Should the pagefile be moved from a SSD?

metalmackey · 22 Oct 2010 at 00:16

Ello Guys,

Someone told me that I should move the pagefile from my SSD to my storage drive because the SSD blocks will be "hammered" and wont last long. I disagree and am keeping it on the SSD for speed. What do you lot think and do?

Ta

eggcup · 22 Oct 2010 at 00:35

in a word, no!

FlukeRogi · 22 Oct 2010 at 00:46

metalmackey said:
What do you lot think and do?

Left all my setting as Windows intended, and just don't worry about it.

raycarmody · 22 Oct 2010 at 00:53

Would agree no, unless you moving to another ssd...you would loose performance..(unless that is what killed my SSD

)

Zarf · 22 Oct 2010 at 01:34

Most of the tweaking advice on the OCZ forums (and mindlessly parroted elsewhere), is utter rubbish, or outdated, or both. Disabling superfetch etc might gain you a fraction of a % in benchmarks (because the drive is idle more of the time) but it negatively impacts the real world experience.
As weird as it might sound, with Win7 just leave everything on default settings.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx said:
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.

metalmackey · 22 Oct 2010 at 11:55

Thats good then, I'll leave it where it is

I've read these "tweaks" like disabling superfetch and indexing too. The only thing I've done is turn off the defragmenter scheduale so it doesn't try to defrag the SSD.

manishpatel80 · 22 Oct 2010 at 12:04

Yeh I have 8gb or ran and I put a 2gb pagefile on my 2tb hard drive. So I have not pagefile on my SSD and my system still runs fine. If I had less ram then I would put the pagefile on my SSD for the speed benefits.

bfar · 22 Oct 2010 at 12:37

Zarf said:
Most of the tweaking advice on the OCZ forums (and mindlessly parroted elsewhere), is utter rubbish, or outdated, or both. Disabling superfetch etc might gain you a fraction of a % in benchmarks (because the drive is idle more of the time) but it negatively impacts the real world experience.
As weird as it might sound, with Win7 just leave everything on default settings.

absolutely this ^^

If you have a very small disk, turning off hibernate is a good space saver. You can also disable system restore (at your own risk).

Phil2008 · 22 Oct 2010 at 16:06

Ah useful info, cos Ive just ordered a ssd and I was going to move the page file, but I'll think I'll leave it and just treat the ssd like any other drive, but wont use defrag often.

metalmackey · 22 Oct 2010 at 16:20

I told ya so Phil

Phil2008 · 22 Oct 2010 at 16:37

This guy is just scaring me, saying SSDs wear out fast if they do a lot of writing, if that were the case,, why the 3yr warranty?

Eddie · 22 Oct 2010 at 17:07

Phil2008 said:
..., but wont use defrag often.

Running defrag on a SSD will have zero positive impact on performance as they don't need it due to the different way in which SSD drives work, i.e. SSDs don't have to seek for files.

I think it may even reduce the life expectancy of the drive as it's just more write cycles. Have a look over at the OCZ forums to see what they say about it/further clarification.

Broken Hope · 22 Oct 2010 at 18:47

Zarf said:
Most of the tweaking advice on the OCZ forums (and mindlessly parroted elsewhere), is utter rubbish, or outdated, or both. Disabling superfetch etc might gain you a fraction of a % in benchmarks (because the drive is idle more of the time) but it negatively impacts the real world experience.
As weird as it might sound, with Win7 just leave everything on default settings.

Default settings for my Intel SSD disabled Superfetch.

shoot1st said:
Running defrag on a SSD will have zero positive impact on performance as they don't need it due to the different way in which SSD drives work, i.e. SSDs don't have to seek for files.

I think it may even reduce the life expectancy of the drive as it's just more write cycles. Have a look over at the OCZ forums to see what they say about it/further clarification.

Not to mention that SSDs basically lie to the OS, where the OS thinks a file is and where it actually is on the SSD is completely different.

boosfuk · 22 Oct 2010 at 18:52

metalmackey said:
Thats good then, I'll leave it where it is I've read these "tweaks" like disabling superfetch and indexing too. The only thing I've done is turn off the defragmenter scheduale so it doesn't try to defrag the SSD.

+1
If using Windows 7 then it recognises the SSD. Never understood disabling things like superfetch as surely memory is still faster than an SSD.