How to prevent programs (e.g. Process Monitor) from killing my SSD in 2 weeks?

Solution 1:

By default Process Monitor writes its captures to the page file, and these are huge. First thing to do would be to move the backing file to the HD. In Process Monitor press Ctrl + B to open the backing file dialogue and change it from the page file to a file on the hard drive.

Process Monitor is one of the most write intensive programs I have ever come across. Worrying about programs like that isn't really worth it because you very seldom, if ever, come across a program like that. Even if you come across another program with writes like that, it is not something you leave running in the background. You only use Process Monitor when you have a specific need for it.

As for the 15TB rating for the Intel drive. 100% 4k random writes to 100% of the drive is about the worst case scenario for an SSD. It is also something you never see on a desktop. That is a enterprise rating. Desktop usage you can probably do upwards of 100TB of writes.

As for finding applications with crazy amount of writes, Process Monitor is a good choice. Just set a filter up to only show writes by a program and you can see what kind of writes it does. I isn't worth doing this with every program, since most do not produce a lot of writes. Only with programs that really do write a lot of data to the drive is it worth investigating.

Solution 2:

If you want to monitor the hard disk usage but find that Process Explorer is making too many writes, consider using the built-in Resource Monitor instead. From the task manager's performance tab, click on Resource Monitor. Under the disk tab, you can sort by Writes and see total I/O for each disk in graphs. It's not quite as detailed, but doesn't require a third party program and should be a lot easier on your drive.