Page file on an intel SSD...Yay or Nay?

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newxperiment

Limp Gawd
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Aug 10, 2009
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So I've searched around the forum and google, and am having a hard time coming up with a definitive answer, so I thought I would ask here :)

I'm using windows 7, and just got my first ssd- an intel x25-m 80g generation2 hard drive...My PC runs folding@home 24x7, which equates to it using a ton of RAM, and necessitates a page file...

My question is, would you just leave the Page file on the SSD, or should I move it to my older 74GB Raptor that I will no longer be using? What would you do! :D
 
How much RAM does your system have? The thing I would worry about with the pagefile on the SSD is probably fragmentation that could occur if you let the pagefile be system managed. Maybe you could set a set limit for the pagefile size and prevent fragmentation on the SSD. Otherwise, I think the raptor is good for the pagefile since it could reduce the need for I/O on the SSD for pagefile.

~But I think if everything is already running fine you could leave it alone.
 
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Pagefile is exactly the kind of thing you want on your SSD. Taking it off negates one of the biggest advantages of owning one, since most of the stuff in the pagefile is small reads/writes at which SSD's excel. If you wanna limit its size, fine, but dont disable it or move it to another drive.

Just leave Windows 7 alone. Microsoft knows what they do with their OS more than all the dumb tweakers you find in forums. Stuff like disabling defrag, superfetch, guess what? The OS does it by default for the SSD. Disabling those things will only hurt performance on your other drives.

Read the link posted above, from the MS blog:

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.
Click to expand...
 
I also have the 80GB SSD you speak of.

The solution: Buy more ram..., max out your mobo. I'm using 4GB right now because I was on a budget when I built. But I am ready to go for 8GB as soon as the funds are available.

I reduced my paging file to 512MB, it is still on my SSD. I will likely reduce it to 64or 128MB when I get the extra ram.

If you cannot get more ram. then yes paging file on the SSD is the "Fastest" option.

80GB SSDs are tight... I have to pick and choose what programs and games to play
 
I'm folding 24/7 on the rig in my sig with no PF and I have yet to have any issues with anything. My benchmarks beat most I compare to online. (Not by a lot but higher numbers are higher numbers.)

But as far as the rest of it, I let W7 deal with that. As mentioned earlier it is well optimized for SSDs unlike Vista.

1 "guide" recommended turning of write caching, it almost halved the performance.
 
quixotic said:
Seconded, but I happen to have a VelociRaptor too. Before I did, the SSD host writes number was rising constantly and quickly for some reason.
Click to expand...

That is the one of the reasons I removed my page file, also moved my browser caches aswell. The resource monitor was showing quite alot of writes to the drive.

I've owned my drive since Dec 24th and my current host writes are at 95.78GB and slowed down quite abit after moving stuff around.
 
Lamina said:
Pagefile is exactly the kind of thing you want on your SSD. Taking it off negates one of the biggest advantages of owning one, since most of the stuff in the pagefile is small reads/writes at which SSD's excel. If you wanna limit its size, fine, but dont disable it or move it to another drive.

Just leave Windows 7 alone. Microsoft knows what they do with their OS more than all the dumb tweakers you find in forums. Stuff like disabling defrag, superfetch, guess what? The OS does it by default for the SSD. Disabling those things will only hurt performance on your other drives.

Read the link posted above, from the MS blog:
Click to expand...

i've seen this before and well aware of what MS is saying but the page file is still staying off my ssd :)

And Superfetch was still on after I installed windows on my SSD I had to manually disable it.
 
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Lamina said:
Pagefile is exactly the kind of thing you want on your SSD. Taking it off negates one of the biggest advantages of owning one, since most of the stuff in the pagefile is small reads/writes at which SSD's excel. If you wanna limit its size, fine, but dont disable it or move it to another drive.
Click to expand...

+1. The SSD is a little like ReadyBoost on steroids in that sense. Besides, I bought the SSD to make my computer faster, not so I could spend time worrying about whether I was babying it enough. I also left my browser caches on the SSD, though I did disable defrag, and upgraded my firmware with TRIM support.

