Windows Paging file question

[alanbjames]

Now i know by default windows uses a paging file but my question is simply this...

I have 32GB of ram, can i disabling the windows paging file without it causing any issues in system stability?

Thanks

[downquark1]

Most likely you can but is it necessary? The file is probably largely unused until it is needed. Or do you want the hard disk space?

[alanbjames]

I was just wondering, since my hard disk update i am in no need of the extra space yet.

[Taf]

If your paging file is on a SSD drive it won't slow your machine down when it is accessed.

If you turn it off on a hard drive, it will still occupy space unless you delete it (show hidden files, delete pagefile.sys).

You could encounter problems if you hibernate your PC.

You should not put a paging file on SSD unless its unavoidable, the constant R/W can shorten the SSD life.

That said, with 32GB of RAM, its unlikely you will use it much, or even at all, you could just create a small one, say 1GB, just in case.

[Taf]

Originally Posted by Paul

You should not put a paging file on SSD unless its unavoidable, the constant R/W can shorten the SSD life.

I just checked my PC, and Win10 now won't set a pagefile on an SSD unless you force it to.

[downquark1]

Originally Posted by Taf

I just checked my PC, and Win10 now won't set a pagefile on an SSD unless you force it to.

what really? I thought it went onto whatever device windows is installed on.

[Taf]

Originally Posted by downquark1

what really? I thought it went onto whatever device windows is installed on.

It may be due to an update as Microsoft realised that pagefiles could damage SSDs which are rapidly becoming the norm.

Ditto defragmentation programs I use now won't touch an SSD or USB stick drive.

[Kushan]

Ugh. This argument again.

Let's clear a couple of things up.

1) Don't disable your page file. Just don't do it.

Even if you have 128GB of RAM, don't disable it. There's a ton of misinformation out there about this, but this is probably the most in-depth article about it from an authoritative source, if you want to get into the nitty gritty technical detail.


2) Don't move your pagefile off of an SSD onto a mechanical Hard Drive (Unless you have a tiny amount of RAM, in which case get more RAM). Aka DO put the pagefile on an SSD.

There's a ton more misinformation about this one. Yes it's true, SSDs have a finite lifespan and early SSDs especially were less reliable, but modern SSDs (even cheap ones) have a lifespan of hundreds of terabytes written before they wear out, akin to you writing hundreds of Gigabytes every day for years. Your SSD is most likely to die from simple age rather than use, even in heavy-use scenarios.

Source: https://www.zdnet.com/article/ssd-re...es-experience/

Your pagefile will cause a few small and frequent writes to it, but not enough to reduce the lifespan of the SSD itself by any significant margin. The drive controller is likely to fail due to age rather than the flash memory wearing out. However, the performance benefits are significant - an SSD is the perfect candidate for an SSD, as they're much more suited to those frequent smaller writes.

Given the topic here is "I have a load of RAM, do I need a pagefile" and the answer is "Yes, yes you do", then it also makes sense to throw that pagefile onto your SSD.

I don't know where this idea came from of Windows not "allowing it unless forced" came from, Windows will just naturally use your system drive by default. No idea what Taf is seeing, I'd love a screenshot.

But yes, you need a pagefile and yes, you should put it on an SSD.

Originally Posted by Kushan

But yes, you need a pagefile and yes, you should put it on an SSD.

Thats your opinion, not fact

You do not need a paging file, nor does that article state otherwise.
It simply recommends you have one, as you may get better performance.
(It also allows kernel crash dumps, the loss of which is quite frankly of little importance to average users.)

I had a Win 7 PC, with 8GB of RAM, and no Page File quite happily running for 3+ years.
It had no memory heavy applications on it, mostly just used for browsing.
With 32GB of RAM, you would need to be using serious amounts of memory heavy software before you ever got near to needing one.

As to SSD, like I said, avoid if you can, if you only have ssd drives, its unavoidable.
It is a fact that constant R/W will shorten the SSD life, betting your data on the SSD outliving its write cycle limits is simply gambling.
The size of written data (TB's) not really that relevant, the number of write cycles is what counts. Dont do it unless you have to.

Of course, you can mitigate any eventual ssd failure with good backups, and keeping you data on a different drive to your OS & page file.

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Paul

Thats your opinion, not fact

You should not put a paging file on SSD unless its unavoidable, the constant R/W can shorten the SSD life..
(It also allows kernel crash dumps, the loss of which is quite frankly of little importance to average users.)

I had a Win 7 PC, with 8GB of RAM, and no Page File quite happily running for 3+ years.
It had no memory heavy applications on it, mostly just used for browsing.
With 32GB of RAM, you would need to be using serious amounts of memory heavy software before you ever got near to needing one.

As to SSD, like I said, avoid if you can, if you only have ssd drives, its unavoidable.
It is a fact that constant R/W will shorten the SSD life, betting your data on the SSD outliving its write cycle limits is simply gambling.
The size of written data (TB's) not really that relevant, the number of write cycles is what counts. Dont do it unless you have to.

Of course, you can mitigate any eventual ssd failure with good backups, and keeping you data on a different drive to your OS & page file.

That's a quick reversal Paul. You've gone from

You should not put a paging file on SSD unless its unavoidable, the constant R/W can shorten the SSD life.

to

You should not put a paging file on SSD unless its unavoidable, the constant R/W can shorten the SSD life.

