Trying to put pagefile into SD card

[zemega]

Hi. I tried to set pagefile into and SD card, but I keep on failing. Upon reboot, Windows create temporary pagefile. I think this is because Windows load the sd card later than creating the pagefile. Is it possible to delay the pagefile service or put it after the sd card is loaded?

 

[yowanvista]

I wouldn't recommend this, SD cards are way slower than HDDs as far as write operations are concerned, that'll only cause slowdowns. doing so will also decrease its lifetime with all those unnecessary cycles. You'd be better off leaving it on the drive, getting a SSD or using another mechanical drive for page filing.

 

[LMiller7]

Windows does not support putting a pagefile on an external drive.

My standard recommendation regarding the pagefile: Unless you have a specific need, and you understand what you are doing, leave the pagefile on system managed. Most attempts to optimize the pagefile are wasted effort.

 

[Palebushman]

Page File Allocation

Windows does not support putting a pagefile on an external drive.

My standard recommendation regarding the pagefile: Unless you have a specific need, and you understand what you are doing, leave the pagefile on system managed. Most attempts to optimize the pagefile are wasted effort.

Hi LMiller7,

My Page/Swap file is allocated to a second HDD* that my laptop has a spare bay for, and is 'System Managed'. The file system is formatted in FAT32 as opposed to the 'C' drive which is NTFS.
This seems to keep my machine fast and smooth with no noticeable bad side effects.
Most of my work involves video and music editing and flight simulation.

BTW C: Drive has the minimum page file setting of 200MB.

Your experienced views, about the above settings, would be much appreciated.

*RPM of both HDD's are the same.

 

[cluberti]

A paging file is going to see mostly read activity - there will be writes, sure, but almost all paging file activity will be reads. The reasons you might want to move the paging file to a different disk would be for added performance on the volume containing Windows (moving those I/O operations off to a second physical disk) or to avoid fragmentation issues that can occur if the paging file needs to grow and/or shrink during normal operations. There can be other reasons, but those are the most common.

 

[whs]

Interesting idea but it makes no sense and is not going to work. An SD card is an extremely slow device and should the pagefile be used, it would give a negative performance bump. Besides, what would happen if the pagefile is active and someone pulls the card. For all those reasons, external devices do not qualify for a pagefile.

If you want participation of an external device in paging you can try Ready Boost with a fast USB stick. But that makes only sense for systems with 1GB or less RAM.

 

[Faladu]

Yeah virtual memory is HD necessary, Ready Boost is for the external drives or SD card.

Due to all the use of virtual memory writes wise, I don't recommend putting it on an SSD either.

Even if you have a lot of RAM, virtual memory of say 400 min 400max is a recommended minimal pagefile after of course defragging the partition it will be put on, and avoid \Windows installed HD if possible.

 

[whs]

Due to all the use of virtual memory writes wise, I don't recommend putting it on an SSD either.

Disagree because

a) writes don't harm a SSD. You will never produce enough writes to wear out a SSD. Before that happens, your whole PC will fall apart.

b) If you have 4GB or more RAM (which most of today's PCs have), there is no activity or very little activity on the pagefile.

 

[Faladu]

Writes technically are a negative for SSD's, point taken on likelihood, I know that, so I will thoughtfully argue if the pagefile won't get much play anyway, it's OK to be placed on a 7200RPM non-Windows installed HD, then.

I know it's not used much with my 8gigs, I have gone days before with none, but had some stuff demand a 400 meg one, wish I could recall what did, but I have slept since then.

I made a little partition JUST for virtual memory using letter V.

 

[whs]

It is really not worth moving the pagefile off the SSD - especially not with 8GB of RAM. I never did that and my oldest SSDs are from 2008 and enjoy a perfect health. Just checked my oldest SSD from 2008 and this is the result:

 

[Faladu]

My point is just not having the virtual memory on the same media as your OS, if avoidable, especially if it's used a lot.
The OS wanting to read and write to same media at nearly same time WILL be a performance hit, true SSD eliminates the speed factor a lot.

I haven't been that impressed with SSD other than boot times and I bought one that was an award winner when I finally did, less than a year ago.

TRIM really doing it's job? Yes I know it's on, if I look at the SSD with a defrag tool, just analyzed, it's appallingly fragmented, like 40%+!

 

[LMiller7]

Pagefile activity will typically consist of relatively small random reads. This is a strength of SSDs and a weakness of conventional drives. Pagefile reads will typically outnumber writes by a wide margin. The characteristics of an SSD are a perfect match for the way the pagefile is accessed.

SSDs do have limited writes but due to wear leveling that number is sufficiently high that it would not normally cause a problem. By the time a drive is worn out by writes it will probably be too small for it's intended purpose anyway.

Putting a pagefile on a separate partition of a conventional drive is not a good idea. This does prevent fragmentation but that is rarely a problem anyway. The big downside is that it increases seek times which is the #1 factor in pagefile performance. On an SSD none of this matters.

Because of the very small seek times fragmentation of an SSD is not a problem.

 

[Layback Bear]

I have no idea why people are so worried about using their SSD. You bought it. Use it. Enjoy it. If the only speed up is on reboot something is wrong. On my computer my SSD is used just like on a hard drive. I let Windows 7 manage all ram and everything else. My Intel SSD works better now than when it was new.
I have tinkered like most and never went anywhere but slower. At one time I tricked my computer into slow motion. I just checked fragmentation and it's at
6%. Starting date of the SSD (my system) 5/16/2011.

 

[Faladu]

So are you guys advising me to let 7 do all it's temp filess and all my browser temp files to my SSD also?
I off loaded as much as I could....

I suggested only another partition on a HD that Windows isn't on.

I read too into it, I suppose, before I bought mine and then never looked back, haven't wipe and dropped 7 since I did the fresh one on the new SSD.

 

[Layback Bear]

Letting Windows do it's things works for me because I do complete shut down and start. I do my own cleaning of temps and such garbage very often. I do all my updates manually and check several times a day. I'm not smarter than Windows 7 and I know it. I leave Windows 7 Services just the way Windows 7 wants them. If I think of something I might want to try the first thing I do is make sure there are still a good number of restore points and look in our Tutorials for information. Like how to do a fresh install of Windows 7 using a SSD. Our Tutorials are a great place for all kinds of information.

 

[Faladu]

Well changing temporary file locations off the SSD and such was done via recommendations/info on a web site, I do plenty of cleaning, also.

Even though I have a 128G SSD (119 after formatting), I'm only using about a third of it, that is why I am asking, I have the space to put temps and such back there, np. I think that would be a lot of writing abuse over time.

 

[Dude]

Faludu, Layback Bear is right. While I understand you want to optimize your ssd, seven does the job for you. It will last for years when allowing windows to manage it. Don't worry about it, just enjoy it!!

 

[whs]

Well changing temporary file locations off the SSD and such was done via recommendations/info on a web site, I do plenty of cleaning, also.

Even though I have a 128G SSD (119 after formatting), I'm only using about a third of it, that is why I am asking, I have the space to put temps and such back there, np. I think that would be a lot of writing abuse over time.

If I were you, I would not believe everything that you find on the web. Using your own neurons usually yields better results.