SSD Thread (Benchmarks, Brands, News, and Advice)

Here you go for the pagefile:
(Drive E)


You know that you can set the pagefile almost wherever you want, right ?

Well at least, you can set it to a RAMDISK, be it physical chips on a PCI-E bus or computer's RAM modules via a driver. If I put my pagefile there, windows:

1. Won't wear my SSD using it;

2. Will access it faster than my 2 SSDs RAIDed.

I am tempted to use the same line you did but I won't.

 

I finally see a solid example of people keep on saying you must have a page file. thank you.

That however really sounds like a silly check to me as there is no way it can directly use the page file(the file is locked exclusively by the OS, only the metadata is readable).

If this is in XP, now you have a valid point as XP's VMM seems to enjoy swapping things to page file when a program is minimized even it doesn't have to.

I was reading somewhere that Vista/7 no longer do it this way and only swap to page file when there is real memory pressure, cannot confirm though.

And yes under this situation, there is a point, stand corrected.

 

So Windows allows you to set a page file on a RAM disk created from RAM and extends nothing. That at least is good programming and other than the mentioned case by Judicator, it is still doing nothing.

 

Silly or not, it's there. *shrug* Programmers have, though, admittedly done stupider things. Really, I'm not sure of the rationale behind this one. It also isn't the only program that requires a page file. I know there are others, even if I can't pull them off the top of my head... and most of them aren't quite as egregious about it (seriously, 1.5 _GB_?). Still, my point is made.

 

Dude...

Looks like I really need to be more... to the point...

This is an SSD thread, not an RAM-Extending one.


I told you, many times, that I DO NOT USE PAGEFILE anymore since two thousands lightyears, I just showed you it can be done, as you kindly asked me here :

Again, this is an SSD thread, not a RAM-Extending one.


So, my point is that creating a RAMDISK to take care of various temporary little writes will:


1. Help to keep my SSD's speed, as less writes = less partially written blocks = faster speed;

2. Help keeping my SSD's capacity by throwing them less writes, so they last longer.


I didn't want to use your line, but here ya go: If you don't understand this, I don't know what else I can say.

Sorry.

 

you are mixing two things together.

1) making page file on a RAM disk(created out of RAM). This is pointless other than Judicator's case.

2) making RAM disk so you can move your say 'Temp Internet File' to it.
This does save you the write to the SSD. How much life you save depends on usage. For me, that would be in the range of no more than 100M/day.

My x25m 80G is rated @ 7TB. So that is .00001 of the rated life.

As for the speed difference, I am seeing 0/1 ms for these small writes, I don't think I can notice that from say 0.01ms

 

Last time:

I - AM - NOT - USING - ANY - PAGEFILE - SINCE - TWO - THOUSANDS - LIGHTYEARS !

So I am not mixing anything.

Since the beginning, I said I created a RAMDISK, outta my RAM.
I intend to direct there the most tmp, small writes and so I can.
Doing so prevent wear, speed and capacity decrease of my SSDs.
Which is the exact point of this thread: SSD benchs news & advices.
I don't have TRIM, because I'm in RAID, so any write spared is good.

I am not mixing anything, you are, I never pretended I was extending my RAM, you talked about that.

Now, you may feel those writes spared to your SSD are worthless, and you might even be right to the bone; however, neither of us is in a position to force the other to be of his own opinion.

Threfore, I am going to kindly finish this by saying you might be full-right, what I am doing in no way is negatively impacting my rig, more the contrary if anything, so I'll continue to explore this avenue and, should I discover some real-life-experience-true-improvement, I'll make a point to let you guys know. Else, I don't think it's necessary for us to continue debating when we don't even agree as to what-we-do-or-not-agree-upon-to-with-up...

Cheers !

eYe

 

I'm old school, so keep my pagefile enabled, however I do reduce it to 256MB for that rare case that I need a pagefile (which does happen). So nothing lost really.

I'm considering getting another 8GB RAM if they drop in price on sale again for $80 like I got my G.Skill, 16GB RAM. Then there is absolutely no need for a pagefile.

