SSD longevity

[John Doe]

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file every
once in a while.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file every
once in a while.

The worries about SSD longevity are way overblown, so leave the swapfile
on it if you like. However, it is a good idea to never defragment an
SSD. Not only is it useless to defrag an SSD, since it has no moving
parts, it does actually add to the write load on the SSD uselessly.

Yousuf Khan

 

[John Doe]

John Doe wrote:

The worries about SSD longevity are way overblown,

In my experience, that is not true. Longevity or quality, in my
experience, early SSDs sucked. I usually like your authoritative
opinion, but have you owned any SSDs?

so leave the swapfile on it if you like.

Apparently it's much better than a swapfile on a conventional hard
drive. So of course I like.

However, it is a good idea to never defragment an SSD.

Yeah, I know that. But my post has nothing to do about that.

Not only is it useless to defrag an SSD, since it has no moving
parts, it does actually add to the write load on the SSD
uselessly.

So you are concerned about SSD longevity, but you aren't concerned
about the swapfile (the most active reading and writing to a hard
drive)...

 

[John Doe]

I am sure I read somewhere that its not a good idea to have a
swapfile on an SSD drive, something to do with the number of
read and writes on the SSD.

But, apparently it is a good idea if you are interested in speed.
That's why I made the above suggestion.

 

[John Doe]

The reply authors (plural) should try reading the material that
they are replying to.

Firstly, just because I mentioned Windows XP's disk defragmenter
does not mean that I'm talking about defragmenting the SSD. I'm
not. As stated, I used it to view the drive contents. That's all.

I'm talking about decreasing the wear on an SSD, that is caused by
using a swap file. Anybody get that? That's why I posted.

And yeah, most people say that defragmenting an SSD is a bad
thing. That includes Intel, in their own SSD tools utility.
Obviously defragmenting an SSD is a bad thing. Everybody should
know that.

--

 

[Michael Black]

I am sure I read somewhere that its not a good idea to have a swapfile on an
SSD drive, something to do with the number of read and writes on the SSD.

As I say, I am not exactly sure, but that was the gist of it.

And swap file is generally to "make more ram". People buying expensive
SSD drives for speed shouldn't need swap, since they'll have spent money
first on filling up the computer with loads of RAM. If it still needs
swap, then it hasn't got enough enough RAM for whatever is being done with
the computer. More ram means less writing to the drive, which is the
situation people want no matter whether it's a mechanical drive ("slow")
or a solid state drive ("too many writes").

THis isn't 1994 anymore, when a computer might have 8megs of RAM and
dedicating a few times 8megs of hard drive space for swap meant a lot more
capable computer, although slow. A lot of the time swap really was needed
back in that era.

Now with everyone having so much RAM, swap is a lot less important, except
for someone pushing limits.

In 2001 I didn't find 32megs of RAM was too little, I only upgraded as I
found more RAM in junk computers. There was even a period with that
computer where I forgot to turn on swap, and I didn't even notice it.

I didn't see a lot of swap used when I was running 512megs of RAM until
October, and this used computer replacement with 2gigs of RAM isn't really
using swap (so I suspect the few megs being used is just overhead).

Michael

 

[John Doe]

a swap file is generally to "make more ram".
Bullshit.

People buying expensive SSD drives for speed shouldn't need
swap, since they'll have spent money first on filling up the
computer with loads of RAM. If it still needs swap, then it
hasn't got enough enough RAM for whatever is being done with the
computer. More ram means less writing to the drive, which is
the situation people want no matter whether it's a mechanical
drive ("slow") or a solid state drive ("too many writes").

THis isn't 1994 anymore, when a computer might have 8megs of RAM
and dedicating a few times 8megs of hard drive space for swap
meant a lot more capable computer, although slow. A lot of the
time swap really was needed back in that era.

I have 32 bit Windows, usable RAM is 3.24 GB. But that is mostly
beside the point. If you really think that an SSD is not very
useful on ANY system, you obviously have never used one, or you
are blind and/or ignorant.

--

 

[DevilsPGD]

The reply authors (plural) should try reading the material that
they are replying to.

Firstly, just because I mentioned Windows XP's disk defragmenter
does not mean that I'm talking about defragmenting the SSD. I'm
not. As stated, I used it to view the drive contents. That's all.

