Win8.1 / SSD / 8Gb DDR3....Page File Needed?

[photoshop]

Right Guys

I've read many for and against arguments to have a page file.
Now, from what i understand some people say that page file degrades an SSD due to the write cycles and therefore shortens its life.
Some people suggest moving the page file onto a mechanical drive.
Some say to minimise the page file allocation when you have 4Gb plus Memory.

Now, I'm using Win8.1 with a Samsung 120Gb SSD EVO and have 8Gb (2x4Gb) PC3-12800 DDR3 running in dual channel.

At the moment Im letting Windows manage my page file. I do a lot of Photoshop work which does eat up my memory (and therefore I have set PShop to use no more than 75% in PShop preferences)! Does make me wonder if I need 16Gb.....

What do people on this forum say about page files and any opinions on how I should be managing it on my machine...?

 

[marc2003]

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

Should 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.

In looking at telemetry data from thousands of traces and focusing on pagefile reads and writes, we find that

Pagefile.sys reads outnumber pagefile.sys writes by about 40 to 1,
Pagefile.sys read sizes are typically quite small, with 67% less than or equal to 4 KB, and 88% less than 16 KB.
Pagefile.sys writes are relatively large, with 62% greater than or equal to 128 KB and 45% being exactly 1 MB in size.

In fact, given typical pagefile reference patterns and the favorable performance characteristics SSDs have on those patterns, there are few files better than the pagefile to place on an SSD.

 

[lsg1r]

What do people on this forum say about page files and any opinions on how I should be managing it on my machine...?

I set mine to a fixed size so it isn't growing/shrinking all the time.

As to photoshop, are you using the 64bit version, the 32bit won't use all your ram and also I find a second drive with a scratch disk is more useful than a pagefile with it.

 

[photoshop]

I set mine to a fixed size so it isn't growing/shrinking all the time.

As to photoshop, are you using the 64bit version, the 32bit won't use all your ram and also I find a second drive with a scratch disk is more useful than a pagefile with it.

Im using Win8.1 64Bit.
What size have you set your page file?!
My scratch disk is set to the SSD and a SATAII drive

 

[ShakenNstirred]

Just let win 8.1 sort it out


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[Raumarik]

These days I'm more likely to disable hibernation on Windows 7+ than muck about with the pagefile especially on an SSD.

Let Windows sort it.

 

[Fire Wizard]

If you have a sufficient amount of physical memory in relation to the workload you're running, it's not going to make an awful lot of difference whether the paging file resides on a mechanical hard drive or a solid state drive. The reason for this is because everything in your performance interest will already be resident in physical memory.

In regards to sizing the paging file, in 99.99% cases, a system managed size will be perfectly adequate because it will be able to support the system committed virtual memory requirements of a particular workload due to the formula Windows uses. However, if you have an abundance of physical memory, it will mean your paging file could potentially be huge when it could quite easily be reduced in size without causing any issues. In those cases, you could follow the advice of Mark Russinovich in his Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory blog post.

I set mine to a fixed size so it isn't growing/shrinking all the time.

It's worth noting that the paging file won't increase in size merely because the maximum has been set to a larger value than the initial size. If that is indeed the case, the paging file will only grow if you near your initial system commit limit, which is essentially the size of physical memory plus the initial size of the paging file. As long as the initial allocation is large enough to support the system committed virtual memory requirements of the workload you're running, the paging file will never need to increase in size and having a larger maximum simply serves as a safety net.

 

[lsg1r]

Im using Win8.1 64Bit.
What size have you set your page file?!
My scratch disk is set to the SSD and a SATAII drive

I meant photoshop, not windows.... you have (well I have) a 32bit and 64bit version of photoshop when you install it... yeah thats adobe for you
Scratch disk is an entire drive, page file is 8GB total iirc, its not like I'm going to miss 8GB over multiple drives in the grand scheme of things even if it's not all being used.

It's worth noting that the paging file won't increase in size merely because the maximum has been set to a larger value than the initial size. If that is indeed the case, the paging file will only grow if you near your initial system commit limit, which is essentially the size of physical memory plus the initial size of the paging file. As long as the initial allocation is large enough to support the system committed virtual memory requirements of the workload you're running, the paging file will never need to increase in size and having a larger maximum simply serves as a safety net.

My fixed size page file likely stems from the old days of hard drives as I found a 'fixed' size reduced fragmentation and the 'section of the drive' was reserved for the page file etc. It's a personal preference I suppose with ssd's more than necessity but thats what I do anyways

 

[Jakus]

I have always dropped, Swap files, Hibernation files etc and never had problems
In XP, Win7 and little Win8/8.1 experience.

I imagine the read/writes are less an issue than for me the waste of up to 16GB of precious SSD .