I have read quite a bit about the placement of page files lately (researching my question) and have not found an answer specific to my question, so hopefully someone here can help.
New system being built:
- Windows 7 pro 64bit 16GB RAM
- AMD FX-8350 8 core processor
- C drive: (OS only) Intel 330 120gb SSD. Currently has the page file on it.
Also... have a WD 2TB HDD which I will partition out for Applications, and data as separate partitions.
My question is about the pagefile being moved to the HDD to keep the SSD only for the OS. Since the SSD has limited writes to each cell the thought is to preserve the SSD by having the pagefile not on it.
I generally set my pagefile to a fixed size = RAM + a little more.
The plan would be to move the pagefile to either a separate primary partition on the HDD, or include it in say a data partition, again, on the HDD not the SSD.
With the current configuration mentioned above, would I be better off leaving the pagefile on the SSD and not worry about the impact of constant read/writes to it, or move it to the HDD?
What would be the performance hit moving it to the HDD? Is there a difference there (on the HDD) if it is in its own partition or shares with a partition with the data or less used partition?
One last consideration, is that AutoCAD is one program that will be used on this PC (not professionally) but in a learning environment.
15 Answers
You have two options really:
- Put it on the SSD for better performance from your page file. This will DRAMATICALLY shorten the lifespan of you SSD if you are frequently writing/reading from your pagefile.
- Based on the amount of RAM you're running, you could potentially disable the pagefile in its entirety (or just hide it on the HDD).
I'm running Win 7 Ultimate with 12GB of RAM, frequently gaming, photoshop, etc and I never hit 12GB. But even if I do, I tossed a small page file on my HDD to handle the case. It increases stability.
Edit:
Seeing that you're planning to use AUTOCAD, you may want to think of investing in a bit more RAM but definitely keep a pagefile around. RAM is cheap and you'll get far better performance keeping all of that info in RAM rather than needing your pagefile.
According to Microsofts MSDN blog, put it on the SSD to get the best performance.
4Should 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.
I have been told that using an USB Memory Stick (USB 3.0 and of significant read/write performance) is the way to go. When the memory stick gets beat up or fails, just replace it. Saves the SSD. Disclaimer: I have not done this but will be going down this path real soon.
With 16 GB of RAM you probably never gonna need a pagefile so you can put it wherever you want or even turn it off (that is what I would recommend to you). But if it's gonna be used one day, then best performance you get if you set it on SSD and HDD (basically on each physical disc in your system).
0Concerning the problem of the SSD lifespan.
Usually Windows (and other software like browsers during navigation) permanently writes something to the system drive.
In my case, Perfmon shows that about 0.7 GiB of data is written to the system disk per each hour in Windows 10. And the pagefile takes only about 8% of this. So placing the pagefile to the system SSD in such case should not change its lifespan dramatically.
