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SSD Wear Leveling and page file question - 1TB page file

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waveform

waveform

PCHF Member
Oct 31, 2023
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#1
I'm just curious about something, and I'm not getting clarity on my searches.
Firstly, I had an extra 1TB SSD, so I moved my page file from C, to that drive. this question is about
Wear Leveling

I know there's all these rules with 1.5 size and other sizes depending on installed memory. But putting that aside for a moment: If I wanted to use an entire 1TB drive for the page file - a 1TB Page file for example (the reason being is because SSD wear out over time, so by using the entire drive, I can put less wear on the same cells in one area of the drive buy spreading out the page file across the drive.)

But on the other hand, I if I used a normal size page file such as 1.5 times installed memory, would the drive's Wear Leveling use different cells across the drive, or would it keep writing to the same location of the drive only using the size specified for the page file? I just figured that if I used the entire drive just as a swap drive, it would take longer for the drive to wear out then confining the page file to one size.
 
#2
don't get me wrong, wear levelling is still a thing with SSD's.
but it only got the attention it did because the first few generations of the technology were not lasting anywhere near how long they advertised, and of course there was the cost.

but these days, with cells that have SLC, or TLC, or MLC capability, plus the amount a terabytes written before failure, and the amazingly low prices now, wear levelling is not a concern at all really.

nice article here: https://www.howtogeek.com/444787/multi-layer-ssds-what-are-slc-mlc-tlc-qlc-and-mlc/

someone (hint hint nudge nudge) even wrote a little Resource article on it: https://pchelpforum.net/t/ssd-guidelines-for-performance-and-longevity.72593/
click the link, go to the History tab in the Resource, and click Download to read the PDF article.
 
#3
Thanks Bruce, I'll give those a read
But on a side note. I should have re edited my question. It was about wear leveling, but more so about using the entire drive. I created an almost 1TB page file using the entire spare SSD drive. Do you think there was any benefit as far as wearing out the drive in less time? Or would it make no difference if I just made a page file 1.5 or o 4 times my installed memory?

16 GBs ram x4 page file = 64GB page file

...right now it's a 1 TB page file. I know that's over kill, I don't need one that large. But would it help in keeping the SSD drive from wearing out sooner?
 

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#4
as to your particular idea of maxing out an entire drive with a pagefile, I really have no idea.
part of me thinks your theory may have merit, but another part says any gain would be offset by the resource the OS would need to use to manage such a thing.

since using SSD's, I have my pagefile, set to a HDD, looking like this.
1698831959288.png

and whenever I have checked it's size, it has only moved away from the minimum once, then gone right back at next reboot.
so for me, basically letting Windows do its own thing works well.
 
#5
The only issue with letting windows manage the page file is that it constantly resizes it throughout the day. You're putting a LOT more wear on your drive creating more I/O traffic in the system. If you set both numbers the same, for example: 16384 - 16384) for the Initial and Maximum, that tells windows to use a permanent swap file that is never resized. But if the OS runs out of room, then it can freeze. So you want to make sure you give it enough room. I would say 2x the amount of memory. Keeping the page file on a standard hard drive seems like a bad idea for performance. Because the whole point of getting a gain out of extending your memory with virtual space is the make that VM space as fast as it can be, or the next best thing to main ram.
 
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