Swap file on M.2 SSD or SATA HDD?

[stockhausen]

I have been asked by someone to build them a new system. Essentially, the system will include a Motherboard, an Intel Core i7 8700 Coffee Lake CPU, 16 GB RAM, a 250 GB Samsung 970 EVO M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD and a 1TB SATA HDD and will run Windows 10.

For performance optimisation reasons, in order to share the disk access load between two drives, it has been my practice in the past to place a fixed size swap file on a 2nd disk where possible. However, I am wondering whether this still makes sense with a fast M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Just let windows manage it and that will be fine.

 

[Glanza]

No need to mess around with that stuff these days.

 

[stockhausen]

Does Windows 10 even know (or care) about the characteristics of M.2 NVMe SSDs?

Is it actually capable of distinguishing between a regular SATA HDD and a faster M.2 device which will put up with a more limited number of read/write cycles (or in fact, any SSD)?

It used always to be the case that one should have a "Custom" page file which would be contiguous rather than fragmented as is the case with system managed space.
Also the recommendation was not to have it on the same drive as the "system" area.
Is this no longer the case or is the current philosophy "Who cares, all disks are fast, consumable items nowadays."?

 

[lude1962]

Does Windows 10 even know (or care) about the characteristics of M.2 NVMe SSDs?

It knows not to defrag it (TRIM)

which will put up with a more limited number of read/write cycles (or in fact, any SSD)?

By the time the page file 'wears' out the drive you would have bought a new one anyway

It used always to be the case that one should have a "Custom" page file which would be contiguous rather than fragmented as is the case with system managed space.

Solid state drive, no head or spinning disk, no slow down reading fragmented files

Also the recommendation was not to have it on the same drive as the "system" area.

On old hdds, the thinking being with only a single disk, performance would be slower due to reading system files and using page file at the same time, so have page file on another disk to speed it up
you could have the page file on another ssd, gains likely to be negligible

Is this no longer the case or is the current philosophy "Who cares, all disks are fast, consumable items nowadays."?

Most people now use a 64bit OS and have a decent amount of memory, unlike 32bit OS that will be constantly paging once a few programs are open.

 

[stockhausen]

It knows not to defrag it (TRIM)

By the time the page file 'wears' out the drive you would have bought a new one anyway

Solid state drive, no head or spinning disk, no slow down reading fragmented files

On old hdds, the thinking being with only a single disk, performance would be slower due to reading system files and using page file at the same time, so have page file on another disk to speed it up
you could have the page file on another ssd, gains likely to be negligible

Most people now use a 64bit OS and have a decent amount of memory, unlike 32bit OS that will be constantly paging once a few programs are open.

Fair enough, swap file on the M.2 NVMe SSD it is then

However . . . one further question, again as a matter of curiosity, what do you consider constitutes "a decent amount of memory"?

For what it is worth, the user will mostly be doing Access database development as well as handling emails and some general Internet usage - they are currently using a system running XP (reliably but very slowly)!

 

[lude1962]

Access still has a 2Gb file limit, but you can link multiple 2Gb files, so it comes down to how much data is he 'crunching'.

Win 10 also uses different mem management and terminology, for example
I have 8Gb, under task manager-> memory I'm seeing
In use (compressed) 4.5Gb (893Mb) Available 3.3Gb
Commited 12/21Gb Cached 3.1Gb
There's also values for paged pool and non-paged pool
I did look up what these meant, ....clear as mud.