SSD - Ok for VM/Swap file use?

fizzy · 25 Jan 2010 at 12:43

Hi,

Quick question - given the "limited" write life of an SSD, is it ok to use them for windows swap/temp files? If so, does this have any major impact on the lifespan of the drive? Given the fact they are fast drives it would ideally be best to use them for swap files over a standard drive if possible.....

I recall there being an issue with flash drives (such as compact flash cards etc) but then they have a low write lifespan (something like 1000+ writes?) and windows swap/temp file usage went through that in no time.

wolvers · 25 Jan 2010 at 12:48

I think you'll of moved onto something else a very long time before that causes a problem with your SSD.

Darren1967 · 25 Jan 2010 at 13:15

Microsoft say in one of technical articles about Windows 7 and SSDs that an SSD is ideally suited for the page file and so it should be left for Windows 7 to automatically manage it. I have 6 GB of RAM on my system and Windows 7 disables Superfetch on my system so I have lots of free memory. As a result, unless I'm playing games, then the page file usage is very low, usually under 150 MB.

Because two games I have installed complain if the page file is disabled (Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II and ArmA II if you must know) then it means that I have to have a page file of 1.5 GB at least. Rather than put it all on the SSD, I've split the page file between my C: and D: drives, the D: drive being the 1 TB Samsung SpinPoint F3. I've set the C: drive page file with a minimum of 16 MB and a maxium of 512 MB and the D: drive one is fixed at 1,024 MB (minimum and maximum the same in other words). This satisfies Dawn of War II which insists on a 1.5 GB page file.

I've been monitoring the page file usage with the excellent System Information for Windows program and it shows that Windows tends to use all 16 MB of the C: drive page file and the rest is given to the one on D:. Of course, if you don't play those games or even many games full-stop *and* you have lots of memory then you could turn of the page file completely.

Another option is to use a RAM disk such as Dataram's free RAMDisk tool as physical memory is faster even than an SSD and all those temporary/page files will be permanently deleted when you reset or turn off your PC.

fizzy · 25 Jan 2010 at 15:22

Many thanks for the replies - think I'll be getting an SSD then.

Another quick question - in order to setup/configure the SSD properly would I need to reinstall windows 7 from scratch, or would I be able to copy an image of my existing boot drive across with something like acronis?

I also need to decide whether to get two 64GB drives, or one 128GB....

UKDTweak · 25 Jan 2010 at 15:26

Although you can image your old drive to a new SSD, it is recommended that you do a clean install, that way your drive will be properly configured for allignment and defrag etc...

Darren1967 · 25 Jan 2010 at 15:58

fizzy said:
Another quick question - in order to setup/configure the SSD properly would I need to reinstall windows 7 from scratch, or would I be able to copy an image of my existing boot drive across with something like Acronis?

I already had Windows 7 installed on my year old Hitachi HDD and I didn't want to reinstall everything so what I did was plug the SSD into a SATA port so Windows 7 could see it with the Computer Management add-on. I then formatted the drive from within Windows 7, which is ideal as it is was designed to be aware of SSDs. My partition offset was therefore the correct 1,024 K.

I then made a fresh image of my C: drive using Acronis True Image Home 2010, something I do every week anyway. All you need to do is use Acronis to restore the NTFS image *only* (uncheck the MBR option) to the SSD partition and once that's done do the same for the MBR *only* (uncheck the NTFS image). It took about 10 minutes from memory as the image was only 16 GB for my system. The 1,024 K offset was correctly maintained.

The final step is to power off your PC and reconfigure the BIOS so it boots from Windows 7 on your SSD. You can then reformat your old HDD and use it for whatever you like, in my case I installed it as an internal backup drive (very useful!!!).

fizzy · 25 Jan 2010 at 16:44

Darren1967 said:
I already had Windows 7 installed on my year old Hitachi HDD and I didn't want to reinstall everything so what I did was plug the SSD into a SATA port so Windows 7 could see it with the Computer Management add-on. I then formatted the drive from within Windows 7, which is ideal as it is was designed to be aware of SSDs. My partition offset was therefore the correct 1,024 K.

I then made a fresh image of my C: drive using Acronis True Image Home 2010, something I do every week anyway. All you need to do is use Acronis to restore the NTFS image *only* (uncheck the MBR option) to the SSD partition and once that's done do the same for the MBR *only* (uncheck the NTFS image). It took about 10 minutes from memory as the image was only 16 GB for my system. The 1,024 K offset was correctly maintained.

Preformat in windows 7 before file copy - check.

Ok, so you did the file system and the mbr transfer as two seperate tasks - what's the difference in doing both at the same time? Is the MBR actually needed as its only the disk contents that you're after? There's also the windows 7 boot partition too (only a couple of 100 mb if I recall) which is the actual boot...

...guess there's no harm in trying it a couple of times to get the best result. Need to get an SSD first though.

Darren1967 · 26 Jan 2010 at 00:58

The reason for copying the data and MBR separately was to maintain the correct partition offset according to some info I read in the OCZ SSD forum. I don't why though... I just do as I'm told. And it worked!

As for the hidden 100 MB Windows 7 boot partition, I didn't have that as Windows 7 was done as an in-place upgrade to Windows Vista which I had been using for almost a year. As such when Windows 7 was installed, it created the necessary boot files on the C: drive instead.