 

no. minimizing write cycles is premature optimisation and will not affect the livetime of your ssd in a way that you will ever notice.

and having a pagefile is important for the moment where the os needs more ram than available. it will instantly crash your app of choice or bluescreen by then.

and after xp, the pagefile is no performance bottleneck at all anymore except when really needed (then, when your apps and os would start to crash).

those apps that need it will use it for memory mapped data, virtual allocated memory and such stuff. those apps won't touch it for where there's a performance difference (the os handles those btw, not the app).

putting it on a ramdisk is useless extrawork without real gain. pagefile has to be on a disk, there are stability reasons for this, and debugging reasons. reasons of performance are, since after xp, not valid reasons anymore.

you should just leave it on automatic size. why? IF you need it one day, then you might need it at an undefined size. if your os has 8gb ram and, at one point, needs a pagefile, do you think the 256mb will save it? not for long, that is.

a pagefile that is fixed in size is like having no pagefile at all: it provides zero of the savety a pagefile is designed for: infinite ram if needed and not available. how ever unlikely, the moment you might need it, you don't want it to be too small (0 is too small, too) to save you.

but that's like explaining a person that he has to backup his 10 year old harddrive "but it never failed on me yet".

 

@davepermen

in general I agree with what you have said(other than to disable page file or not which I don't think worth the time to argue as it is personal preference, I have enabled them again after observing the behaviour as you said in XP vs Vista/W 7).

I do notice that even select 'auto manage' under my Windows 7, it still creates a 4GB file(I have 4GB physical) so it seems that it will grow as needed but does take a chunk that is 1 to 1.5x of physical memory.

This is not an issue to me as I provision enough space for my need but can be significant for smaller SSD(why I said those 40/64 is just too small), just some information that may be helpful to others.

 

My way for setting up page file.

 

I've tried that before, but if you notice it will opt on the larger side even when it doesn't need it.

 

That means either your working set is much larger than your physical memory(i.e. you may want to add more memory if budget/system allows) or Windows 7(I assume you meant that when your experienced this) still have the habit of swapping when not needed.

 

May someone please help me out with this Ill be sure to rep you!

 

I think the post followed your original one already said that they are ok. And yes, that is the expected result of ATTO on a Sandforce drive.

The only thing I would double check is alignment which you can fire up AS SSD(don't even need to run the benchmark).

After that, just move on and enjoy.

Now whether it will die on you or have sleep issue is an entirely different thing but setup wise, you are done.

If you must follow OCZ's advice(they said the default MSAHCI drive doesn't properly pass on TRIM), install the RST driver. But some people did have sleep issue with that driver.

 

Yes i know the scores were ok... i wanted to know what was in bold

Thanks Chimp! What i wanna know is which one should i install? RST 9? 10?

 

9.6 and above support TRIM.

 

10. people have more issue with 9

 

With 8GB of RAM and 1.5GB of memory useage shown?

 

Ike, that seems to be hinting Windows is still very aggressive at using the page file.

 

How about some SSD talk? :d

1 year of use and my Intel is feeling a bit sluggish at times (maybe it's just in my head). Am I correct that I should be getting much better 4K write speeds?

Intel G2, W7, IRST 9, system restore turned off, write cache on, optimizer was run right before the bench.

ps: it has recently benched as low as ~15 MB/s 4K write.

 

Indeed there is nothing wrong with RAMdisks(except from the cost).
RAMdisk will make the system more responsive because the hard drive (even if it's an SSD) it is still the bottleneck.
Also random writes to an SSD will cause greater wear than sequential writes. By utilizing a RAMdisk we can prevent that -at the end of the day, when we will have to shut down our computer, we will only have to store our data once to our hard disk and it's going to be in a sequential way-.
As far as it concerns the usage of a page file, we don't need it as long as we have plenty of memory available and make sure that we won't run any applications that will exceed our physical memory or that we don't use programs that demands the existence of a page file.
Even in that case, if the size of the required page file can fit into the RAMdisk it should be preferred over any hard disk for obvious reasons.

My only concern is the cost but if someone can afford it, I see no reason why not to do it.