Even if the pagefile reduces its lifespan somewhat, realistically an SSD should still last several years, by which time replacement drives will be cheap and even faster. And, as an enthusiast, you'll probably have the urge to upgrade before then anyway.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
i've seen this before and well aware of what MS is saying but the page file is still staying off my ssd :)

And Superfetch was still on after I installed windows on my SSD I had to manually disable it.
Click to expand...

Is ironic to read this sort of argument here on [H] because its very similar to the anti-overclocking argument that it shortens CPU life.

Well, if it shorten's my SSD life from 8 years to 6 years, I dont really care, because by then I probably wont be using it anyways. I'd much rather have 6, hell, even 3 years of excellent performance, than 8 years of not benefiting from one of the things that make the SSD outstanding, which is instant, almost RAM like pagefile access.

I am looking at the resource monitor right now and the ratio of read to writes from the pagefile is like 5:1. A lot of programs are reading from it, and I have it limited to 1024mb. Performance is amazing, I have Dragon Age minimized and a bunch of stuff open and less than gig of RAM free, and it runs smooth as butter. I ain't giving this up!
 
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SicKlown42012 said:
Microsoft themselves recommend to leave the pagefile on your SSD. Since the majority of pagefile activity is small random reads and relatively large writes, it's a perfect fit for a SSD. I've been running with the pagefile on my Torqx without any kind of problem since Windows 7 was released.

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

information
Click to expand...

I am doing the same. Like sicklown states, it is perfect for a SSD. I just adjusted the size of the page file as not to let the thing run rampant.
 
danman said:
Did you refresh WEI after you installed it?
Click to expand...

I did refresh the WEI after installing Windows and pretty sure it was on still. But i'm not 100% certain. Also when I first installed my drive was still in IDE mode so that might be why. I had to switch the windows driver to the MS AHCI driver then switch it in bios.
 
Lamina said:
Is ironic to read this sort of argument here on [H] because its very similar to the anti-overclocking argument that it shortens CPU life.

Well, if it shorten's my SSD life from 8 years to 6 years, I dont really care, because by then I probably wont be using it anyways. I'd much rather have 6, hell, even 3 years of excellent performance, than 8 years of not benefiting from one of the things that make the SSD outstanding, which is instant, almost RAM like pagefile access.

I am looking at the resource monitor right now and the ratio of read to writes from the pagefile is like 5:1. A lot of programs are reading from it, and I have it limited to 1024mb. Performance is amazing, I have Dragon Age minimized and a bunch of stuff open and less than gig of RAM free, and it runs smooth as butter. I ain't giving this up!
Click to expand...

You make a valid point. But guess what when it comes time to upgrade my drive which could be 1 or 2 years from now or longer. The amount of writes and wear and tear to the drive will have a big impact on the price I can sell it for.

Cause someone surely will not give you a good value for your used SSD if the media indicator is showing 85% wear on it.

I did it more for my peace of mind than performance, even if the Page file runs great on the SSD. I have enough ram in the rig currently that it barely touches the page file too often.
 
I would actually love to see some screenshots from all the intel SSD's owners of your host writes.

How long you've owned the drive?

what is the primary use of the drive?

Have you done any tweaks?

Might have to create a new thread for this don't want to hijack this guys.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
You make a valid point. But guess what when it comes time to upgrade my drive which could be 1 or 2 years from now or longer. The amount of writes and wear and tear to the drive will have a big impact on the price I can sell it for.

Cause someone surely will not give you a good value for your used SSD if the media indicator is showing 85% wear on it.

I did it more for my peace of mind than performance, even if the Page file runs great on the SSD. I have enough ram in the rig currently that it barely touches the page file too often.
Click to expand...

You're blowing it way out of proportion. It's not going to happen. My intel 80gb G2 has 3 TB of host writes and it's at 98%. Amount of host writes isnt going to affect the value of the drive when the drive was going to last 20 200 years anyways under your use.

