SSD Optimization - Pagefile Or No?

[Shou Miko]

For most leaving pagefile on auto is fine, but if u lack of space u can always resize it to around 1-2gb bcs some basically Microsoft programs wants the pagefile like office programs.

 

[nomdeplume]

This is more along the lines of the discussion I expected. Many of you have very specific use cases and strong opinions to match. The core of my question was, with SSD being so good at performing the job pagefiles do, are they too good to their own detriment? From what I'm gathering it's more up to luck of the draw with SSD than anything outside a major problem Windows fails to manage.

 

[Beastie]

Thats because on 8 and 10, they are natively SSD aware, and instead of doing a Defrag on the SSD it just runs a full Trim command on the drive.

W7 also has always set up my drives correctly so I think it must be natively SSD aware also. I was careful to check the trim and defrag settings when I installed my SSDs.

The core of my question was, with SSD being so good at performing the job pagefiles do, are they too good to their own detriment? From what I'm gathering it's more up to luck of the draw with SSD than anything outside a major problem Windows fails to manage.

Sorry I'm not sure I understand your question, TBH.

SSDs are ideally suited to pagefile use and any recent version of Windows is very good at managing pagefiles and administrating SSDs.

If you are concerned I would intitially set everything to automatic then check everything to see if there are any issues.
I'm pretty confident that there won't be any issues unless you are very limited with system RAM and or DD space.

 

[W1zzard]

When you start any program in Windows, there are sections of the exe file that are never touched and will never touched during the lifecycle of the program, so effectively wasting memory that could be used for something else, even if it's just the disk cache.

With pagefile on, Windows will move these memory pages to disk.

If you have tons of memory, just set a small fixed 2 GB pagefile, or let Windows manage it, so it can dynamically grow (and shrink).

Also, some games (Call of Duty) like to allocate tons of memory for no apparent reason and will fail if they can't get that chunk of memory reserved. Memory can be reserved, and as long as no data is written to it, Windows will not actually allocate any memory pages to it. But the reservation is limited to physical memory free (at time of request) + pagefile free (at time of request).

 

[nomdeplume]

Sorry I'm not sure I understand your question, TBH.

SSDs are ideally suited to pagefile use and any recent version of Windows is very good at managing pagefiles and administrating SSDs.

After performing a search and not finding resolution I asked here. The only logical reason I could think of for turning it off with a SSD boot drive was it might work a little too well. Hardware and software both engineering a solution that way overdid it when used together. As I noted, this was being a bit anal by looking for a complicated problem where it didn't exist. Investigating new hardware instead of just figuring unknown problems weren't lurking in the background.

@Bill_Bright on the whole you are right about Windows working, but the majority of implementations are in branded boxes. Tiffs between M$ and those companies due to breaking each others products after updates are not unheard of. You were right but it was somewhat humorous how worked up about it you were getting. It wasn't meant to be a divisive subject by any stretch.

 

[Damocles]

Well, my story with page file goes like this:
Page file is completely turned off, but for some strange reason MSI Afterburner shows it is being used a lot. Right now around 2048 MB. So what's with that?

 

[alucasa]

Gandalf has spoken.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I disable pagefile only because I have 32GB of RAM which means it'll also eat nearly equal amount of drive space.

Which clearly demonstrates you (like most people) know nothing about memory management or how the PF works illustrating why should just leave the PF alone!

The PF does NOT eat an equal amount of drive space unless there is very little RAM to start, or unless needed and that would be very rare outside of a busy server environment. I have 16GB of RAM and Windows manages my PF. Yet W10 only allocated 2.4GB for my system too (see P4-630's Post #20 above).

I turn off pagefile cause no game come close to use 16GB RAM.

What study, tech paper, white paper, OS maker, computer maker, game maker says turning off the PF is "better"? As P4-630 noted, the PF is not just for games.

Ever heard of an operating system? What about anti-malware programs, firewalls, hardware monitoring programs? What do you suppose happens when Windows spools out lower priority data to the PF? It leaves your faster resources (your RAM) available for those games and hardware maps and everything else.

Just because someone told me to leave it alone, I cant and I wont.

Don't play in the street!

How about you then? Show us any study, KB article, white paper, RAM maker, game maker, OS maker - any recognized technical expert who recommends turning off the PF!

For most leaving pagefile on auto is fine, but if u lack of space u can always resize it to around 1-2gb bcs some basically Microsoft programs wants the pagefile like office programs.

Again, ever heard of an operating system? What about Avast, MBAM, Windows Defender or Avira? What about CoreTemp or RealTemp? These are all programs that even most gamers keep running while gaming.

