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System with SSD, SD card and too little RAM

Last response: in Windows 7
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Hello All,
Recently I picked up a Dell D430 with an SSD drive (64GB) but unfortunately this system has only 2 GB RAM; the MAX!

So I put in an SD card in the slot (32GB0 in hopes of using Readyboost or setting the pagefile to this "drive"...

ReadyBoost is disabled because the SSD is too fast, the system does not allow me to set a paging file to the SD card...

... besides setting a paging file to my SSD, what are my options? Thanks, Francis

More about : system ssd card ram

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Windows 7 Expert

With a SSD, 2gb of ram may not be that much of a problem.

If the laptop does not suit you, abandon it. sell/give it away. It is a very old tech unit.

You might be able to use the ssd to replace the hard drive in a newer laptop.

geofelt said:
With a SSD, 2gb of ram may not be that much of a problem.

If the laptop does not suit you, abandon it. sell/give it away. It is a very old tech unit.

You might be able to use the ssd to replace the hard drive in a newer laptop.


With merely Firefox and Thunderbird running (plus drivers & stuff) I get low memory warnings! So it *is* a problem for me. And the laptop suits me fine, that's why I kept it, *not* sold it on! So what if it's 4 or 5 years old?

While good advice in general it is not an answer to the question if you don't mind... No offence!

Windows 7 Expert

The answer is that there is no good answer.
Your laptop does not support >2gb.

Paging on the SSD is the proper place.

You might use windows task manager to identify all the tasks that are running and see how much their working sets are. Then stop the ones that are not essential.
Run msconfig and look at the startup task list to see if you can't uncheck some.
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Windows 7 Expert

You were given a perfectly valid answer. You have limited RAM and the SSD is too small. You have three options:

1. Increase RAM (Already at MAX)
2. Install a larger SSD and set an appropriate sized Paging File.
3. Replace the laptop. The D430 very old and not well suited to Windows 7, it comes from the Windows XP era where it was <just> tolerable.

geofelt said:
The answer is that there is no good answer.
Your laptop does not support >2gb.

Paging on the SSD is the proper place.

You might use windows task manager to identify all the tasks that are running and see how much their working sets are. Then stop the ones that are not essential.
Run msconfig and look at the startup task list to see if you can't uncheck some.


Yes, if the Dell supported more than 2 GB I would have put it in already :-)

I'm led to believe that the paging file should not be run in principle and will shorten the life of an SSD.
That's why I wanted it on an SD card instead...

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Fastbreak323 said:
Yes, if the Dell supported more than 2 GB I would have put it in already :-)

I'm led to believe that the paging file should not be run in principle and will shorten the life of an SSD.
That's why I wanted it on an SD card instead...


You were led wrongly.

From a performance point of view, you want to resolve demand page faults as quickly as possible. Your app will wait until the page fault is resolved. A SSD does that much faster than a hard drive or SD card.

The longevity of a ssd is limited by the number of updates written to it.
If the motherboard supports SMART statistics, you can find out the status of your wear level.
There are some apps that will do the computation for you.

But, even with heavy desktop usage, you are looking at a 10 year life; the ssd will be long obsolete before then.
When you run out of updates, the ssd will still be readable, allowing you to copy it to a replacement.
One key to increasing longevity is to keep perhaps 20% free space available.
A 120gb ssd will cost <$100 if you need more space.

Sorry folks, I'm not one to change PC's, smartphones and the like every year, just because a better one goes on sale. Don't *want* to (environment) and don't want to spend the dough.

So, unless someone knows the solution to the question I'll be running the paging file again, as usual, on the "C" drive, the SSD.

geofelt said:
You were led wrongly.

From a performance point of view, you want to resolve demand page faults as quickly as possible. Your app will wait until the page fault is resolved. A SSD does that much faster than a hard drive or SD card.

The longevity of a ssd is limited by the number of updates written to it.
If the motherboard supports SMART statistics, you can find out the status of your wear level.
There are some apps that will do the computation for you.

But, even with heavy desktop usage, you are looking at a 10 year life; the ssd will be long obsolete before then.
When you run out of updates, the ssd will still be readable, allowing you to copy it to a replacement.
One key to increasing longevity is to keep perhaps 20% free space available.
A 120gb ssd will cost <$100 if you need more space.


Thanks Geofelt! At the moment I use some 29 of the 60 GB so a replacement is not yet urgent.
I'll muddle through as is (for now at least). Regards, Francis
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