Not puting the page file on the disk is pretty silly, especially when the intel X-25M was practially designed for page file useage patterns. Why even use the SSD at all? It wont accumulate host writes sitting on the shelf...
 
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Makaveli@BETA said:
That is the one of the reasons I removed my page file, also moved my browser caches aswell. The resource monitor was showing quite alot of writes to the drive.

I've owned my drive since Dec 24th and my current host writes are at 95.78GB and slowed down quite abit after moving stuff around.
Click to expand...

Your drive will last over 340 years at your current usage rate, conservatively. Realistically, somthing else in the drive will deteriorate well before you run out of flash life. Like, the steel casing will probably corrode into nothing before then. Certaintly an 80gb flash drive won't have much value then, regardless of host writes.
 
nowwhatnapster said:
I reduced my paging file to 512MB, it is still on my SSD. I will likely reduce it to 64or 128MB when I get the extra ram.
Click to expand...

Have you noticed any performance changes this way, or are there even any? Is it just a space saving technique on the hard drive?
 
okashira said:
You're blowing it way out of proportion. It's not going to happen. My intel 80gb G2 has 3 TB of host writes and it's at 98%. Amount of host writes isnt going to affect the value of the drive when the drive was going to last 20 200 years anyways under your use.

Not puting the page file on the disk is pretty silly, especially when the intel X-25M was practially designed for page file useage patterns. Why even use the SSD at all? It wont accumulate host writes sitting on the shelf...
Click to expand...

And having the page file on the SSD or off hasn't made any performance different on my system at all so why not move it off the drive!

Why bother if the machines doesn't hit the page file too often! And if there comes to a point when I start to hit the page file on a regular I think going to 12GB of ram will make a larger difference than the said benefits of having the page file on my SSD.


Also your Media Wearout Indicator is really at 98% with only 3 TB's written to the drive?

 
okashira said:
Your drive will last over 340 years at your current usage rate, conservatively. Realistically, somthing else in the drive will deteriorate well before you run out of flash life. Like, the steel casing will probably corrode into nothing before then. Certaintly an 80gb flash drive won't have much value then, regardless of host writes.
Click to expand...

So because the drive will wear out before I have to worry about host writes I should just stop worring about it and write any and everything to the drive because i'm just going to replace it anyways befores its end of life.

Can't really say your wrong YMMV and to each his own.

As I stated before these are my own personal preferences. I do like the feedback one of the reasons I love this forum!
 
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Taking your page file off your SSD to move it to a regular HDD is one of the absolute worst ideas.
It completely defeats the purpose. The Page File is a substitution for RAM(the fastest storage in your computer) so the SSD is the next logical place to put these frequently read files.

One thing i do is i manually set the page file to a size of my liking so windows isnt wasting time resizing the damn thing or taking up too much of my precious SSD space.

I would like to note that page file fragmentation or any fragmentation for that matter is completely irrelevant for SSDs. Its not like a HDD where the head has to move around and it takes longer to read from different areas of the drive. As long as you are using all of the channels on the controller you can read at the same speed from anywhere on the drive of an SSD.
Think about it.....Why would they tell you to disable windows defragger if fragmentation was an issue?

Secondly, your SSD is not going to wear out. It may die or fail, just like any other computer part you own, but it wont just give up cause it has been written to too many times.
Chances are that your SSD will outlive you.
 
When I say wear out i'm referring to the MLC flash memory I know the drive won't just die. In fact if any drive were to die on me I would prefer it to be a SSD than a HD. The SSD will essentially turn into a read only drive if what i've read is correct.
 
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I didn't realize you were running a 160 GB g2.

That's even more silly!

That puts the flash wear out lifetime at your usage rate at around 680 years from now...

The year 2690.

There's a good chance the entire human race will be wiped out, or society as we know it wont exist then, but your worried about reselling your Intel G2 in the year 2400.

Makaveli@BETA said:
Why bother if the machines doesn't hit the page file too often! And if there comes to a point when I start to hit the page file on a regular I think going to 12GB of ram will make a larger difference than the said benefits of having the page file on my SSD.
Click to expand...

