# SSD Optimization - Pagefile Or No?



## nomdeplume (Jan 8, 2017)

I ran through a good number of tweaks after installing the SSD but wondered what the current thinking is on turning off the pagefile.  Beyond that if I keep it enabled should I could consider bumping it up the recommended amount or higher?  Not sure I understand the downside to leaving it on other than slightly increased disk writes.

I purposely bought this computer because there is so little it lets you change I couldn't royally eff things up screwing around.  I mention this to eliminate any advice based on more advanced feature set mb's. 

Hp 8200 Elite SFF
Intel Q67
i5 2400
850 Evo 250GB
Windows 7 Pro


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## alucasa (Jan 8, 2017)

Personally, I leave it at auto and forget about it.


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## nomdeplume (Jan 8, 2017)

Good enough.  Figured I was getting a bit anal.  Never hurts to ask though.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 8, 2017)

nomdeplume said:


> I ran through a good number of tweaks after installing the SSD but wondered what the current thinking is on turning off the pagefile.


There isn't any thinking. That's the problem. There is no technical white paper, study, or article anywhere that says turning off the page file, regardless how much RAM you have or if using a SSD, is "better". None. Period. Yet you will still see over and over again people who think they are masters at memory management who think they know more than the PhDs and computer scientists at Microsoft and claim "_because they didn't see a difference_" or "_because they have lots of RAM_" that its okay to disable the Page File. That is simply twisted and unsound logic. That's like saying because I didn't break my hand when I punched the wall, it must be okay to punch the wall.

The ONLY time it makes sense to not let Windows manage your page file is if you are critically low on disk space. But the proper fix to that is to free up or buy more disk space - not disable the PF, or manually set a small PF.

Contrary to what some may want you to believe, Microsoft has not been sitting on their thumbs the last 20 plus years since page files have been around. They have it figured out and do it right because it is in their best interest to ensure your system runs optimally. Unless you really are a true expert at memory management, leave it alone!

On top of all that, SSDs are ideally suited for Page Files. See Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives and scroll down to, "_Frequently Asked Questions, Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?_" While the article is getting old, it still applies - in fact, even more so today since wear problems of early generation SSDs are no longer a problem.


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## Jetster (Jan 8, 2017)

Here we go again. Leave it alone

As far as SSD Optimization?  I turn Defrag schedule off. That's it. (oddly enough in windows 10 its called disk Optimization)  Don't use that at all on an SSD


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## newtekie1 (Jan 8, 2017)

Jetster said:


> Here we go again. Leave it alone
> 
> As far as SSD Optimization?  I turn Defrag schedule off. That's it. (oddly enough in windows 10 its called disk Optimization)  Don't use that at all on an SSD



Thats because on 8 and 10, they are natively SSD aware, and instead of doing a Defrag on the SSD it just runs a full Trim command on the drive.


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## Vulcansheart (Jan 8, 2017)

The only time I disable the pf is prior to doing a backup disk image. It will save several GB on the final image size. Otherwise, leave it on auto.


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## biffzinker (Jan 8, 2017)

Jetster said:


> I turn Defrag schedule off. That's it. (oddly enough in windows 10 its called disk Optimization) Don't use that at all on an SSD


All it is on a SSD is TRIM plus Meta Data files being fragmented.


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## nomdeplume (Jan 8, 2017)

I said GOOD ENOUGH!   Bill, you were doing good until the part where you steadfastly asserted Windows has it in their best interest to make your system run optimally.  LOL   

To be clear I updated 7 year old old version of BIOS, all settings, nearly all drivers.  Rebooted with SSD as secondary drive and ran Magician to update firmware.  Installed W7 on SSD, installed suite of stable drivers from first step, turned on TRIM, turned off hibernation/defrag/indexing, and then finally questioned if the pagefile was redundant.  The only real decision left is whether I want to chance slowing Windows down by updating through WU or WSUS.