I'm talking about decreasing the wear on an SSD, that is caused by
using a swap file. Anybody get that? That's why I posted.

XP doesn't have a swapfile. It does, however, have a page file.

How often are you seeing pages get paged out to disk? If you're not
seeing writes on a regular basis (as is generally the case, unless your
system is actually running low on RAM) then it probably makes little
difference if you leave it on the SSD or not.

 

[John Doe]

The term "swap file" or "swapfile" is very common and easily
recognized by anybody who knows anything about computers.

Another moron that missed the point of my post...

--

 

[DevilsPGD]

The term "swap file" or "swapfile" is very common and easily
recognized by anybody who knows anything about computers.

Yes, but swapping and paging are different things.

Did you look at the rest of my post where I point out how to figure out
whether it's a significant factor or not?

 

[John Doe]

Yes, but swapping and paging are different things.

Says who?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa175246(v=sql.80).aspx

Memory Architecture

"in a virtual memory system, the operating system creates a
pagefile, or swapfile" (referenced by windowssecrets.com)

--

 

[cyanghost109]

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I

could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that

might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file every

once in a while.

It's never a good idea to use an SSD as a swapfile as constant writing will wear them slowly. It's less of a concern these days. A few years ago, SSDs had a bad rep for dying out easily and that's when you really had to be careful.

Even still, assuming you have often exceeded RAM, you should assign your pagefile to a hard drive instead. But, as long as your RAM doesn't become exceeded often, you should be okay.

Also, using Windows XP isn't the best idea as it limits support and features for an SSD such as TRIM. Windows 7 has better support for SSDs.

 

[John Doe]

A Google Groups user doesn't know how to format a UseNet reply
pretending to be technically inclined, and completely missing the
idea in my post.

This might be the most replies I've ever received, with no one
commenting on what I actually wrote.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

In my experience, that is not true. Longevity or quality, in my
experience, early SSDs sucked. I usually like your authoritative
opinion, but have you owned any SSDs?

Yes, I own two now. I've been running one on my desktop for a year or
more, and just bought one for my laptop, which I'll be installing in the
next few days. That's why I am saying "authoritatively" that concerns
about the longevity of SSD's are way overblown.

Actually, you can't compare early SSD's to current ones. Believe it or
not, the bigger they are getting, the faster and more reliable they are
getting. Tests have shown that larger models of the same SSD have a
performance advantage over their smaller siblings. This is because the
controllers on the SSD's do a lot of internal housekeeping within their
flash memory cells, so they need to leave a portion of them reserved
away from general storage use. The more flash they have access to, the
more scratchpad area they have for themselves.

Apparently it's much better than a swapfile on a conventional hard
drive. So of course I like.

If you look at some laptops on the market today, they only have an SSD
as their sole storage source. So they need to put their swapfiles on
something, so the only choice is the SSD and nothing else.

I personally have moved my swapfile off of the SSD, as I also have hard
drives available as alternatives. So I've actually split my swapfile
onto multiple hard drives (5 of them), so the swapfiles are accessed in
a round-robin fashion, reducing the load on each individual hard drive
too. That's just my choice, because I had the choice. Others may not
have that much choice, so leaving it on the SSD is fine.

Yeah, I know that. But my post has nothing to do about that.

Then why were you asking about moving your swapfile after mentioning the
XP defragger seeing the swapfile?

So you are concerned about SSD longevity, but you aren't concerned
about the swapfile (the most active reading and writing to a hard
drive)...

Well, a defrag operation is quite a bit more involved than even swapfile
operations. A defrag might involve turning over every single cell in the
SSD at least once, depending on how full the SSD is and how fragmented
it is. Mind you even doing this isn't likely going to reduce your SSD's
life very much, but why do useless write operations if you can avoid
them? Let's say you have a maximum of 5000 lifetime write operations on
each cell of the SSD. There are millions of these cells, so somebody did
the calculation that it would take them 300 years to reach the maximum
write limit on each and every cell in the SSD, given a certain average
number of writes per day!

