SSD for page file?

moosedoctor · Aug 28, 2017

Has anyone dedicated an SSD entirely to the page file in Windows 10? If so, is it worth it - did it speed things up noticeably, or at all?

I know the quick answer - no, I can't turn off the page file. A bunch of Adobe programs and some games don't run without a swap file.

USAFRet · Aug 28, 2017

moosedoctor :

Just the pagefile?
No.

Having a small drive for cache, scratch space...yes.

But for the pagefile, just have that live on your C drive SSD.

atomicWAR · Aug 28, 2017

If you're running enough programs to exceed your ram's capacity then yes it will be faster but only barely. If your not then it is pointless. Generally speaking though running a page-file on an SSD isn't the best idea because SSD's have a limited number of read/writes. Point being a pagefile can wear them out faster then normal use. Knowing that if you're ok with it and do use a lot of your ram's capacity it should be a bit faster than a HDD.

bigpinkdragon286 · Aug 28, 2017

Seems more practical to increase the capacity of RAM available to the system. With enough RAM available, you can keep a small, fixed size, 8 GB page file on a regular hard disk that practically never gets used, and you don't have to worry about any possible detrimental effects to an SSD. Why worry about improving the performance of the paging system if you can equip the computer to only ever rarely use it?

If your system is doing a lot of paging, you need more RAM, or perhaps software that doesn't cause the paging.

The only idea I've considered for improving the performance of the paging system was the idea of keeping a small paging file on a RAM disk, but the whole exercise becomes silly at this point. What benefits more, the faster paging system or the RAM used to accelerate it? Plus I haven't worked out if there is even a practical way to run the paging file from the RAM drive.

atomicWAR · Aug 28, 2017

^ As a ram fiend I agree.

moosedoctor · Aug 29, 2017

Yeah, these are pretty much what's been going through my mind too. What I was really hoping for is a backwards RAMdisk situation, where I could use my M.2 or a regular SSD like ram. I got curious as to how speeds would compare with an 1833 mhz ddr3.

I found a 64gig ssd for $20 so I came up with this.

moosedoctor · Aug 29, 2017

ps. I have plenty of ram, but not enough for a ramdisk. I have 2*8gb Vengeance LP 1833s

USAFRet · Aug 29, 2017

Don't bother with a RAMDisk. Given the existence and speed of SSD's, it is pretty pointless.

And for the pagefile, worse than useless.

You're sucking off part of the physical RAM, to use as a pagefile, which only gets used when the system runs out of physical RAM.
hmmmm.......

Kasper Jorgensen · Aug 29, 2017

Don't worry about putting page file on ssd, it's not like your ssd will die suddenly just because of that. The average user will write somewhere between 1-2 TB a year on a system drive. Do the math and you will figure your ssd will probably outlive yourself.

moosedoctor · Aug 29, 2017

USAFRet :

Actually the idea was to use the 64gb ssd as a page / cache drive instead of keeping them on my M.2 (c:\) or SATA SSD (d:\).
If I had 64GB DDR3, I wouldn't think twice to set up a 32GB Ramdisk out of it. I just want everything to run as fast as possible.

As I mentioned I've gone quite a while without a swap file to increase performance since RAM is (at least had been) always quicker than SATA or any other interface. Now with M.2 and crucial's momentum cache software I think we're not far away from SSD M.2s and DDR = ram and hard drives running off the same interface. i'm just in a rush that's all.

bigpinkdragon286 · Aug 29, 2017

A problem with the pagefile is that it's used for a few things, no matter what, such as Registry backing stores, because they're so infrequently accessed, and some software just won't run without a pagefile, or even a pagefile of a minimum size. With 16 GB of RAM, the pagefile, no matter where you keep it, should be used at a minimum, unless you frequently use software that hogs memory. I would consider 32 GB of RAM to be enough that, dedicating a few GB to a pagefile wouldn't be quite so pointlessly silly, however you still have to understand that the improvement you're going to see from the paging system is one of those things you're going to have to measure with benchmarks, as you're not going to otherwise see it under normal conditions.

I agree with USAFRet that there's nothing wrong with putting the paging file on your boot drive, even if it's an SSD. There are plenty of situations where you don't even get a choice, such as a laptop with a single SSD as the only available storage. SSD drives haven't been showing a greater rate of failure under those usage conditions, so...

The only major concern for paging to an SSD is under conditions where the systems pages often. This could lead to excess writes to the SSD, which in theory could shorten the lifespan of the drive. Upping the RAM would remedy that situation though, provided you could install enough RAM to mitigate the paging.

I would question the lopsided nature of any build that sticks an SSD into a situation where RAM is starved and the SSD would be hammered by the pagefile.

USAFRet · Aug 29, 2017

Almost 6 years ago, when I went to 16GB RAM and a small 120GB SSD, I changed the pagefile to 1GB min/max, simply for space reasons. Leaving it on the OS SSD.
Saw zero performance issues.

I've seen no reason to change that now having 32GB RAM and a 500GB SSD OS drive.

moosedoctor · Aug 29, 2017

USAFRet :

Likewise. Thank you all for your responses. Honestly the jump from HDD to SSD (esp M.2) still blows my mind and if anything I would RAID0 a couple of SSDs before Ramdisking or (i would never) running a page file over a gigabyte even if it is on SSD.

USAFRet · Aug 29, 2017

moosedoctor :

RAID 0 + SSD:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-950-pro-256gb-raid-report,4449.html

tl-dr - Not the magical speed benefit we assume it should be.

paulahern64 · Jan 15, 2018

I have another reason to put the page file on the D drive, being SSD and SATA they have separate controllers thus there is a speed increase where the OS can simultaneously access windows and the page file. But until I hear otherwise I cannot see why one would waste a limited number of SSD read\writes on the page file

bigpinkdragon286 · Jan 15, 2018

If the machine is configured with enough RAM, the pagefile writes are not going to decrease the life of the SSD significantly. You have to expect the pagefile to be on the SSD in single drive configurations and if SSDs were this vulnerable to usage, you would likely hear more about them failing.

If you can even measure a speed difference between having the OS and pagefile on different drives, I suspect the pagefile is being used more than it should be.

USAFRet · Jan 15, 2018

paulahern64 :

1. Given sufficient RAM, the pagefile is almost never used.

2. Write cycle death is an overblown concept, from the very early days of consumer SSD's.

3. I've had the pagefile on an SSD for years. That particular SSD (120GB Kingston) started as the OS drive in 2012.
It is still in the system doing secondary duty as scratch/cache space for various applications.
All testing applications, incl the Kingston toolbox, report it as 99% life left.

4. An increasing number of systems are SSD only. Like my system. So there is no choice but to have it on an SSD.

SSD for page file?

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