 

it is not an issue for me on a 32gb ssd, nor on a 40gb ssd (both in active use).
no, it should never be an issue. those that say it is saved money on the wrong place. if 2-4gb is a problem, you have bought the wrong ssd.

omgomg it's 1.5gb. who cares? it's there to save your .. back.

and an ssd is not designed for having an os on it including page file, tempfiles and all, which is why we need to setup such stuff, right? oh wait, NO. they designed it EXACTLY for that usage.

by having a ramdisk you increase the chance to need a page file by the size of the (on-ramdisk)pagefile. which completely is besides the point of the pagefile. it should be there for you when you don't have enough ram. dedicating ram to it, well, makes zero sense, then.

which are? sorry, not obvious to me. a pagefile is there to extend your ram. putting it into ram makes zero sense, thus.
second point: the pagefile is designed to grow unlimited if ever needed, to save you from a crash. it can't o a tiny disk like a ramdisk
third point: the pagefile is designed to allow bluescreens to write then debuginformation to disk. removing it increases the chance, that the os can't detect why a bluescreen happened, and thus no fix can be developed. so you increase crash-chance by fixing/disabling the pagefile (and reducing the amount of system ram), and increase the chance that, on crash, you can't debug it afterwards to fix it.

see the points above.

by changing ANY pagefile setting you completely disable what it's made for. it's like going into your car, popping up all airbags and stick needles into them, and then say "i know better than the car manufacturer".

myth one: the pagefile will affect the lifetime of my ssd in any meaningful way. untrue, you would have to measure the difference. pagefile writes are not much in ordinary usage. only in the emergency case, and there it's better than a crash (which would mean doing work again, and this would result in MORE writes on disk)

myth two: the pagefile will affect the performance of my system. it won't, since after xp it won't. it's completely redesigned and only used when needed / for stuff that has ZERO performancegain when not doing it on disk (storing pre-allocated memory that an app does NOT use yet. it's only virtually there. read up msdn developer guides to learn how it works. in short: it doesn't slow your system down ever)

myth three: you know better. that myth will never die, and is, most of the time, never true.

 

You can install an OS like windows on an external usb hard drive with all those features you mentioned above, right?(they are storage devices like SSDs are) oh wait, NO. They are SO sloooooow....
what's your point?

RAMdisk won't prevent you from assigning the rest of your free hard disk space as page file, don't get confused and get your facts straight. You can assign more than one partitions and more than one disks in order to extend your virtual memory.

it makes perfect sense when you understand that access times of RAM are measured in nanoseconds when for SSDs in microseconds and HDDs in milliseconds. do the maths to see how many times different those are.
Also when DDR3 PC10600 RAM has lets say peak transfer rate of 10667 MB/s would you prefer an SSD?
When you have enough space in your RAM there is no reason to put the pagefile on a many times slower HDD/SSD. If RAM is not enough see my previous point above.

again you are wrong , check above why

I never had a single blue screen due to lack of virtual memory by disabling the page file. The only blue screens I had was because of bad drivers and due to overclocking. If you are a developer then you will have a different setup for your OS. If my needs and my usage patterns do not require the existence of more memory than the available physical one or the software I am running doesn't have specific requirements I will have to configure my OS accordingly. There is no universal setup that will cover everybody's needs.

If you so concerned about possible crashes then you are advised to leave the pagefile on.

If it was so important you wouldn't be given the option to disable it, in the same way you cannot change the kernel of the OS. People use computers in many different ways and the OS tries to cover as many as possible. Defragment is another example, that your OS has it doesn't mean that you have to use it always and everywhere. I hope you get the point (SSDs for instance).
About your example with the car and the airbag, have you seen many airbags on dragster cars? I haven't but I have seen many on passenger vehicles, different purpose different setups.

Personally I am not worried about the writes of my OS SSD, Intel X25-E 64GB, it will last longer than this laptop or even the next one, but I am not concerned about possible crashes either.