If it was better to disable the PF when you have lots of RAM installed, why doesn't the OS disable it? That is easy to code in. Why doesn't Windows or Linux or any other OS disable the PF when lots of RAM is installed?

It amazes me how old this argument is when there has NEVER EVER been ANY evidence presented that says turning off the PF is better. But there is lots of evidence out there showing to just leave it.

I am NOT asking you to believe me! I am NOT a formally educated expert on memory management. Read for yourself.

An excellent article on Memory Management, The Out-of-Memory Syndrome, or: Why Do I Still Need a Pagefile?

But removing the pagefile can actually make things worse. Reason: you are forcing the system to keep all private committed address space in RAM. And, sorry, but that’s a stupid way to use RAM.

If you don’t have a page file, then all private committed memory in every process, no matter how long ago accessed, no matter how long the process has been idle, has to stay in RAM—because there is no other place to keep the contents.

So for the vast majority of Windows systems, the advice is still the same: don’t remove your pagefile. If you have one and don’t need it, there is no cost. Having a pagefile will not “encourage” more paging.

...there’s still no benefit to removing the pagefile.

See Page File Setup - MS TechNet article by Ed Bott who recommends you don't disable it even with lots of RAM and notes that making it smaller can actually slow down performance in some situations.

The How-To Geek: Understanding the Windows Pagefile and Why You Shouldn't Disable It (my bold added).

The Bottom Line: Should You Disable It?

The vast majority of users should never disable the pagefile or mess with the pagefile settings—just let Windows deal with the pagefile and use the available RAM for file caching, processes, and SuperFetch.

And to kick a dead horse, from Computer Hope,

Question: Is it a good idea to change my Microsoft Windows page file size?

Answer: No.

Question: I have plenty of RAM, should I disable the page file?

Answer: No.

So if any of you who have disabled your PF can show us ANY paper or recognized expert who reports it is better to disable the PF, please post a link. Other wise, leave the PF alone!

********

Tiffs between M$ and those companies due to breaking each others products after updates are not unheard of. You were right but it was somewhat humorous how worked up about it you were getting.

I get worked up when people use exceptions to try and prove their point. Exceptions don't make the rule!

Fact: Car brakes can and have failed. So do you stop driving? Do you argue that all brakes are lousy? No! 100s of millions of Windows computers update just fine with no problems month after month after month (with the Windows Update at the default -autoupdate- settings, no less). Yet you are trying to prove your point by suggesting it is a big problem. If it were, these forums would be inundated every Patch Tuesday. But that's not happening. Why? Because WU works. Is there the occasional exception? Sure. But exceptions don't make the rule.

 

[DRDNA]

When you start any program in Windows, there are sections of the exe file that are never touched and will never touched during the lifecycle of the program, so effectively wasting memory that could be used for something else, even if it's just the disk cache.

With pagefile on, Windows will move these memory pages to disk.

If you have tons of memory, just set a small fixed 2 GB pagefile, or let Windows manage it, so it can dynamically grow (and shrink).

Also, some games (Call of Duty) like to allocate tons of memory for no apparent reason and will fail if they can't get that chunk of memory reserved. Memory can be reserved, and as long as no data is written to it, Windows will not actually allocate any memory pages to it. But the reservation is limited to physical memory free (at time of request) + pagefile free (at time of request).

I agree and recommend with W1zzard on this 100% even though there are hardliners who will recommend otherwise.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

I have a 120gb ssd for my OS, I don't want the page file constantly writing to it or taking up space so I moved it off the C: drive and it it on my storage hdd... Job done

 

[Papahyooie]

I have a 120gb ssd for my OS, I don't want the page file constantly writing to it or taking up space so I moved it off the C: drive and it it on my storage hdd... Job done

That's a possible route to take if the space on your SSD is at a premium. However, if the OP or anyone else wants to go this route, realize that a HDD is vastly slower than most SSD's today... So when the OS wants to grab that data out of the pagefile, it will do so at a much slower rate. This can cause performance to drop, vice keeping it on the SSD, especially in heavy multitasking.

In short, this is only a good route to go if you NEED that extra couple of gigabytes on your SSD. And even then, it *usually* makes much more sense to offload something else to your HDD to free up the space, such as documents, music, games, etc.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I have a 120gb ssd for my OS, I don't want the page file constantly writing to it or taking up space so I moved it off the C: drive and it it on my storage hdd... Job done

That's certainly better than disabling the PF but I agree with Papahyooie and would suggest you move something else off the SSD instead of the PF. You can create a new Documents and Download folders on your D drive and make them the defaults. And you can move your Temp file default location to the D drive too.

Remember, SSDs are ideally suited for Page Files (see Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives and scroll down to, "Frequently Asked Questions, Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?"). Assuming your SSD is not a legacy 1st generation SSD, you don't have to worry about too many writes wearing it out before its time.

