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It's not the speed, it's the capacity. My windows folder and my steam folder alone come to just under 100GB. All that needs to be on the SSD.
 
no just you not run out of space more likely with the 64GB one you need to keep 10-20gb free on them so the drive can clean it self up (the data rate is not that important with SSDs as its the access times that what makes the system respond fast or not)

@mranderson
what are you using the ssds for if its for gameing or norm use just buy one 256GB one (guessing your getting 64GB ones) as Trim support when it comes soon will work and you not have to keep the SSD tidy
 
It's not the speed, it's the capacity. My windows folder and my steam folder alone come to just under 100GB. All that needs to be on the SSD
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Wow.. really??? My main windows partition is a mere 30gb and never gets full.. although I do have a multiboot system... Several OS's for specific useage, games, office, etc... You really need that much on an ssd??? lol, heres me thinking I would never fill a 128gb, and maybe just get a 64gb!!!
 
DrMekon said:
Wow.. really??? My main windows partition is a mere 30gb and never gets full.. although I do have a multiboot system... Several OS's for specific useage, games, office, etc... You really need that much on an ssd??? lol, heres me thinking I would never fill a 128gb, and maybe just get a 64gb!!!
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Guess you're not a heavy gamer then ;) Picking 3 games (Mass Effect, The Witcher and GTA IV) for example, those games together take up over 33GB...
 
jbloggs said:
I would simply move it over onto an ordinary (mechanical) HDD, then you still have a pagefile but just not on an SSD...
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I wouldn't

Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?

Yes. Most pagefile operations are small random reads or larger sequential writes, both of which are types of operations that SSDs handle well.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

* Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
* Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
* Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.
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I am only using 24gig of my hard drive at the moment. I only ever put one game on at a time! So, a 64gig would be ample for me. All my pics, videos etc are stored on an external HD.
 
The pagefile usage would vary a little I guess, but generally the same type of access. Win 7 has more to offer for SSD's, TRIM, proper SSD partition alignment from a fresh install...
 
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If I wanted to speed things up then yes, maybe they're concerned about SSD wear or degradation from the constant access.

There's a lot of fuss made of the write life span. If I was unpacking huge files (ISO's?) all the time I'd use a conventional HDD. Otherwise I want the system as fast as possible, so every paging access from the OS to the SSD. If it's really an issue maybe a ram drive would be of use.

Taken from the X25-M manual.

3.5.4 Minimum Useful Life

A typical client usage of 20 GB writes per day is assumed.

Should the host system attempt to exceed 20 GB writes per day by a large margin for an extended period, the drive will enable the endurance management feature to adjust write performance.

By efficiently managing performance, this feature enables the device to have, at a minimum, a five year useful life.
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Super Talent's UltraDriveMe same as the M225, check out the life span.

 
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Regarding the life expectancy of solid state drives:

Anandtech said:
How Long Will Intel's SSDs Last?

SSD lifespans are usually quantified in the number of erase/program cycles a block can go through before it is unusable, as I mentioned earlier it's generally 10,000 cycles for MLC flash and 100,000 cycles for SLC. Neither of these numbers are particularly user friendly since only the SSD itself is aware of how many blocks it has programmed. Intel wanted to represent its SSD lifespan as a function of the amount of data written per day, so Intel met with a number of OEMs and collectively they came up with a target figure: 20GB per day. OEMs wanted assurances that a user could write 20GB of data per day to these drives and still have them last, guaranteed, for five years. Intel had no problems with that.

Intel went one step further and delivered 5x what the OEMs requested. Thus Intel will guarantee that you can write 100GB of data to one of its MLC SSDs every day, for the next five years, and your data will remain intact. The drives only ship with a 3 year warranty but I suspect that there'd be some recourse if you could prove that Intel's 100GB/day promise was false.
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Intel X25-M SSD: Intel Delivers One of the World's Fastest Drives - How Long Will Intel's SSDs Last? (Page 4)

The Tech Report said:
So the X25-M shouldn't be short on performance, but what about longevity? MLC-based flash memory cells are limited to 10,000 write-erase cycles, giving solid-state drives a finite lifespan. When estimating the operating life of their drives, other SSD makers generally rely on a basic formula to calculate the number of cycles used:

Cycles = (Host writes) / (Drive capacity)

Intel says this formula oversimplifies the issue, and that two other factors must be considered. The first of these variables is write amplification, which refers to the amount of data actually written to a drive for a given write request. Intel gives an example in which a host system generates a 4KB write request that, thanks to a drive's 128KB erase block size, actually incurs a 128KB NAND write. Dividing the NAND write size by the request size yields the amplification factor, which is 32 in this case. Intel says the X25-M's write-amplification factor is extremely low at 1.1, while "traditional" SSDs have much higher amplification factor of 20.

The efficiency of wear-leveling algorithms also has a hand in determining an SSD's lifespan. If a drive is going to shuffle bits around to avoid bad cells and more efficiently use those available, it must do so without wasting precious write-erase cycles. Intel estimates the X25-M's wear-leveling efficiency factor at less than 1.1, claiming that traditional SSDs have an efficiency factor of 3.

Taking write-amplification and wear-leveling efficiency into account, Intel says the correct formula for cycling is as follows:

Cycles = (Host writes) * (Write amplification factor) * (Wear leveling factor) / (Drive capacity)

Using a write-amplification factor of 1.1 and a wear-leveling efficiency factor of 1.1, 20GB of write-erase per day for five years should consume only about 550 cycles on an 80GB X25-M. Using "traditional" SSD technology with an amplification factor of 20 and an efficiency factor of 3, the same write-erase load would use over 27,000 cycles. That's a huge difference, and to be fair, it's one that relies on values provided by Intel that aren't entirely consistent. Another Intel presentation from IDF estimates that "mediocre" SSDs have a write-amplification factor of 10 and a wear-leveling efficiency factor of 5, resulting in just under 23,000 cycles for our 20GB of write-erase per day example. That presentation also pegs the X25-M's efficiency factor at 1.04 rather than 1.1. We can't easily test a drive's lifespan ourselves, but we did ask Samsung for the write-amplification and wear-leveling efficiency factor values for its SSDs. Samsung hasn't responded yet, though.

If you don't want to crunch through the math, Intel estimates that the 80GB X25-M will last for five years with "much greater than" 100GB of write-erase per day. That's a relatively long time for much more data than most folks are likely to write or erase on a daily basis.
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Intel's X25-M solid-state drive

The other concern is degradation, it's well known that there is a slight performance decrease from a brand new solid state drive compared to a used one. Though, this only seems apparent in benchmarking and not in real life situations.
 
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