. I now have 4 SSD's in my sytem, and for the system disk I have relocated all the main folders such as Program folders, Pictures, Documents, and I expect it's lif to be far longer than any HD.
I use Primo read/write mode on my system disk and my main media drive, (which contains the relocated folders 3gb cache each), plus an SSD as second level cache on the media drive. I have tested defer writes for up to an hour, but as I feel the real effect on SSD life is not great, I currently am not using it, though I may later.
Bottom line is, I would not worry too much about the life of the SSD, but if you are not convinced, perhaps buy a cheap SSD as the prices are dropping like a stone, and use it as a second level cache, as a day seems very long to me not writing back to the main drive, may well be a bug, but I myself would never risk longer than an hour even with a final version a any cache.
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Re: Registry Corruption
Whats the sense in deferr writes a whole day?
You do not benefit when all data stacks the write-buffer, then it runs full and you are constantly in the situation that you need to flush... flushing happens at write speed of the disk, what turns you out same than without write-cache.
The goal is to choose a defer timeout according to the cache-size and your specific use-case that gives you high speed and flushes in the background. AFter one day is not in the background. Background means: shortly after your prior write-task is done and you use your pc otherwise (without disk-writes), so it can flush and "prepare" for the next write task.
Keeping it free as soon as possible is good since it gives more free space to accelerate next write into mem.
I think developers can limit it to max 1 hours... thats already a lot for a simple flush timeout.
Here is a good formula for calculating how long your disk will be busy when cache is full and completely flushes for another greater write:
S = Cache-Size / Disk-WriteRate
Example: 4096MB / 110MB/S = 37 seconds.
In that case you clearly want to put "Deferr Timeout" lower than 37 seconds.
Why because you can write 4 GB.. lets say a DVD... in a snap of a moment... and you want it to be ready for copying the next one in a snap of a moment after zapping the first for about 47 seconds
So yes, please start flushing after 10 seconds... thats good.
Remember that your (modern) RAM is fast enough to write nearly any available cache-size in less than 10 seconds.
Lets assume its set to one day, now you copy the first DVD and theres few kilobytes cache-space left..... all the data remains in cache, while the disk is bored. When you access the PC in the evening trying to copy the next dvd... oh no... it starts writing the very first one onto disk no... because the caches full... and youre slower than without. all the free disk-i/o in that time... wasted.
Im just a bit illustrating...
THe real intention of timeout in my opinion is to adjust it in the range of seconds (10/20/30/40/50/60) so to prevent lagg or any other unextected problems when cashe-flush happens early.
Great idea guys.
Try again.
PS: Anything regarding windows filesystem and lost/unritten writes... i can just say, please try at least: chkdsk C: -r
Now you know windows needs at least one flush a day... while it still makes no sense ... or do you have a "floppy-speed" system-drive?
You do not benefit when all data stacks the write-buffer, then it runs full and you are constantly in the situation that you need to flush... flushing happens at write speed of the disk, what turns you out same than without write-cache.
The goal is to choose a defer timeout according to the cache-size and your specific use-case that gives you high speed and flushes in the background. AFter one day is not in the background. Background means: shortly after your prior write-task is done and you use your pc otherwise (without disk-writes), so it can flush and "prepare" for the next write task.
Keeping it free as soon as possible is good since it gives more free space to accelerate next write into mem.
I think developers can limit it to max 1 hours... thats already a lot for a simple flush timeout.
Here is a good formula for calculating how long your disk will be busy when cache is full and completely flushes for another greater write:
S = Cache-Size / Disk-WriteRate
Example: 4096MB / 110MB/S = 37 seconds.
In that case you clearly want to put "Deferr Timeout" lower than 37 seconds.
Why because you can write 4 GB.. lets say a DVD... in a snap of a moment... and you want it to be ready for copying the next one in a snap of a moment after zapping the first for about 47 seconds
So yes, please start flushing after 10 seconds... thats good.
Remember that your (modern) RAM is fast enough to write nearly any available cache-size in less than 10 seconds.
Lets assume its set to one day, now you copy the first DVD and theres few kilobytes cache-space left..... all the data remains in cache, while the disk is bored. When you access the PC in the evening trying to copy the next dvd... oh no... it starts writing the very first one onto disk no... because the caches full... and youre slower than without. all the free disk-i/o in that time... wasted.
Im just a bit illustrating...
THe real intention of timeout in my opinion is to adjust it in the range of seconds (10/20/30/40/50/60) so to prevent lagg or any other unextected problems when cashe-flush happens early.
Great idea guys.
Try again.
PS: Anything regarding windows filesystem and lost/unritten writes... i can just say, please try at least: chkdsk C: -r
Now you know windows needs at least one flush a day... while it still makes no sense ... or do you have a "floppy-speed" system-drive?
Re: Registry Corruption
I still think that it's a good practice to preserver my SSD writes cycles to a minimum if I can (I am not fanatic about writing to the SSD, but if there is a software that claims that it can preserve the life of the SSD and it works fine then why not using it to it's full extent?). If I use defer writes it also trimmed a lot of files before they are actually written to the disk and also as Romex software claims that they write to the disk at at block size boundary which should complement how windows is writing 4K bytes which should reduce writes amplification factor. As long as the system is stable I see no difference in using defer writes for 10 seconds delay or 24 hours. It should behave the same if the software is working properly. Windows does not care if Registry is written to memory instead of actually being written to the disk. Again my system was working fine with defer writes for a few days and randomly hangs without any chance to recover. As I promised to "Suppoort" it's about two weeks since I tested my system without defer writes and I see no signs of instability. So I think that there is an inherent bug in this software which behaves differently for different defer writes timings.
Johnb
Johnb
Re: Registry Corruption
@johnb,
Thank you again for the testing! Well, it seems that the issue is probably caused by the defer-write feature. As you described, the problem is that randomly the system hangs with defer-write (I suppose that you already waited enough time). Did the computer ever enter into the hibernte or hybrid-sleep mode before hangs? Could you send us your computer hardware configuration? You may get it via HWiNFO.
Thank you again for the testing! Well, it seems that the issue is probably caused by the defer-write feature. As you described, the problem is that randomly the system hangs with defer-write (I suppose that you already waited enough time). Did the computer ever enter into the hibernte or hybrid-sleep mode before hangs? Could you send us your computer hardware configuration? You may get it via HWiNFO.