Solved Am I chasing a BAD idea...?

[unclepine]

Whilst cruzin around the web, I came across an article that seemed odd to me.

It suggested that to get more "Punch" ie Speed outa your system, move your swap files over to another drive...? I'm no techie by a long shot, so I was wondering if this is a good idea for me to try out. I presently run a Asus P7P55D MoBo, i5 750 LGA 1156 2.67gb 8mb cache, 8mb Ram, 5770 Vid card, 120gb SSD drive as main, and a Seagate 500gb 'E' Drive for other files. The OS is on the SSD drive. My Windows Experience rating is at 7.3 because of the processor which I'd like to updrade. All the other specs are at 7.4 or 7.7, so the i5 is dragging it down.

I do NOT know the details of what the swap files really do. Suffice it to say, I want to get as close to a full Windows Rating as I can, but it seemed strange to move something away from the SSD, which is supposed to speed things up, and have the OS go hunting for these files from a SLOWER drive...??! Am I making myself clear...?

Any thoughts/suggestions for this 'ol fart will be MUCH appreciated...!!

 

[Brink]

Hello unclepine,

Moving the page file (swap file) would only be beneficial if it was moved to faster HDD/SSD, or if you had a HDD and wanted to move it to another HDD/SSD of equal or faster read/write speeds.

You wouldn't want to move it to a slower HDD. It would indeed cause a bit if a performance hit.

If you like, you might also take a look through the options in the tutorial below to see what may be able to help improve performance.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11728-optimize-windows-7-a.html


Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Alejandro85]

I would say yes, it's not a good idea. The swap file is better placed on the fastest possible drive, and given you have a SSD disk, it's good idea to keep the file there. Moving to a regular HD will only drag performance because intensive use of the slower disk. Keeping the swap file in the SSD is the way to go.

Just as a comment, it can be a good idea if you had 2 normal HDs to put the system in one and the swap in another physical disk (so both do not "compete" for IO time on the slow disk). Or if you had a second SSD on the same computer (sounds like an overkill to me ) moving it there would give some improvements too.

 

[unclepine]

Hey Brink and Alejandro85, THANKS for the quick reply and info. Just what I wanted to hear from some "Pro's"..!

Will recommend this site for future help...GOOD WORK...!

Cheers, Unclepine

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome. Glad we could help.

 

[unclepine]

Hey Shawn, I almost forgot. I was also gonna ask if there is any truth to the idea of keeping a certain amount of "free" space on the SSD because these devices don't like being "almost" full...? Something to do with de-fragging...?

Laurie...I hate using usernames...!

 

[Alejandro85]

As far as I know there is no problem at all leaving SSDs 100% full or at any capacity, they'll just store the data no matter what.

BUT!
Windows does have problems when free space is short, precisely because the swap file. Since Windows often does intensive use of it, it needs to have some free space to grow at will, and when no more space is available, the system slows down when memory becomes full. So, at least the logical drive where the swap file is in must have some amount of free space for optimal performance. All others may be 100% used with no problem.

 

[Brink]

It's best to leave enough free space for Windows to have to use if needed. I like to leave at least 10GB free.