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## Jetster (Jan 8, 2017)

newtekie1 said:


> Thats because on 8 and 10, they are natively SSD aware,



I though they switched that back? They were aware now they are not, was my understanding. Could be wrong though

Okay well I learned something 

http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-tip-defrag-secrets-for-hard-disks-and-ssds/

Okay OP: don't do shit


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 8, 2017)

Jetster said:


> As far as SSD Optimization? I turn Defrag schedule off. That's it. (oddly enough in windows 10 its called disk Optimization) Don't use that at all on an SSD


It's been called "Optimize Drives" since Windows 8 and it is not odd because that is what it does, regardless the drive type. And there is no need to disable it because Windows already knows if a drive is a HD or SSD and if it detects it is a SSD, it will not even attempt to defrag it because Microsoft knows it makes no sense to defrag a SSD.


nomdeplume said:


> Bill, you were doing good until the part where you steadfastly asserted Windows has it in their best interest to make your system run optimally.


Of course they do. To think otherwise is being silly. Why would Microsoft, Intel, Gigabyte, Linux, NVIDIA, AMD, Ford, or any product maker NOT want their product to run optimally?



nomdeplume said:


> turned on TRIM, turned off hibernation/defrag/indexing, and then finally questioned if the pagefile was redundant.


None of that makes sense either. TRIM is enabled by default. You want your HDs to be defragged regularly. Indexing works (W10 is not XP, after all). And hibernation is for notebook and not disabled by default either.

In other words. W10 works just fine with its default settings.


Jetster said:


> I though they switched that back? They were aware now they are not, was my understanding. Could be wrong though


Switched back? Why would they do that? SSD use has done nothing but increase since SSDs first came out. In fact, more and more computers, especially notebooks are coming from the factory with only SSDs.


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## Jetster (Jan 8, 2017)

Bill_Bright said:


> Switched back? Why would they do that? SSD use has done nothing but increase since



I read it in an article somewhere. But anyway. I'm glad I know now

cool its says trimmed


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 8, 2017)

Jetster said:


> cool its says trimmed


Agreed. And actually, that is why I don't use 3rd party applications like Samsung Magician - Windows already knows how to properly utilize and maintain SSDs.


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## nomdeplume (Jan 8, 2017)

I was just making light of my dumb question getting serious responses.  It's Windows 7 and there was no harm in double checking TRIM was on or updating the firmware using Magician

Thanks for that link.  I use Perfectdisk which has SSD optimize, if I ever want to run it, and my spinning disk set to automatically defrag.  Until I got around to installing that I just clicked Windows defrag off.


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## alucasa (Jan 8, 2017)

Well, I figure my SSDs will outlive its lifespan anyway, so I don't care.

Truth to be told, my oldest SSD (Cheapest SSD I could find at that time, 64gb Kingston SSDnow!) is 7+ years old running Fedora. Never bothered with trim or whatever and it still runs fine.


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## RejZoR (Jan 10, 2017)

I disable pagefile only because I have 32GB of RAM which means it'll also eat nearly equal amount of drive space. And if you have hibernation enabled, I'd lose around 60GB for things I'll never need because I have bloody 32GB of RAM. I have it set to 16MB so I still get the benefits of error recording from BSOD's and that's about it.


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## Jetster (Jan 10, 2017)

If you have it set to 16Mb then its not disabled

Wait, you have a 2 Tb SSD and your concerned about a couple of Gb? You set it to 16 Mb? Makes no sense


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## biffzinker (Jan 10, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> I disable pagefile only


You don't need to disable the page file on Windows 10. The next time Windows 10 runs scheduled maintenance the page file shrinks then is dynamically allocated based on demand.


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## RejZoR (Jan 10, 2017)

Jetster said:


> If you have it set to 16Mb then its not disabled
> 
> Wait, you have a 2 Tb SSD and your concerned about a couple of Gb? You set it to 16 Mb? Makes no sense



16MB is the same as being disabled. And while I do have a 2TB SSD, why would I waste space on pointless feature? I had it configured the same on 2TB HDD I had before it...


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## P4-630 (Jan 10, 2017)

It eats only 2432MB on my system on auto, while I have 16GB ram.
Just let the system handle this.


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## Enterprise24 (Jan 10, 2017)

I turn off pagefile cause no game come close to use 16GB RAM.


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## biffzinker (Jan 10, 2017)

Enterprise24 said:


> I turn off pagefile cause no game come close to use 16GB RAM.


*Leave the page file alone. 
*
Here's the Scheduled task ran during Scheduled Maintenance pertaining to the Page File.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jan 10, 2017)

biffzinker said:


> *Leave the page file alone. *


Just because someone told me to leave it alone, I cant and I wont. And I know I wont go blind playing with it.