That's exactly MY point (and everyone else's.) Why bother? We didn't bother, YOU did. You took the time to take the PF, at negative benefit, off the SSD, then post about how great your decision was.

While everyone else DOESN'T bother, and leaves it as default.

Yes, I do understand our decision and your thinking. But I'm just saying, the sooner you can free yourself from making illogical decisions based on being anal, or some habit or something, the better off you will be in life :D

Don't take this the wrong way, all in good humor.
 
There is no negative benefit when your machine doesn't hit the page file! It could be on a 4200rpm drive what would it matter if its never touched!

lmao I never once said you have to do what I did. My post was just what I choose to do and why. The best part about a forum is the original poster can either try what I did. or he can just leave it as is or do as everyone else. I was in no way trying to force my choices on him. At the end of the day I saw no performance hit what so ever with the page file being on the HD so I kept it there.

Everyone is allowed to have an opinon even if they are illogical or anal as you put it.

And my life is fine thanks for the prep talk their coach!
 
Lets keep the focus on topic for the OP.

So based on the post we have seen thus far we can say.

1. Everyone agrees the SSD is the best place to keep the page file for performance reasons.

2. Some say they have moved it off the drive to save space on the SSD.

3. Some say leave the Page file alone and let windows 7 handle it as its much better at it than vista.
 
If you want to save space just limit the size (or make it static, same max/min, which is what I've always done)... I wouldn't make it tiny tho, unless you're really crunched for space. It exists for a reason, depending on your workload you very well may run out of RAM sometimes and that's what the page file is there for... There's still one or two odd programs that act erratic if you kill it or make it too small as well (the latter being rarer).

Obviously if you've got 6GB+ of RAM and you don't often work w/huge files then whatever you do w/it probably won't make much of a difference tho. I've left mine on the SSD, not really concerned w/long term health of the drive... As an early adopter I know the resale value of this thing will probably plummet regardless. If MS engineers think the SSD is an ideal place for it then who am I to argue with it. The OS seems to use it when idle to cache stuff in/out of RAM, maybe it helps organize Superfetch stuff or something.

Vista was pretty efficient at handling the page file as well btw... I don't think Win7 really made any huge strides in that regard. Most of the page file tweaks/arguments hark back from the Win95/98 days tbh (and WinXP days on rigs w/less than a gig of RAM). The only other performance-driven argument that you could make (besides putting it on the SSD for obvious reasons), is the fact that having it on a drive other than the OS drive can free up that drive to do other things... But again, w/lots of RAM (and particularly an SSD), you're not likely to notice one way or the other.

I wouldn't touch it or move it unless you're really paranoid about the lifespan of your SSD and you intend to keep it a really long time or you really think it'll affect the re-sale value (kinda speculative if you ask me), just limit the size if you've got a particularly small SSD. Before doing that tho, you might as well disable Hibernation (if you don't use it), since that'll eat much more drive space (particularly if you have lots of RAM, the hiberfil.sys file will grow in direct relation to your RAM).

You can purge old System Restore points as well if your current OS install has been with ya fora while and you have alternate backup methods to resort to anyway (image backups etc.).
 
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Makaveli@BETA said:
i've seen this before and well aware of what MS is saying but the page file is still staying off my ssd :)

And Superfetch was still on after I installed windows on my SSD I had to manually disable it.
Click to expand...

Thanks for mentioning this, forgot to check mine out, I see my Superfetch is started also. So I took off my old ReadyBoost USB stick (see, buying the $400 SSD got me a 2GB flash drive back!) and I'm going to disable Superfetch, is there anything else I need to check on? I had my page file on another drive when using all HDDs, but I'm keeping the page on my SSD.
 
Superfetch may be on but it doesn't necessarily mean it's caching stuff off your SSD... Just like the defrag service is probably on but it won't actually defrag your SSD regardless. I don't think anyone really knows why the MS engineer in that Q&A that was brought up before suggested that Superfetch was disabled by default on SSD anyway... After all, Superfetch shouldn't be writing anything, just reading and copying to RAM (which is still much faster than the SSD).

