Solid State Drives (SSD)

[kick]

Hello,

I bought M225 128Go which will receive Win7 64bits+appli. I would like having a second SSD who will be dedicated to the SWAP. Is it a good idea?

If yes, for this second disk, i dont know about what criteria to choose, is it necessary to privilege the performances in reading or in writing? Or 2? What model do you recommend me for the fact what I want to make it?

Thank you

Eric

[targetbsp]

That's incredibly expensive proposition considering a lot of people get away with not even having a swap file these days. It'd be cheaper to buy more ram and run a minimum sized page file for backwards compatibility.

As there's no seek time to speak of on an SSD I'm not even sure there'd be any benefit in moving it from your primary SSD.  I think people that do that use cheap small SSD's to reduce wear on their main SSD, not for performance.

Anyway, swap file needs high small size random read performance and high sequential write performance. Source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/e7/archive/2009/05/05/support-and-q-a-for-solid-state-drives-and.aspx

[kick]

Thanks targetbsp,

I hadn't speak about my Hardware:

Notebook DELL VOSTRO 1710, CORE2DUO T8300 2.4GHZ, Chipsets Intel northbridge PM965 and southbridge 82801HBM ( ICH8-ME ) -> SATA II, Win7 x64, with 4Go (This is the maximum) DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz (this is the maximum too), SSD Crucial M225 128Go, HD 320Go.

I use my computer essentially for treatments photos and CAD.

What you say is always valid for my hardware and my use?

Excuse me for my bad english.

Eric

[targetbsp]

I have 4gb ram and have only a minimum size (200mb) swap file on the same SSD as my OS.  Said swap file is never used - it's just some older apps moan if it is missing.  I never use more than about 2.5gb of ram.

Easiest way is to load up all the stuff you're ever likely to have loaded at the same time and see how much memory it uses.  If it's less than 4gb then you're kind of wasting your money trying to make a swap file faster.

If you want to be a bit more scientific about the process then the 'official' way to calculate how big a swap file you need is here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889654

When testing - be realistic.  If you often load your photo and cad software at the same time then do so. If you only use one or the other then it's pointless loading both up just to force memory usage which will never occur in normal use.  Remember to load a sizeable image or project in the applications too.

[kick]

thanks a lot targetbsp,

I'll test all when i'll receive all.

Eric

[Slight]

If you have 4GB of RAM and a swapfile (or Pagefile as it's more commonly called) of 4GB on your main SSD you will be absolutely fine. In fact I doubt you will even need the Pagefile at all, most people don't need a page file with 4GB of RAM.

I tested it out with my system once, switched off the Pagefile completely and I received no errors about it. It wasn't until I purposely synchronously launched the entire Adobe CS5 lineup as well as a couple of Starcraft 2 campaigns that it finally gave me an error saying I should enable the Pagefile. Even then I am still opting for a Pagefile on my main SSD, no need for buying a seperate one for this _at all_, apart from wasting money.

[targetbsp]

I'm showing my age I guess! It's not been called a swap file since Windows 3.

[lordgllynn]

I typically recommend that pagefiles be set up on the second drive. If you're using an SSD for a primary drive, it makes perfect sense to use the platter for pagefile so as to limit the amounts of writes to the SSD and still support legacy applications that need the pagefile, virtual memory, swap file. This also helps increase performance as the memory being used is being transmitted on a seperate bus. So, with the app data on the SSD and the pagefile on the other drive, you will prevent unnecessary wear on the SSD and speed up the data traffic by accessing it through two different interfaces.