SSD and pagefile questions

[Alaric]

Reading the new review of the OCZ Trion , ED mentioned that the performance leaned more towards reads than writes , by design. Am I correct in my memory by thinking writes are what "uses up" a SSD? And if so , would it be better to get an SSD with more balanced read/write speeds for pagefile performance , or spend the money for enough fast RAM to eliminate the pagefile completely? This is a case of I don't even know what I don't know. The answers seem to be obvious , but I may be missing some factors I'm unaware of. Or the factors I mentioned may be of limited to no importance.

 

[Mr.Scott]

You will never eliminate the pagefile completely. The OS requires it.
Even if you disable it, the OS still uses what it needs. There is always a pagefile of some sort whether you actually see it or not.

 

[Alaric]

Would the ability to minimize it's usage have any effect at all on the life of the drive? (probably no). And would faster write speeds give any noticeable performance improvement relative to the pagefile? (also probably no)

 

[EarthDog]

Yes writes 'use up' an SSD.

That said, you are looking into this issue WAY too deep. Writes are not an issue on SSDs and really haven't been for a couple of generations honestly. Hit the web and search "SSD endurance testing". You will find a couple of sites picked many different SSDs and just wrote on them...... and wrote on them............and wrote on them, for months or a year+ straight (until they died). IIRC, the first one to die in one test wrote 800TB worth of data of several months of straight writes. The last to die wrote over 2100TB or 2.1PB worth of information. Writes are simply not an issue for 99.9999999999999% of home users.
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

I would get something like the Trion or BX200 if you are looking for budget drives.

As far as PF and such, leave it as is. If you make any change, make it a static size so it doesn't take up more space if needed. With 8GB and 16GB of ram, I set mine at 2GB and haven't had an issue.

 

[Mr.Scott]

I set a static size of 512mb. I have never had a problem.

 

[Johan45]

Just FYI some software (games) won't run without one either.

 

[Alaric]

Yes writes 'use up' an SSD.

That said, you are looking into this issue WAY too deep. Writes are not an issue on SSDs and really haven't been for a couple of generations honestly. Hit the web and search "SSD endurance testing". You will find a couple of sites picked many different SSDs and just wrote on them...... and wrote on them............and wrote on them, for months or a year+ straight (until they died). IIRC, the first one to die in one test wrote 800TB worth of data of several months of straight writes. The last to die wrote over 2100TB or 2.1PB worth of information. Writes are simply not an issue for 99.9999999999999% of home users.
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead

I would get something like the Trion or BX200 if you are looking for budget drives.

As far as PF and such, leave it as is. If you make any change, make it a static size so it doesn't take up more space if needed. With 8GB and 16GB of ram, I set mine at 2GB and haven't had an issue.

This is why I come here. You guys keep me on track. The last time I didn't look deep enough in to something I got an FX and a mobo one tier short of a good time. That experience has made me a little paranoid about how much I don't know. I was actually thinking about getting a 4 X 8 GB set of RAM and using half of it , with the other half a "just in case" and still having a matched set if I need 32 GB in the future.