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## n-ster (Jan 10, 2017)

I've gotten the habit of putting a manual size for the pagefile, usually 1-2GB


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## P4-630 (Jan 10, 2017)

Enterprise24 said:


> I turn off pagefile cause no game come close to use 16GB RAM.



The pagefile isn't there just for games....


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## puma99dk| (Jan 10, 2017)

For most leaving pagefile on auto is fine, but if u lack of space u can always resize it to around 1-2gb bcs some basically Microsoft programs wants the pagefile like office programs.


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## nomdeplume (Jan 10, 2017)

This is more along the lines of the discussion I expected.  Many of you have very specific use cases and strong opinions to match.  The core of my question was, with SSD being so good at performing the job pagefiles do, are they too good to their own detriment?  From what I'm gathering it's more up to luck of the draw with SSD than anything outside a major problem Windows fails to manage.


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## Beastie (Jan 10, 2017)

newtekie1 said:


> Thats because on 8 and 10, they are natively SSD aware, and instead of doing a Defrag on the SSD it just runs a full Trim command on the drive.


 W7 also has always set up my drives correctly so I think it must be natively SSD aware also. I was careful to check the trim and defrag settings when I installed my SSDs.




nomdeplume said:


> The core of my question was, with SSD being so good at performing the job pagefiles do, are they too good to their own detriment?  From what I'm gathering it's more up to luck of the draw with SSD than anything outside a major problem Windows fails to manage.


 Sorry I'm not sure I understand your question, TBH.

 SSDs are ideally suited to pagefile use and any recent version of Windows is very good at managing pagefiles and administrating SSDs.

 If you are concerned I would intitially set everything to automatic then check everything to see if there are any issues.
 I'm pretty confident that there won't be any issues unless you are very limited with system RAM and or DD space.


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## W1zzard (Jan 10, 2017)

When you start any program in Windows, there are sections of the exe file that are never touched and will never touched during the lifecycle of the program, so effectively wasting memory that could be used for something else, even if it's just the disk cache.

With pagefile on, Windows will move these memory pages to disk.

If you have tons of memory, just set a small fixed 2 GB pagefile, or let Windows manage it, so it can dynamically grow (and shrink).

Also, some games (Call of Duty) like to allocate tons of memory for no apparent reason and will fail if they can't get that chunk of memory reserved. Memory can be reserved, and as long as no data is written to it, Windows will not actually allocate any memory pages to it. But the reservation is limited to physical memory free (at time of request) + pagefile free (at time of request).


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## nomdeplume (Jan 10, 2017)

Beastie said:


> Sorry I'm not sure I understand your question, TBH.
> 
> SSDs are ideally suited to pagefile use and any recent version of Windows is very good at managing pagefiles and administrating SSDs.



After performing a search and not finding resolution I asked here.  The only logical reason I could think of for turning it off with a SSD boot drive was it might work a little too well.  Hardware and software both engineering a solution that way overdid it when used together.  As I noted, this was being a bit anal by looking for a complicated problem where it didn't exist.  Investigating new hardware instead of just figuring unknown problems weren't lurking in the background.

@Bill_Bright on the whole you are right about Windows working, but the majority of implementations are in branded boxes.  Tiffs between M$ and those companies due to breaking each others products after updates are not unheard of.   You were right but it was somewhat humorous how worked up about it you were getting.  It wasn't meant to be a divisive subject by any stretch.


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## Damocles (Jan 10, 2017)

Well, my story with page file goes like this:
Page file is completely turned off, but for some strange reason MSI Afterburner shows it is being used a lot. Right now around 2048 MB. So what's with that?


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## alucasa (Jan 10, 2017)

Gandalf has spoken.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 10, 2017)

RejZoR said:


> I disable pagefile only because I have 32GB of RAM which means it'll also eat nearly equal amount of drive space.


Which clearly demonstrates you (like most people) know nothing about memory management or how the PF works illustrating why should just leave the PF alone!

The PF does NOT eat an equal amount of drive space unless there is very little RAM to start, or unless needed and that would be very rare outside of a busy server environment. I have 16GB of RAM and Windows manages my PF. Yet W10 only allocated 2.4GB for my system too (see P4-630's Post #20 above). 



