Page File and SSD drives

[madcratebuilder]

Do you leave the pagefile on your ssd, or do you move it to your D (spinner) drive?

Many user have the OS on a ssd C:/, and use a hdd for data as the D:/ drive. I have always moved the pagefile to a seperate drive (spinner) because it A: reduces the read/writes to the ssd, B: frees up some space, important if you only have a 60-120gb ssd, and C: on a separate drive it does not compete for read/write time that other apps may be doing on the OS drive. I also set the pagefile at a fixed size, the same as the amount of memory the machine has up to 8gb. If you run with dozens of open apps you may want to go as high as 16gb.

Good read on Page Files.


After some reading about this I think my concern about ssd read/writes may be flawed thinking. Any additional read/write caused by the page file is insignificant on the newest generation of ssd's, although earlier ssd's can have wear leveling issues...reportedly.

My thinking on a fixed size for the page file is primarily it will be one continuous block on the drive, and should not become fragmented, assuming you create the file on a fresh drive.

If you take the time to google this subject you well see a lot of really smart software engineers and tech guys argue, sometimes very heatedly. Bottom line, do what works for your conditions.

 

[LMiller7]

From a performance perspective an SSD is the ideal location for the pagefile. SSD performance characteristics (primarily seek time) make it an almost perfect match for the pagefile, while those of a conventional drive could hardly be worse. But in practice with typical RAM sizes and workloads the pagefile isn't going to be used enough to make much difference. Most paging doesn't involve the pagefile at all so pagefile performance is rarely a bottleneck to overall system performance.

I don't think limited writes is a serious factor in SSD lifetime. Most will be replaced because it is too small for current needs, not because of failure. Most people using an SSD find the size constraining.