SSD and Pagefile

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ticallion

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I'm moving upto a Intel G2 80gb SSD with a WD Cavier 640 as the secondary for games/apps.

How would I set my Page file? Would I disable it, leave it on the SSD or move the windows virtual memory to the WD Black?

Thanks
 
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sub mesa
If you have more than 4GB RAM you can disable it. If you have less, move it to the HDD. As its hardly used; only in emergency situations. And if its used; your performance will be extremely bad; like Pentium 1 systems.

Toms hardware has an article about disabling swap, if you have enough memory and are not running ancient operating systems, it should be no problem. Putting it on your SSD only wastes valuable space.
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sub mesa

sub mesa

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If you have more than 4GB RAM you can disable it. If you have less, move it to the HDD. As its hardly used; only in emergency situations. And if its used; your performance will be extremely bad; like Pentium 1 systems.

Toms hardware has an article about disabling swap, if you have enough memory and are not running ancient operating systems, it should be no problem. Putting it on your SSD only wastes valuable space.
 
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sminlal

sminlal

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Intel has done some studies that indicate the pagefile on a typical Windows system has a 40:1 read to write ratio (ie, 40X more reads than writes), and they suggested that an SSD is an excellent place to put the pagefile.

That having been said, if you can afford to use an SSD then you should be able to afford enough RAM to make the pagefile superfluous - getting rid of pagefile I/O altogether is a lot better than trying to make it fast.
 
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sminlal

sminlal

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If you have enough RAM, it probably won't make much difference if you have a page or not, since it wouldn't be used very much. If you don't have enough RAM, then it's the difference between the programs running or failing to load due to insufficient memory.
 
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rockyjohn

rockyjohn

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I remember reading somewhere - sorry can't cite a source - that you don't want to use a page file directly on an SSD because of all the read and write operations degrading it. So if you are considering that I suggest doing a little more research first.
 
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sub mesa

sub mesa

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Even with a swap file on an SSD it won't be used very much, or even at all. So if its not used, it won't degrade performance of your SSD.

Performance degradation on SSD happens with excessive random writes when the SSD thinks there is no more 'free' or 'unused' space left; and has to do very long read-erase-program cycles which are very slow. TRIM can fix this, but also zero-writing the SSD would clear everything and reset to factory performance conditions.
 
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MRFS

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Here's another alternative:


Create a small partition in the lowest sector addresses on your Caviar 640:
there are several programs available to add partitions, e.g. Partition Magic,
Partition Commander, etc.

Before writing any files in that small partition, turn OFF the Indexing Service on that partition:
My Computer | right-click on that partition | Properties
UNcheck "Allow Indexing Service"

Download the CONTIG program from the Internet:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428.aspx

Create a custom-sized "pagefile.sys" as the first file in that small partition:
a really safe rule of thumb is 1.5X the amount of RAM in your machine.

Change the attributes to "+A +S +H" in Command Prompt:

attrib pagefile.sys +A +S +H

Move your swap file to this pagefile.sys:
right-click My Computer | Properties | Advanced | Performance Settings | Advanced | Virtual Memory

And respond to XP's prompts as you go.


This should "short stroke" all OS I/O to and from that swap file.

You can also run CONTIG without creating a dedicated new partition,
but it won't use "short strokes"; you may want to experiment
by defragging your Caviar 640 after creating "pagefile.sys"
but before moving paging to that file.


MRFS
 
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nebun

nebun

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do not disable page file, leave it alone. i have had my page file on my ssd for over 1 year and never had problems. just so you know my system has 12gb ram (overkill) and i still did not disable my page file. it would take a long time for chip blocks to be worn out. all this wearing out will take a very lone time, from what i have read it's about 40+ years non stop usage
 
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ticallion

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Why? I'd be getting slower performance with it left alone.
 
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