The only argument I can see is that even tho RAM's faster, SSD are so fast that the difference is irrelevant to the user, so any caching efforts from Superfetch should instead focus on regular magnetic HD (where the user is gonna see the biggest benefit). That goes back to my original statement, just because the service is on doesn't mean it's working off the SSD.
 
Thats exactly whats going on. DON'T disable Superfetch and Defrag if you have mechanical drives along with your SSD. The services are on but they will leave the SSD alone, they will only pay attention to the mechanical drives.
 
I tend to agree on leaving the PF settings alone. With all the engineering MS has spent over the years getting PF algorithms the way they are for Win7, I can't bring myself to limit the PF size or choose anything other then "Let windows handle it," out of fear that I could be restricting performance or somthing.

If someone had some inside information, mabye I could waver.


Let me give an example where I needed a larger PF (and was glad it was on the SSD :p)

I was recovering a large volume (~2 TB) which I had lost using R-Studio. R-Studio discovered some 90,000,000+ files on the array, and to load these / search these, had to load the index to RAM. I have 4gb of ram but this filled that after a few minutes, and the SSD quickly went into a 100% write state to take up the slack. Mabye If I had 6gb of ram I wouldnt have needed it, mabye not...
 
bitgod said:
Thanks for mentioning this, forgot to check mine out, I see my Superfetch is started also. So I took off my old ReadyBoost USB stick (see, buying the $400 SSD got me a 2GB flash drive back!) and I'm going to disable Superfetch, is there anything else I need to check on? I had my page file on another drive when using all HDDs, but I'm keeping the page on my SSD.
Click to expand...

No, windows 7 is not Superfetching data off the SSD! And even if it was, why disable? RAM is still much faster then your SSD. Microsoft has teams and teams of engineers that have put in 1000's of hours on developing this stuff. MS has stated that Superfetch will not cache data from your SSD. Makaveli, see why I gave you a hard time? Don't spread misinformation.
 
I think we need a sticky / FAQ for this SSD stuff. This forum is becoming crowded with the same questions over and over...

  • I just got a new SSD, what should I do besides the usual clean install?
  • Should I disable Superfetch, Prefetch, Defrag, Indexing?
  • Will TRIM work with RAID?
  • How do I know TRIM is working?
  • etc, etc...
 
okashira said:
I think we need a sticky / FAQ for this SSD stuff. This forum is becoming crowded with the same questions over and over...

  • I just got a new SSD, what should I do besides the usual clean install?
  • Should I disable Superfetch, Prefetch, Defrag, Indexing?
  • Will TRIM work with RAID?
  • How do I know TRIM is working?
  • etc, etc...
Click to expand...

The problem is the answers change too much right now, as this technology is still developing.
6 months ago you would have gotten completely different answers to those questions.
 
While I agree with the general idea of leaving the PF and other settings pretty much as they are, a lot of the arguments seem to be predicated on the assumption that Win7 will autodetect the SSD and do the right thing. Is there a way to confirm that Win 7 has in fact recognized the drive as an SSD? Maybe by looking at setting in the registry somewhere? Also is just rerunning winsat/WEI enough to get Windows 7 to retune the superfetch, defrag, etc. settings automatically, or is that only done once at install time? What if someone installs Windows on a mechanical drive and then later clones over to an SSD. Will running WEI on the new drive be just as good as a reinstall from scratch?
 
okashira said:
I think we need a sticky / FAQ for this SSD stuff. This forum is becoming crowded with the same questions over and over...

  • I just got a new SSD, what should I do besides the usual clean install?
  • Should I disable Superfetch, Prefetch, Defrag, Indexing?
  • Will TRIM work with RAID?
  • How do I know TRIM is working?
  • etc, etc...
Click to expand...

I think a sticky would be great if it's kept up to date. What I hate are those "roll up" threads you see on some forums where the admins take like 5 long threads and mash them together into a single giant sticky with hundreds, if not thousands of posts spanning years of time that is nearly impossible to navigate or extract useful information from.
 
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