However the consensus is thet having a pagefile on an SSD will not shorten its life.

https://superuser.com/questions/1297...ith-little-ben

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thre...r-now.1293484/

https://www.ricksdailytips.com/page-file-on-ssd/

There are more but along the same lines. Running a defrag on an SSD will cause more harrm to an SSD than having a page file on it.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Paul

Thats your opinion, not fact

You do not need a paging file, nor does that article state otherwise.
It simply recommends you have one, as you may get better performance.
(It also allows kernel crash dumps, the loss of which is quite frankly of little importance to average users.)

I had a Win 7 PC, with 8GB of RAM, and no Page File quite happily running for 3+ years.
It had no memory heavy applications on it, mostly just used for browsing.
With 32GB of RAM, you would need to be using serious amounts of memory heavy software before you ever got near to needing one.

As to SSD, like I said, avoid if you can, if you only have ssd drives, its unavoidable.
It is a fact that constant R/W will shorten the SSD life, betting your data on the SSD outliving its write cycle limits is simply gambling.
The size of written data (TB's) not really that relevant, the number of write cycles is what counts. Dont do it unless you have to.

Of course, you can mitigate any eventual ssd failure with good backups, and keeping you data on a different drive to your OS & page file.

If you have 32GB of RAM, I imagine you would be using memory heavy software, otherwise it's just e-peen. But all the same, disabling the page file does nothing good (other than save some disk space) but has performance impacts, stability impacts (Yes, you can reduce stability if something happens to gobble up memory in the right way).

Your anecdotal evidence of a light-use PC with more RAM than it needs is hardly enough against source after source after source claiming otherwise.

Likewise, you keep making claims about SSD lifespan yet studies show different results.

What I find most amusing here is that there's a sheer contradiction in what's being said. On the one hand you're claiming that having tonnes of RAM means you don't need a pagefile, while also saying that putting a pagefile on an SSD will utterly ruin it due to all the writes.

But if you don't need the pagefile because you have so much RAM, then where are all the writes coming from? Which is it?

Originally Posted by pip08456

Running a defrag on an SSD will cause more harrm to an SSD than having a page file on it.

SSD's do actually get defragged (And it's good for them), but it's handled differently to HDD's: https://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheRe...ntYourSSD.aspx

SSD's also have other operations done on them that don't apply to HDD's, like TRIM, etc. but it's all handled by the OS.

*Sigh* I cannot be bothered with this.
You're obviously a 'google expert' on PC's so I'll leave you to it.

JFYI, You have still shown nothing that proves you need a paging file.
Is it better to have one, generally, yes, do you need one, no, I (and many others) have actually proved that, practically.

Btw, if something rogue is gobbling up memory, a paging file isnt going to save you.

I have made only one claim about SSD Lifespan, that more R/Ws will reduce it, you have not (and cannot) prove otherwise, its a simple fact of SSDs.

I have never mentioned defragging, so I have no idea why you are on about that.

The OP's question was ;

I have 32GB of ram, can i disabling the windows paging file without it causing any issues in system stability?

The answer is yes, you could.

That does not mean you should, but that wasn't the question.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Paul

*Sigh* I cannot be bothered with this.
You're obviously a 'google expert' on PC's so I'll leave you to it.

JFYI, You have still shown nothing that proves you need a paging file.
Is it better to have one, generally, yes, do you need one, no, I (and many others) have actually proved that, practically.

I'm sorry, I quite enjoy a good debate

I won't go on about the pros/cons of having a pagefile as I think I've made my case clear on that - Expert advice is yes you should have one and you should just let Windows manage it.

Originally Posted by Paul

I have made only one claim about SSD Lifespan, that more R/Ws will reduce it, you have not (and cannot) prove otherwise, its a simple fact of SSDs.

Yes, it's a fact about SSD's, but to use an analogy it's a bit like saying you should lose weight because extra weight will reduce the lifespan of the tires on your car. It's technically true, but it's such a trivial difference that it's inconsequential. As I said before, SSD endurance is measured in hundreds of TB's written (Or total drive writes per day over the warranty of a drive). A 500GB Samsung 970 has an endurance of 600TB written. That means you'd have to completely overwrite the drive 1200 times.

A pagefile doesn't write a ton of data when you've got plenty of RAM and if you do run out of RAM, the pagefile being on flash storage will mean a much faster and responsive system. It's win/win having the pagefile on an SSD and it's not going to kill your SSD any sooner than it's likely to die anyway.

I'll use my "Google expert" skills to link to yet more advice on this, straight from the horses mouth (Microsoft): https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/arc...d-state-drives

Originally Posted by Microsoft

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.

They go on to say...

• 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 other words - most pagefile activity is reading (40x writes), which is grand for SSD's and doesn't reduce wear (unless you want to account for the fact that 100k reads will result in 1x write to "Refresh" that data).

When you do write to a pagefile, it's in large chunks (also good for SSD longevity) and measured in Megabytes. Given that SSD longevity is measured in Terabytes, hopefully you can begin to see why the "Pagefile reduces lifespan" argument is....largely moot.

Originally Posted by Paul

I have never mentioned defragging, so I have no idea why you are on about that.

...I was replying to pip...

[Hom3r]

Many years ago on my Windows Me, i put a second HDD drive into my PC Tower, I moved the Page File to that drive, and it did speed things up.