ssds - caching, virtual memory

PorkPieCat · 10 Apr 2012 at 14:42

say a REALLY anal person got their hands on an ssd, and was worried about write/erase cycles. what steps would they take to make an ssd last as long as possible? (my current hdds haven't been changed in about 7 years...)

- browser caching on another disk
- write only commonly used programs to ssd
- turn off virtual memory

anything else?

cheers

Rooster212 · 10 Apr 2012 at 14:46

Page file and hibernation off, defragmenting should be disabled automatically but you'll want to make sure as it is unnecessary.

If you need a page file (if you have little memory) you could move it to a secondary drive.

paradigm · 10 Apr 2012 at 14:48

Don't turn the page file off, leave it on a mechanical HDD. It has absolutely nothing to do with how much physical memory you have and all to do with the way Windows was written to work. Quite simply, it uses the page file even if you have "spare" RAM. I have 32GB of RAM and still have a page file (albeit on my mechanical RAID array rather than my SSD).

Move your user profile to a mechanical HDD.

wazza300 · 10 Apr 2012 at 15:28

it will crash or lock up if you turn pagefile off,you can either move it to a hdd or reduce it to say 2500mb,ideally you want a fast pagefile so leaving it on the ssd is the best

PorkPieCat · 10 Apr 2012 at 15:48

thanks for the replies guys. time to google "user profile"... didn't even know what it was lol.

and ok, i'll shove the pf onto my storage drive. i've actually been running without any for ~3 years with 2gb ram on a pentium iv (pentium d since january), windows xp machine. yeah. i think there's been a single occasion where the lack of pf made a difference, and that's when my optimistic friend installed skyrim on my pc to try and see if i could play. crashed after 20 mins xD. new build will have 8gb ram, but i'll listen to you guys and stick with a small pf.

thanks again for the replies