 

[Papahyooie]

Assuming your SSD is not a legacy 1st generation SSD, you don't have to worry about too many writes wearing it out before its time.

Indeed. "Saving the SSD from too many writes" is old wisdom, and no longer relevant today. Today's SSD's have a comparable mean time before failure to HDD's. In other words, it will handle write cycles for enough time for it to become obsolete anyway.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Today's SSD's have a comparable mean time before failure to HDD's.

In many case, much longer. I note many SSDs are warrantied for 10 years. The number of writes they must endure is limited, but so is the size of our Sun.

For example, the Samsung 850 PRO 10 year warranty covers 300 terabytes written which equates to a 40 GB daily read/write workload over a 10-year period.

it will handle write cycles for enough time for it to become obsolete anyway.

Yeah, everything else is likely to wear out first, if not retired for something new long ago.

 

[Papahyooie]

For example, the Samsung 850 PRO 10 year warranty covers 300 terabytes written which equates to a 40 GB daily read/write workload over a 10-year period.
.

I agree with what you said as a whole, but is your math correct? 40GB a day for a year equals 14,600 GB (14.6TB). Over ten years, that equals 146,000GB (146TB). Rounded, that's closer to twice that amount, 80GB a day. (Unless I'm crazy and doing this wrong....)

So to drive the point to those listening at home, it's even MORE reliable than that. Warranty only covers what Samsung is guaranteeing... A decent sample will perform far beyond that.

 

[Bill_Bright]

It's not my math. I quoted their page. From that link, scroll down to "Unmatched endurance" to see. I do note they say "daily read/write work load". Maybe that is 40 GB reads and 40 GB writes. Either way, it is typically many reads per single write and it is writes that were the problem for 1st generation SSDs. So again, it is much more likely a electro-mechanical device (hard drive with moving parts) will "wear out" long before any modern SSD (with no moving parts) will.

 

[Papahyooie]

Ah yea, they probably mean 300TB as total read/writes. That makes sense, except like you said it is the writes that were the problem. Either way, as you say... A mechanical hard drive, having movable parts, is more likely to wear out.

So kids, don't fall for outdated "limit your writes" bad information. Just keep your Page File on your SSD.

 

[biffzinker]

When you start any program in Windows, there are sections of the exe file that are never touched and will never touched during the lifecycle of the program, so effectively wasting memory that could be used for something else, even if it's just the disk cache.

With pagefile on, Windows will move these memory pages to disk.

You left out the recent compression of old memory pages Microsoft added in Windows 10. Windows 10 now stores those compressed memory pages in RAM until a certain threshold is met than there written out to the page file in the same compressed form.

 

[nomdeplume]

Beyond that if I keep it enabled should I could consider bumping it up the recommended amount or higher?

Since we've come this far would anyone care to produce a rationale for going with the fixed max of 3x RAM? Which in my case would be 24GB with 8GB currently allocated and managed by Windows. SSD is 95% unused so space is no object. Asking this a theoretical question in lieu of examining a real world usage requiring a PF that large.

 

[Beastie]

Since we've come this far would anyone care to produce a rationale for going with the fixed max of 3x RAM? Which in my case would be 24GB with 8GB currently allocated and managed by Windows. SSD is 95% unused so space is no object. Asking this a theoretical question in lieu of examining a real world usage requiring a PF that large.

The less RAM you have the more likely you are to need a big pagefile.

 

[Papahyooie]

Since we've come this far would anyone care to produce a rationale for going with the fixed max of 3x RAM? Which in my case would be 24GB with 8GB currently allocated and managed by Windows. SSD is 95% unused so space is no object. Asking this a theoretical question in lieu of examining a real world usage requiring a PF that large.

Let windows manage it. The "3x RAM" only comes into play if there are full system memory dumps that happen in the case of a crash. It won't use 3x your ram for swap. And if space is no problem, then there's no reason to change it.

 

[Jetster]

Thank God we can change these settings. Microsoft could have been like Apple and just locked everything down.

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

@Bill_Bright I'm not answering that. I will say M$ doesnt care what some users think.

 

[R-T-B]

How about you then? Show us any study, KB article, white paper, RAM maker, game maker, OS maker - any recognized technical expert who recommends turning off the PF!

Samsung Magician will turn it off if you go for "endurance" or whatever the mode is.

 

[Mussels]

Here we go again. Leave it alone

As far as SSD Optimization? I turn Defrag schedule off. That's it. (oddly enough in windows 10 its called disk Optimization) Don't use that at all on an SSD

windows 10 calls it that because instead of defragging an SSD, it runs TRIM.