Page file on separate, slower drive to save space on SSD?

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AstoSoup

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May 7, 2013
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I just upgraded to a Plextor m5 128GB SSD. The drive benchmarked very high for a low price so I took the gamble and im mostly very pleased :) The WEI is 7.7 and my computer is MUCH more responsive. I do however seem to be running out of space very quickly (53 GB free) and because I have 8GB of RAM, my page file is 8GB. I know Windows needs that large of a paging file, but can I install another slower, older 40 GB SATA drive and put the paging file on that, without losing performance? I was thinking programs and Windows could access the paged memory faster because of the speed of the SSD, would this be slower if I used an older SATA drive? Thanks in advance!


Specs:

CPU - AMD Athlon II X4 645 3.1 Ghz Quad Core, 2.5M Cache
Memory - 8GB G. Skill Ripjaws Series DDR3-1866, 9-9-9-24 (2x4GB)
Motherboard - Biostar A880Z Deluxe, Sata 6GB/s, Pcie 3.0, 7 Channel Audio
GPU - MSI Radeon HD7770 Ghz Edition 1GB, 256 bit, Dual Fan, Copper Pipe Bypass Cooling, 640 cores, 2XDVI/2X Mini/HDMI/ PCIE 3.0
Hard Drive -
System - 128GB Plextor M5S Series SSD, SATA 6GB/s, 256Mb cache. Read Speed - 71,000 IOPS, Write Speed - 51,000 IOPS
Media - 1TB Hitachi External, USB 2.0, 16mb Cache
Case - In-Win Plastic and Titanium, 5x 120mm fans, bottom mount PSU
PSU - Coolmax 580w SLI Certified, 140mm intake fan, Dual 32 amp, 12v rails.
O.S - Windows 7 Professional X64
 
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Trent Quan-Sing
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AstoSoup

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May 7, 2013
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I said the same thing at first, but Windows default is to match your page file size to the amount of memory installed. It has been confirmed a fact that this setting is optimal and shouldnt be changed. Why, I am not sure, but it consumes alot of HDD space. As far as the page file being for memory operations on that drive only, you could be right. I hope someone answers and sheds some light to this, as 8GB of space would be a nice gain :)
 
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Trent Quan-Sing

Trent Quan-Sing

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Jun 5, 2013
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Right click computer.
Properties.
Advanced system properties.
performance settings.
advanced tab.
Virtual memory>change button.

You will notice there is pagefile settings per hard drive.
The overall means, Yes it is helping you on a system level when windows is involved.
accross two different hard drives.

Some programs allocate on the drive wont be able to use another drives pagefile.
if you have a partitioned drive then it wont work at all but seperate drives yes, to a degree.

More info here: http://
 
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heyu291

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May 29, 2013
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the reason for the pagefile to match the mem is mostly in case u have a blue screen failure, so windows can log all of what's going on during the failure.

I have been building pc's for gaming for years, and experimented with all kinds of page file setting, on all of windows versions.
you defiantly don't need 8 gigs of page file with 8 gigs of ram, unless you are doing some crazy multitasking.

with 8 gigs of mem, set ur page file to 1024 on your other drive, it will save 8 gigs of space on ur main drive, and eliminate a lot of ware on ur ssd.

the pc will work great, and u shouldn't notice any down grade in performance. you may actually see an increase because ur pc will spend less time caching main mem to page file
 
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AstoSoup

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May 7, 2013
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The link you provided does simplify the purpose of a page file and has a solid argument that it is not needed. Judging by the information on that link, I can turn it off all together because I will never use more than 8GB of RAM.
 
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Trent Quan-Sing

Trent Quan-Sing

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Jun 5, 2013
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Good to hear.

As a few of us have said 8GB of Ram is less important than the speed of the Ram and how big your pagefile is if your just playing games or doing regular computer work.

Unless your doing some CAD work..

In my opinion 1-2GB pagefile on your SSD should suffice or you could let the system manage it.
 
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