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Possible Duplicates:
How to control RAM / swap usage
Should I keep my swap file on an SSD drive?

I just put an SSDNow100VS2 into my laptop, with Windows 7 Ultimate 64, and 4GB of ram. I'm a little concerned that using a page file will shorten the life of my drive. As I understand it, windows will swap stuff out to the page file, even if it's still got plenty of ram.

Is there any way I can stop windows from swapping stuff out to the swap file unless it actually needs to? The only other alternative is to disable the swap file, which I'm hesitant to do, as I often use VMWare, which uses a fair bit of ram.

Any other advice on prolonging the life of my drive would also be welcome.

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  • Please read our FAQ before posting next time, this question isn't suitable for this site but is for our sister site Superuser.com – Chopper3 Aug 15 '11 at 15:46

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Unfortunately, without additional RAM or another hard drive to put the pagefile on, there's not much you can do in this case. You do have a valid concern here, as using a pagefile on the SSD will impact it's lifetime (see the second part of my answer to this question for more details).

That being said, most operating systems only swap stuff out when needed (i.e. RAM has run out), or when the kernel decides to (see the comments below). Swapping anything out of RAM is generally inadvisable, since swap space is a lot slower then just keeping it in RAM.

For more general information about SSDs, see my answers to the following two questions: Should I install my operating system on my SSD or HDD? and Should I install my operating system on my SSD or HDD?.

You might also have success using a utility like Cacheman 7, which is a memory management, optimization, and tweaking utility. Have a look at the options the software offers, and see if it is suitable for your particular needs.

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Breakthrough
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  • Incorrect, actually. Most linux distributions start paging parts of memory out to swap at around 60% usage (ubuntu default) (read up on [swappiness](http://kerneltrap.org/node/3000)). Windows will also start paging applications out for disk cache if the sections of application memory are outside the working set. – Darth Android Aug 15 '11 at 15:59
  • Hmm, good point @Darth Android, answer updated. – Breakthrough Aug 15 '11 at 16:08
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Your problem is lack of ram. Kinda. What is stored on the swap is the commit not the actual ram usage. So if you have low usage it will just note the pages in your swap. will not write/read intensively. If you disable swap then the moment your applications commit more than 4G you are in a trouble. They may use much less real ram but windows does not allow overcommit.

But I think you are asking the wrong question here.

Your drive has 3 year guarantee. So even if you push its life below that - Kingston will replace it. and in three years you will have to upgrade anyway.

Instead search here for good reliable backup services so you can cope with a drive failure and stop worring.

D.Iankov
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You can turn off the pagefile. Control panel->system->adanced settings->peformance settings->advanced tab->change->Set no paging file.

Generally, this is a terrible idea. In your case, it might be preferable (or even default behavior).

I believe that superfetch is disabled by default for SSDs.

soandos
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These concerns need to be put to rest. While write endurance was a concern in the days when they first showed up on the enterprise markets and the first generation of consumer SSDs, it is a myth these days.

In general, you'll need something like 10GB of writes a day to bring an SSD to its knees in five years. At least according to Intel's spec page. While I know you have a different brand, I highly doubt you'll hit any near 10GBs of writes a day.

surfasb
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