Really? How about the cycles it takes from your CPU to run all those processes to check what can go to virtual memory and what not, where exactly a particular page file is stored,etc, etc and all the I/O activity in order to transfer the content of your RAM to the pagefile and vice versa?
They may have optimized the whole procedure through decades (that's right it's been that long, and I am not talking only about MS) but not eliminated the performance impact to zero.

Unfortunately that includes you as well

 

you're right about one thing: there's more than one pagefile to goto.

anything else is wrong.

oh, and yes, the pagefile takes time. i'm talking about time you NOTICE. since after xp, you will NOT notice a slowdown because of a pagefile, which you would NOT have had, if you did not have a pagefile. this was true on xp, but it's NOT ANYMORE.

btw, all those things that take so much time are all run in the background, you never see them blocking your usage.

so yes, they eliminated the performance impact for the active user down to zero, except when the user is out of ram. and then, it's there to save him.

you never died in a car accident, yet, right? does that mean you can drive like crazy, and not take any safetyguards? not having a bad thing happen to you is a typical reason for people to disable safeguards. which is why most people don't do backups till they lost their data. and it's why they disable the pagefile.


so, you know better, except you don't. yes, a pagefile uses some system resources. but no, you have never verified if those resources, those milliseconds, ever affect your usage. they don't.


hint: computers can do more than one thing at the same time/toggle what they do billions of times a second since.. years? just checking where to place some bit of memory is not much code, and not much cycles.

 

If you have enough RAM, I see you have 8 GB on 1 system, you can specify a fixed size. 400 MB is the suggested minimum by Windows 7.

 

i said it before, and will say it again: if you specify a fixed size, you can disable it alltogether. the idea is to have it with a DYNAMIC size, so it will grow big enough if needed. anything else is disabling the main feature of the pagefile.

 

No, I disagree. 400 MB pagefile is sufficient to allow system dumps.
As I have 8 GB RAM, I only need the pagefile for dumping purposes.

 

well, it's main feature is to help with unlimited amounts of ram (limited by disk size) if an app needs more ram, so the app/os doesn't crash due to low ram.

if you don't need that, yes, turn it off. and then come back crying "my os isn't stable"

you can do what you want, but always explain the consequences, too. changing pagefile to fixed size disables it's main feature, it's reason it got created, it's reason to exist. the system dumps got added on later, and are nice to have, too. but the idea of the pagefile is to extend your ram as needed. you disabled that.

and i can easily fill your 8gb ram if needed. and i've seen crashes because of it (while not developing stuff that then went crazy, no, while using it as an ordinary pc user)

 

I am glad that you noticed it.

I am pretty sure you won't notice the difference between an $800 X25-E SLC drive and $400 X25-M MLC drive either (unless you use specific benchmarks). That you don't notice it with your human senses doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

Isn't that the purpose of having an OS? (FYI there is a word for that and it's called multiprogramming)

Fortunately I am not concerned about crashes (btw, I am talking about computers here not cars), whoever is, can take the appropriate measures. In my case I have configured the hardware and the software in a way that provides me stability and reliability for what I do.

I never said I know better, that's your words not mine ( I don't understand why you keep repeating it).
What I am trying to say is that every extra process will add up to the whole, even if you don't realize it with your human senses (ms) (they are not accurate or reliable btw so please don't mention them that often, especially in this field).

Thanks for the hint btw, fortunately I am aware of it. What I am not aware of, is if you realize that the problem begins when you have to check a few bits every lets say few milliseconds.... (hope you get my point )

 

Our uses differ, then. I've never run out of RAM, even when I used to disable my pagefile. Now, to be fair, I'll mention that I currently do have a pagefile (due to said DoWII silliness), and it's on my SSD (although once I get all the parts for my secondary platter drive, I'll probably shift it onto there). My post was more to point out that there are people that worry about these things, justified or not, and that for them, there's a "reason" to do this sort of thing. Also, the original point was the necessity, or lack thereof, of pagefiles, and my post was to address the point that there are programs that require a pagefile to run. The RAMDisk portion was just a refinement of the situation (since the original question was why you need a pagefile if you have 8 GB of memory or more).

 

For me it's working fine. Was testing it and page file was bigger then 16 MB only with 1 GB of RAM, but it wasn't bigger then 512 MB.

