fixing all of my computers problems

[digicidal]

Yeah I put the swapfile on my SSD - otherwise there would be no point to having it really... unless you have one of the older models with really poor random writes (<80MB/sec). Although BSA is correct about TRIM eventually leading to slower performance, if you read through the specs - you're talking about a looong time before that happens.

Even in the absolute worst-case scenarios (i.e. running the drive with nothing but random writes ocurring 24/7 and a very small MLC drive - you're still going to get at least 6-months to a year out of the drive)... when you take into account a larger drive, SLC or better managed MLC (over allocation, controller managment algos, etc) and the simple fact that your PC is never going to be in a 5K IOPS demand state - no matter what you're doing with it and it becomes a non-issue. Do the math based on the specs of your drive divided by 10, andd you'll come up with somewhere in the area of 5-25 years for most SSDs under pretty heavy use. (Since drive manufacturers like selling snake oil as much as cable manufacturers - I would reduce everything in their stats by 10X - so if they say 5M cycles... at best consider that 500K cycles, if not 100K cycles).

In any case, think about what hard drive you were using even 3 years ago - if it's the same one you're using now... then by all means put the swapfile somewhere else... especially because you're using a 3 year old SSD which is much worse than they are now! However, even if that is the case, I would warrant that you don't use your PC 24X7 as a server - therefore much of the time it is simply sitting idle and doing nothing - thus not wearing anything down at all. In most common analysis cases the average user spends 8-10 hours per day on their system generating at the very most 75GB worth of total writes... which even on a 16GB drive will still get you through a couple years even by a conservative 10K-cycle lifespan not to mention the 500K to 5M specified by current manufacturers.

That being said - although I run my swapfile on the SSD - I never, ever set it to more than 512MB - and often just 64MB. After all, I'm running 16GB of RAM - so the only thing that will even be trying to use the swapfile will be legacy applications - which shouldn't be expecting me to have more than 512MB of RAM anyway... if they even run in a 64bit OS - which I doubt.

Add to that the fact that I change systems and hard drives only slightly less frequently than I change my socks (OK - kidding, but seriously at least twice a year I either add a HD to one of my systems or replace one with a newer/faster/larger model).

YMMV tho.

Food for thought if you're interested in further reading.

 

[Rob Babcock]

My SSD uses the Sandforce controller. I deleted my swap file as that seemed to be the standard setup for running the Mushkin SSD. I'm getting a 7.3 WEI so it's working pretty well. I just wanted to verify vs other setups.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Yeah I put the swapfile on my SSD - otherwise there would be no point to having it really... unless you have one of the older models with really poor random writes (<80MB/sec). Although BSA is correct about TRIM eventually leading to slower performance, if you read through the specs - you're talking about a looong time before that happens.

Not so long - http://www.anandtech.com/show/2899/8
Maybe looong time before full failure, but not for performance degradation.

ps:

you have one of the older models with really poor random writes (<80MB/sec)

Random writes (<80MB/sec) ??? You must be confused - Only of best consumer level (MLC) drives OCZ Vertex 2 PRO is getting only a bit orver 50MB/s in 4KB Random Writes....

 

[digicidal]

LOL - well not 'confused' unless you mean between my brain and the monitor (i.e. my hands). What I meant to say was SEQUENTIAL writes... and RANDOM reads. Random writes are bad everywhere and only on the best 10K RPM 'spinners' are they commonly much over 3-4MB/sec (let alone anywhere close to 80), and on some SSD's they are even below 1MB/sec - although those are older designs for the most part and SLC SSD's are much faster than spinners or MLC SSD's in this regard.

I often find myself thinking about three lines ahead of where I'm writing, and this helps me in some things (as I type about 80wpm) but causes more errors when I'm chatting online or typing forum posts while having people coming into my office and bugging me for things.

To clarify what I should have communicated (and hopefully put it more succinctly): The performance declines are nominal under normal PC usage provided that you have a more recent SSD with sequential writes greater than 80MB/sec and random reads over 160MB/sec as these are the two most common interactions with a hard disk as far as the windows swapfile is concerned.

Anand has some other information pertaining to this as does Microsoft.

I suppose I should further clarify to say that as long as the S.W. and R.R. rates are at least equivalent to that of a spinner - the fact that your random access times will be sub 1ms as opposed to 7-12ms for a spinner will make the drive much, much faster. Coupled with the assumption that most memory operations (whether pagefile or RAM) are random reads of data that was written at load time by the app being used... and you should have a performance difference that will not only show itself in benchmarks - but will be apparent to even the most casual of users.

 

[digicidal]

Not so long - http://www.anandtech.com/show/2899/8
Maybe looong time before full failure, but not for performance degradation.

Well, full failure is all that is really of concern unless the performance degradation falls below (well below in fact when you factor in the low latency of SSDs) the performance of a spinner. That an SSD loses 5% or for that matter 25% of it's throughput is a concern if the drop was from 100MB/sec to 75MB/sec - however it's less of a concern if the drop is from 250MB/sec to 185MB/sec... since even at 185MB/sec it will still be way faster than any 10K RPM hard disk. Add in the fact that only WRITE performance is significantly affected by this and the additional fact that only about 20-30% of hard drive activity is writing data and the rest is reading it... and the argument becomes less clear.

Again... I'm not saying you are wrong by any means... you are most certainly correct - I'm just saying that even with all of it's shortcomings I don't consider SSDs to be inferior in any way to spinners other than in the cost per GB department. And that even if it meant having to replace my SSDs every 2 years - I would still consider it worth it to have the swapfile on the SSD over the spinners in my system.

That being said - the BEST solution (IMHO) is to simply have no swapfile at all provided that your OS can deal with it, which Microsoft is getting better about but still sucks! Why you would ever need a slow pagefile in a system with more physical RAM than the entire OS occupies on the hard drive is a mystery to me that defies explanation. It made sense in the 90's, but when I can buy 16GB of RAM for under $300... I don't understand!

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

No, what you should do is find a $20 250GB hd, install it and put the swap file on it.

So you set the swap file to 250,000 MB?

 

[digicidal]

So you set the swap file to 250,000 MB?

Must have been right after he purchased his 100-megapixel digital camera...