This has been my boot drive since 2012 with page filing never turned off

[BallistixOnZ490]

Also a 2 year old 525 Gb in my second PC is at 98% still with only 8 Gb ram.

If either do die, 512 Gb ones are only £40 now, £30 for 256 Gb, £20 for 128 Gb.

Also £55 for 512 Gb Nvme if you have a free M.2 slot for a windows drive, but theres no need at all to waste an M.2 slot for a boot drive, any Sata SSD is perfectly fine.

Disabling page file / moving it to a HDD is pure dumb.

Also its at almost 625 annual switch ons, and almost 7 hours of daily use wow.

 

[Tetras]

While I take your point, page file use is not equal between systems, or users and write amplification can depend on a lot of things, including free space and workload.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

While I take your point, page file use is not equal between systems, or users and write amplification can depend on a lot of things, including free space and workload.

Still not gonna kill an SSD in under a decade, and newer ones have more writes tolerance.

Also £18.99 for a 128 Gb, big whoop if it lasts 3-5 years only.

 

[Tetras]

Still not gonna kill an SSD in under a decade, and newer ones have more writes tolerance.

Also £18.99 for a 128 Gb, big whoop if it lasts 3-5 years only.

Replacing an OS and re-activating old software is a pain, that's more of the issue for me. 3-5 years would be unacceptable on my daily/work pc. Perhaps I should look into using raid or making an image.

Currently, I have the pagefile and browser cache on a second SSD, which doesn't do anything else.

As far as I'm aware, there aren't any stats on what exactly it is that fails in SSDs? Like, the early failures could have been the controllers, or even the dram, not just the flash.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

And how many SSDs have died from page filing?

Everyone worried about something that has affected nobody.

 

[Rroff]

It is going to depend a lot on what people do - my 2013 era drive:



By my estimation if I'd left the page file on the automatic setting it would have dropped it down to around 70% health by now with my use - instead I have a custom setting. There is no real need to disable the page file on an SSD but custom settings can reduce the number of host writes quite a lot.

 

[Tetras]

And how many SSDs have died from page filing?

Everyone worried about something that has affected nobody.

I'm not sure if anyone knows, maybe the manufacturers, I guess and I don't think they recommend moving the page file? Browser behaviour worries me more because Chrome and Firefox have historically written many GBs even with just casual browsing.

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

I'm not sure if anyone knows, maybe the manufacturers, I guess and I don't think they recommend moving the page file? Browser behaviour worries me more because Chrome and Firefox have historically written many GBs even with just casual browsing.

Actually people would be reporting it right here on these forums if their windows drive SSDs were degrading.

Evidently, it never happens at all.

Hard drives generally fail much quicker than these SSDs degrade, and at current prices so what if you need to spend £20-40 every 5 years at least to replace one?

'Replacing windows is hard / sucks' ... If you aren't already keeping a backup of your user folder at least thats entirely your fault. Typically hard drives fail much quicker than SSDs.

 

[Murphy]

And how many SSDs have died from page filing?

Everyone worried about something that has affected nobody.

While i agree it's generally not something to worry about if you had a machine with less than 4GB RAM (6% of Steam users) you'd be seeing more paging so would see the effects more.

The whole move page file, tweak this, tweak that are hangovers from the early days of SSD's when write endurance was lower and SSD's cost way more, nowadays it's largely a non-issue for your typical user.

 

[EsaT]

And how many SSDs have died from page filing?

Pretty sure there are more than handfull of them...
From PCs with inadequate RAM for the usage.

Because that's what makes the difference in does it cause some writes, or lots of writes:
If there's not enough RAM data is juggled constantly between RAM and page file.
(that thing which made "spinning rust" PCs crawl at snail's pace)

 

[BallistixOnZ490]

So upgrade ram before using an SSD as a boot disk, easy.

 

[EsaT]

It is going to depend a lot on what people do - my 2013 era drive:

840 EVO is one of those original too tiny transistor planar-TLC drives.
So wouldn't try "cold storing" that drive longer time without power.

After all those drives needed originally that bubblegum fix of firmware starting to refresh data periodically to prevent it from evaporating.
And with likely toward 200 writes of every cell, their charge holding ability has probably degraded from that original level of working so and so.
(actual amount of writes is higher than that done by host)

 

[Tetras]

Actually people would be reporting it right here on these forums if their windows drive SSDs were degrading.

Evidently, it never happens at all.

Hard drives generally fail much quicker than these SSDs degrade, and at current prices so what if you need to spend £20-40 every 5 years at least to replace one?

'Replacing windows is hard / sucks' ... If you aren't already keeping a backup of your user folder at least thats entirely your fault. Typically hard drives fail much quicker than SSDs.

I don't think they would be though, because the lifetime wear doesn't really tell you much about the condition of the SSD. Most SSD deaths (at least, in home systems) happen way before the flash has suffered excessive wear (according to the tools you used in the OP).

In the absence of data for what exactly it is that causes a failure, there are precautions like disabling search indexing, moving the page file, etc, but as far as I know, there are few facts and even if you RMA, you don't get a detailed report about what failed or why.

I do keep backups, by the way, but activation status can't usually be backed up the same way and regardless, replacing a boot drive is always a pain I'd rather not have.

 

[Meddling-Monk]

Got a (near) identical drive (240GB rather than 128GB). Also from 2012 (March), but mines had the Swapfile moved off it since obtaining it. Largely to keep as many writes off the SSD as possible to help keep it going as long as possible and it's had great success. Initial years didn't see it drop below 100% when others saw it drip below 100% with general use.

Since quite a few applications made a fuss when there was no Swapfile available, especially with Windows Updates, even with plenty of memory available. Eventually gave in and reinstated the Swapfile, but placed it onto the Ramdisk, but Windows Updates like some temporary storage that's not actually temporary (gone after a reset), so gave in and allowed Windows to manage it. And that's when I saw the main C drive drop rappidly to its current 93% after 9 years. Most of that drop happened in last few years after letting the Swapfile return. So there is a tiny amount of cause/effect here. It'll still live many years I'd imagine, but compared to without the Swapfile, it's definitely being driven harder than it would have been.

 

[hornetstinger]

That's why I rather have my operating system installed onto paper punch tape.