@ daveperman: when page file is set to "automaticlly..." it uses more then 2 GB of space on my SSD, and it means at least 2 GB less for wear leveling. That's good reason for me not to leave it "automatically...".

 

That's right

 

I'm well aware of my habits using Windows 7 with all my applications. So I don't worry about filling my RAM to the max. I'm professionell enough to know what I do. My pc career started with OS/2 1.3 to OS/2 2.1 which was superior to Windows 95/98 at that time. I'm sorry that IBM had to drop it. After OS/2 I used the various Windows versions, 95, 98, NT 3.1, XP, and now Windows 7 which I enjoy very much.
So you can be sure, I won't cry if I get a BSOD as I'm sure I will look into it and will resolve the problem as I have more than 35 years of IT experience as professionell.

 

I agree, therefore I also disabled hibernation. Another waste of SSD space.

 

sure, thanks for mentioning it.

but it means it's not worth paying any difference, disabling any functionality or savety guard, or anything, then.

no, it's called multitasking.

then it's fine. but saying it doesn't change anything is wrong. it disables safetyguards. which are there FOR you.

you implied them.

why should i bother about stuff that, hm.. does not bother me? i want my pc to be faster, more stable, more secure, more reliable, better working. none of the pagefile fiddlings does any of that. so why should anyone touch it?

which is where the multitasking comes into play. the pagefile is never the bottleneck except when without it, your apps would have crashed. as it never is the bottleneck (and this is proven with enough tests, and with the theoretical way on how it's implemented), why should you optimize on it? hint: when you optimize something, that is not the bottleneck, then you will NOT GAIN ANYTHING.

why should i support anyone worrying about something that has no justified reason to worry about? what i wanna do is help that person. and i don't do that by patting on it's back saying "you're great". i do it by stating the truth. messing with the pagefile is useless oil snake nonsense.

omg omg and those 2 gb less for wear leveling show a massive difference in performance and lifetime of your ssd, right? wait, no. no they don't.

yes, but, well, no, it isn't. it doesn't mean anything.

but thanks to the nonsense you spread in here you remind me why i left over a year ago. and now, a year later, people have apparently not learned a single bit. they still fiddle with stuff that is absolutely useless to fiddle instead of just enjoying life. and then spread their fiddling as the holy great thing that helps tremendously, and you're so stupid if you don't do it, you should have known better, follow my guideline that i found on this random blog, it's much better than what microsoft has developed in years, tested on millions of systems, and verified and tweaked all the time to serve us.

i always forget how people are stupid. thanks for reminding me..

 

see, there is the "i know better". you show ancient knowledge about systems that don't matter for your windows 7 setups. your experience gains you nothing for today. no it's in your way actually. it does not let you let go of old habits that don't make sense anymore. evolve, get rid of the old mess, move on.

but you won't agree. i know that in advance. you're not the first like that. and you're not the first who, at some point, then get overrun by younger, smarter ones. just because they don't have the old baggage they still take with them.

you don't know better than microsoft how the os should work. you just don't know.

 

ok we won't argue about it

You forget something basic, everybody has mind to think, to filter what she/he reads and decide whether or not to accept them as knowledge. You also forget that someone is entitled to his/her own opinion and you should respect that and not being rude or insulting. Plus, nobody is trying to convince you about anything neither should you.
Companies have developed many technologies over the years and some of them managed to survive up to date and others didn't, the evolution never stops and things that worked great in the past may no longer work in the future.
Keep that in mind and please allow me to not continue the conversation even further cause it serves no purpose to this thread.

 

Well, then why did you worry so much about backing your stuff up to the cloud, and how the company you backed up to might go poking through all your files? It could be argued that there's no justified reason to worry about that either.

More to the point, there are (enough) people that don't have the discipline to keep their files (size-wise) trimmed down, and for them, if they're on a small SSD (32-64 GB), then 2 GB of pagefile represents a lot of wasted space to them. I agree with you that for the most part (certain people with abnormal usages aside... like professional photographers editing numerous large pictures on a SSD) SSD wear is overblown; your SSD is more likely to die of controller failure or some other issue before you wear out the NAND, but space is a valid reason for disabling a pagefile. And if you've achieved a stable system that you don't really change, then you shouldn't have a need for crash dump space, or any of the other things that a pagefile provides. This does presuppose the stable system.

