The page file controversy on an SSD!?

[Red Squirrel]

When the system is working 100% perfect I usually turn it off, but some people insist that turning it off can cause all sorts of issues, so as a troubleshooting step I turn it on if I'm actively having issues I'm trying to figure out, so I can rule it out as being the issue.

I run Linux though, and not Windows. Linux only uses the page file if it actually needs it, so it's not as hard on the SSD to have it on.

 

[SimMike2]

Most of the so called SSD tweaks were developed in the early days of SSD where the drives were really small. Since drives are decent size now, I think you can let Windows 7 setup do what it wants when setting up the drive. Some people recommend turning off indexing, but I don't do that because then my photo files and other files don't sort the way I like. Like I said most of the tweaks were developed because the drives were 30GB or 40GB in size. That isn't the case now. I say don't worry about it.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Most of the so called SSD tweaks were developed in the early days of SSD where the drives were really small. Since drives are decent size now, I think you can let Windows 7 setup do what it wants when setting up the drive. Some people recommend turning off indexing, but I don't do that because then my photo files and other files don't sort the way I like. Like I said most of the tweaks were developed because the drives were 30GB or 40GB in size. That isn't the case now. I say don't worry about it.

The tweaks are also about minimizing writes due to SSDs having a limited number of writes per block. Turning off defrag is also a VERY good idea. It's not actually needed on a SSD either. In fact I think if you were to let it run it would go in an infinite loop... though I can't confirm as I never tried it.

 

[ViRGE]

The tweaks are also about minimizing writes due to SSDs having a limited number of writes per block. Turning off defrag is also a VERY good idea. It's not actually needed on a SSD either. In fact I think if you were to let it run it would go in an infinite loop... though I can't confirm as I never tried it.

I don't recall for Win7 (I think it just ignores it by default), but Win8 and above just send TRIM when a defrag is called for.

And no, it wouldn't go in an infinite loop. A defrag works on the logical space. For HDDs it is identical to the physical space, but for SSDs it is not. So if you ran it on an SSD, you would have your files logically collected and ordered, while physically they'd be as spread apart as before.

 

[imagoon]

I don't recall for Win7 (I think it just ignores it by default), but Win8 and above just send TRIM when a defrag is called for.

And no, it wouldn't go in an infinite loop. A defrag works on the logical space. For HDDs is identical to the physical space, but for SSDs it is not. So if you ran it on an SSD, you would have your files logically collected and ordered, while physically they'd be as spread apart as before.

QFT.

Only benefit here is it also defragments the NTFS data tables. Which really only start affecting performance somewhere north of 100k fragments. It takes longer even on an SSD to work through the 100k + table to find the right sector to request. A defragmented file is stored as "cluster 2000 -> 122000" where a fragmented one becomes a huge table of "10 - 15, 35-56, 18-19, 2000-2435, 134-160" etc.

Granted this only tends to affect apps like exchange and MSSQL or other write heavy large file applications. Home users rarely see it get that bad.