Besides, defragging an SSD will not achieve any greater organization
internally in the SSD, as the sector numbers that the OS recognizes have
absolutely nothing to do with the cells where they are kept on the SSD.
The SSD actually reassigns the cells everytime there is a write
operation, to keep the write-load balanced between all of the cells.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I am sure I read somewhere that its not a good idea to have a swapfile
on an SSD drive, something to do with the number of read and writes on
the SSD.

As I say, I am not exactly sure, but that was the gist of it.

Yeah, I read a lot of the same things when I was first venturing into
buying an SSD too. So for that reason, I did move my swap off of the
SSD. Now having used an SSD for awhile, I now know that that was BS. The
people writing those warnings are being overprotective, treating the SSD
like some fragile little newborn baby. They aren't that fragile.

Of course, I've already switched my swapfile over to alternative hard
drives, but that's because I had the choice, and the solution I came up
with is not a bad solution as it should be just as fast as putting the
swapfile on the SSD. So I see no reason to switch back, but if I were
putting together an SSD system today (actually I'll probably be putting
one together tomorrow), I wouldn't bother. Just leave it on the SSD.

I mean I don't think one should be just stubbornly contrarian with the
advice either. Some of the suggestions are okay, no need to keep doing
things that were done simply to make access faster on a hard drive (such
as drive indexing), since the SSD can be searched so much faster than
any hard drive. Keeping those techniques turned on in an SSD is just
uselessly adding write operations that won't make the SSD any bit faster.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

And swap file is generally to "make more ram". People buying expensive
SSD drives for speed shouldn't need swap, since they'll have spent money
first on filling up the computer with loads of RAM. If it still needs
swap, then it hasn't got enough enough RAM for whatever is being done
with the computer. More ram means less writing to the drive, which is
the situation people want no matter whether it's a mechanical drive
("slow") or a solid state drive ("too many writes").

No, swapfiles will still be used by operating systems of all kinds (e.g.
not just Windows, but Linux and MacOS too) whether you got 2GB of RAM,
or 128GB of RAM. You should never disable a swapfile in any operating
system, no matter how much RAM you got. Operating systems work on a
"demand paging" system these days. That is they are constantly
optimizing the use of RAM, by marking for removal unused pages from
memory. Even if it has plenty of free space, the OS will attempt to mark
useless pages rather than let them accumulate in RAM.

It writes copies of these unused pages to these swapfiles. If the OS
needs those pages again, then it will first check RAM to see if it's
still in RAM, and if not then it'll be in the swapfile. If it finds the
pages still in RAM, then no problem, it won't have to read it from the
swapfile again. If you have plenty of RAM, most of the time those pages
will still be in RAM. If the page isn't in RAM, it's then called a "Hard
Fault", and triggers a read from the swapfile. The only difference
between a system with plenty of RAM and one with not enough is how many
Hard Faults per second there are, that is how often it needs to read the
data back from the swapfile. However, both systems will still be writing
to the swapfile about as often. The swapfile write operation is usually
queued up and done during idle periods, when the computer isn't busy.
Reading from the swapfile can happen haphazardly at any old time,
depending on how many Hard Faults happen.

So the only thing that's different between the plenty-o-RAM system and
the lack-o-RAM system is that hard fault reads happen more often in the
latter.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

XP doesn't have a swapfile. It does, however, have a page file.

That's just pedantic bullshit. We all know what he means. We all know a
swapfile is a synonym for a pagefile these days. There may have been a
time when these two were two separate things, but they aren't anymore.

Yousuf Khan

 

[John Doe]

I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT DEFRAGING THE SWAPFILE. NOBODY UNDERSTANDS
WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT IN THE ORIGINAL POST? REALLY?

I'm talking about occasionally moving the swapfile on the SSD. I'm
assuming that the SSD randomization algorithm/routine does not
apply to the location of the swapfile.

--

 

[John Doe]

Some troll...

--

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Subject: Re: SSD longevity
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No, it wouldn't.

 

[DevilsPGD]

I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT DEFRAGING THE SWAPFILE. NOBODY UNDERSTANDS
WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT IN THE ORIGINAL POST? REALLY?

You're the one that brought up the disk defragmenter tool.

I'm talking about occasionally moving the swapfile on the SSD. I'm
assuming that the SSD randomization algorithm/routine does not
apply to the location of the swapfile.

You assume wrong.