 

In my very own system, I have 8GB of RAM (didn't pay the upgrade), and NEVER does windows use it fully.

So basically, I ALWAYS have at least 4GB of unused RAM...

Makes then sense to me to create a 4GB RAMDISK and then FORCE WINDOWS to use it as much as I can, preventing therefore the use of my SSDs for garbage, for small and temporary files.

My humble opinion.

 

I agree that's purpose, to redirect as much disk I/O activity as possible to the RAMdisk and I insist that I see nothing wrong with that. If Kingstone produced 4GB DDR3 1333 CL 7 HyperX modules I would do it as well. Unfortunatelly I only have 2x2GB...

 

Funny how people got hooked by the pagefile thing while, at first, point was to create a RAMDISK to prevent wear on my SSD...

All this conversation started out of my RAMDISK bench I posted, and people confused it with pagefile.

With regards to dave, I will say that again:

Unless you are using a program that needs a pagefile, or running many VMs, or working with huge files, THERE'S NO NEED FOR A PAGEFILE nowadays if you have at least 4GB of RAM.

Indeed, I am yet to see a scenario where a pagefile would have helped anyone escaping from a crash due to insufisant RAM, providing they have at least 4GB using either vista or seven, and 2GB using XP or earlier, and except for the 3 scenarios described above.

Regarding specifically the safety it might provide, and while it may serve the purpose of writing dump data when a crash occurs, this in NO WAY helps the user, it could only help Microsoft figure out what the heck happenned...

Now, who really sends dump crash data to Microsoft dave ?

In my humble opinion (which line you should start to use dave, because you use much the I know better than any other here in my opinion), for the average user, with 4GB of RAM, pagefile is useless as the O/S never fully utilizes your RAM, except if you catch a virus which is exploding itself in your RAM

Microsoft might have worked the pagefile so it's not slowing down your system like it used to, that doesn't mean it's necessary for that sole reason and, Microsoft can screw things up like any other (been there, done that; already got the T-shirt...)

Thing is that, even if a pagefile is not necessary, because you have plenty of RAM say, if you have one, windows will use it anyways, even if you have 32GB of RAM; as access to RAM is much faster than DISK access, why use the DISK instead of the RAM ?

On top, when windows writes (or reads) to a disk pagefile, any other disk I/O is delayed (queued) and, therefore, slows the whole rig. Might be barely noticeable, still...

Finally, writing to the said pagefile wears my SSD, where if this pagefile would be set onto a RAMDISK, it wouldn't, and access to the said pagefile would be faster because again, RAM access is faster than Disk access.

But, I have no need for a pagefile since 8 years, and I'm happy with that, never did I suffer from lack of RAM, with 2GB in XP, and 4GB in vista an seven.

Cheers !

eYe

 

I myself run w/o a pagefile at all for more than a year now with my 8GB of memory. The only time i do need those 8 gigas is when i need a couple of VMs in the air simultaneously.
Rest of the time like eYe-I-aïe and stamatisx mentioned the RAM just sits there idle.
So how hard is it to grasp that it's better to put that RAM into use as opposed to just let it sit there?
I personally am going to be using it for storage of temp files and the various browsers caches.

 

@dave

From the horse mouth(i.e. Intel the brand we love), increasing over-provisioning from 7% to 17% increase the life by about 200%. So a 4GB page file out of 40G can be something.

That said, to the SSD it is still free until it really has data written to it so initial allocation would not affect that

 

The tone you use, consistently condescending, makes you look like you think you've got the absolute truth over anyone else, and that any opinion not in line with yours is therefore not valid.

Don't get me wrong dave: I am absolutely 100% sure you've got great thoughts to share with us; however, I don't think the way you position them will gain you any kind of respect or, even worse, any kind of appreciation.

For instance, if a pagefile is worth something to you, why would you consider someone else's different experience as being wrong, for the sole reason that it doesn't match your view ?

I am glad a pagefile helps you in case of crash dump and so, but I, for one, never had to deal with such crash (from being left outta available RAM); why would you consider my view as not being valid, factual, reasonnable or so ?

Please, accept that Microsoft are not GOD; again, they make boo-boo with every O/S they release (how's that alt-tab working in seven; it's a total mess)...

Your sig states that you will always question someone else's thoughts, which is good because it helps clarify things; however, you're not an omnicient GOD for that sole reason. You might wanna try to temper your comments toward others; stating that the whole world is stupid because they don't see things the way you do is not to your advantage, and it doesn't make you look any better.

With Regards,

eYe

 

I think my Windows 7 setup is at least as good as yours, if not superior.
I laugh at you and your silly opinions.

 

What's all this hostility in the threads lately ? Sheesh people should just sit back n take a coffee break.. Perhaps a reefer break as well.. Dave no need to be angry.. Everyone has their own opinions and preferences and viewpoints on things... None are stupid... none are better than others... If people wish to do things. Certain way because it makes then content... And refuse to acknowledge a better way of doing things... Then so be it.

People come to these blogs to learn and get advice ... No need to soil the forums with all this nonsense... If someone makes u upset, it should be as easy as clicking the "x" at the top of your browser and forgetting about it..

What's with everyone lately? Take 5 , take a breather and i assure you everything will be A-O-KAY

 

Just installed an updated version of my BlackBerry's O/S. When you do so, you need to first install the app to your computer, then install from the computer to the BB.

O/S I downloaded is 5.0.0.104. This is a 130MB ZIP compressed file.

While decompressing this kind of file used to take ± 30 seconds on an HDD, and ± 15 seconds on my 2 Intel 160GB SSDs, it lasted for ± 5 seconds with all windows tmp files set to my RAMDISK (NOT talking about pagefile here...)

Installing the app on my SSDs used to take ± 1 minute and say 37 seconds, with my TMP files now set on my RAMDISK drive, it took ± 47 seconds to install...

Not a so big deal would you say, mind you, still a (welcomed) improvement for me.


As I stated I would let the community know if I could find any (Real Life) improvement setting a RAMDISK onto my RAM, well, there we go.

Basically, decompressing files works much faster onto a RAMDRIVE than on my SSDs, which would do the job must faster than HDDs.

As well, installing programs is also faster with my RAMDRIVE than without, as it is with SSDs over HDDs, RAID over single, 7200 over 5400...


Yours to see; I tried, I saw, I love.

The rest is all yours !

 

Even if you disable your pagefile, you cant and wont stop paging. It doesn't matter how much RAM you have. Windows will still page to other backing stores, to executables and dynamic link libraries, memory mapped files, on disk caches etc. Hell you can track hard faults with Latmon or whatever and even without a pagefile you will find processes are hitting up your storage disk all the damn time and its completely normal.

What boggles my mind is that some people actually think they can manage virtual memory better than Windows can. You should leave Windows to manage your pagefile because it will use it only when it has to and when it is beneficial to do so. There is literally no disadvantage in letting Windows handle it and furthermore it is a part of what makes recent incarnations of Windows efficient with virtual memory management.

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding with how virtual memory works in Windows 7 and it is in part due to old myths that were maybe half relevant back in the old days of Windows 98 but which are non issues now.

 

@ eYe-I-aïe

No one is disputing that writing to a RAM DISK is faster, it is whether the usage pattern worth the effort(which is a preference). For me, I can see all my RAM used as OS cache over time(I reboot about once a month). So it is just a simple case of whether to let the OS decide how to use the RAM or let me decide and that depends on usage pattern.

For what you have tried, I have done it when I was running DOS. That was the time when that extra memory above 640K and 1M was not usable by DOS and some clever programs(forgot the name) can utilize that and turn it into a RAM DISK and that thing was larger than then floppy size.

I think DOS was the last OS I used a RAM DISK. Since NT(and linux), I only recall may be one or two occasions that I really want to have a RAM DISK.