Enterprise24 said:


> I turn off pagefile cause no game come close to use 16GB RAM.


What study, tech paper, white paper, OS maker, computer maker, game maker says turning off the PF is "better"? As P4-630 noted, the PF is not just for games.

Ever heard of an operating system? What about anti-malware programs, firewalls, hardware monitoring programs? What do you suppose happens when Windows spools out lower priority data to the PF? It leaves your faster resources (your RAM) available for those games and hardware maps and everything else.


DeathtoGnomes said:


> Just because someone told me to leave it alone, I cant and I wont.


Don't play in the street! 

How about you then? Show us any study, KB article, white paper, RAM maker, game maker, OS maker - any recognized technical expert who recommends turning off the PF!



puma99dk| said:


> For most leaving pagefile on auto is fine, but if u lack of space u can always resize it to around 1-2gb bcs some basically Microsoft programs wants the pagefile like office programs.


Again, ever heard of an operating system? What about Avast, MBAM, Windows Defender or Avira? What about CoreTemp or RealTemp? These are all programs that even most gamers keep running while gaming.

If it was better to disable the PF when you have lots of RAM installed, why doesn't the OS disable it? That is easy to code in. Why doesn't Windows or Linux or any other OS disable the PF when lots of RAM is installed?

It amazes me how old this argument is when there has NEVER EVER been ANY evidence presented that says turning off the PF is better. But there is lots of evidence out there showing to just leave it.

*I am NOT asking you to believe me!* I am NOT a formally educated expert on memory management. Read for yourself.

An excellent article on Memory Management, The Out-of-Memory Syndrome, or: Why Do I Still Need a Pagefile?


> But removing the pagefile can actually make things worse. Reason: you are forcing the system to keep all private committed address space in RAM. And, sorry, but that’s a stupid way to use RAM.
> 
> If you don’t have a page file, then all private committed memory in every process, no matter how long ago accessed, no matter how long the process has been idle, has to stay in RAM—because there is no other place to keep the contents.
> 
> ...



See Page File Setup - MS TechNet article by Ed Bott who recommends you don't disable it even with lots of RAM and notes that making it smaller can actually slow down performance in some situations.

The How-To Geek: Understanding the Windows Pagefile and Why You Shouldn't Disable It (*my bold added*).





> The Bottom Line: Should You Disable It?
> 
> The vast majority of users should never disable the pagefile *or mess with the pagefile settings*—just let Windows deal with the pagefile and use the available RAM for file caching, processes, and SuperFetch.


And to kick a dead horse, from Computer Hope,


> Question: Is it a good idea to change my Microsoft Windows page file size?
> 
> Answer: No.
> 
> ...



So if any of you who have disabled your PF can show us ANY paper or recognized expert who reports it is better to disable the PF, please post a link. Other wise, leave the PF alone!

********


			
				nomdeplume said:
			
		

> Tiffs between M$ and those companies due to breaking each others products after updates are not unheard of. You were right but it was somewhat humorous how worked up about it you were getting.


I get worked up when people use exceptions to try and prove their point. Exceptions don't make the rule!

Fact: Car brakes can and have failed. So do you stop driving? Do you argue that all brakes are lousy? No! 100s of millions of Windows computers update just fine with no problems month after month after month (with the Windows Update at the default -autoupdate- settings, no less). Yet you are trying to prove your point by suggesting it is a big problem. If it were, these forums would be inundated _every_ Patch Tuesday. But that's not happening. Why? Because WU works. Is there the occasional exception? Sure. But exceptions don't make the rule.


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## DRDNA (Jan 10, 2017)

W1zzard said:


> When you start any program in Windows, there are sections of the exe file that are never touched and will never touched during the lifecycle of the program, so effectively wasting memory that could be used for something else, even if it's just the disk cache.
> 
> With pagefile on, Windows will move these memory pages to disk.
> 
> ...



I agree and recommend with W1zzard on this 100% even though there are hardliners who will recommend otherwise.


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## NdMk2o1o (Jan 10, 2017)

I have a 120gb ssd for my OS, I don't want the page file constantly writing to it or taking up space so I moved it off the C: drive and it it on my storage hdd... Job done


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## Papahyooie (Jan 10, 2017)

NdMk2o1o said:


> I have a 120gb ssd for my OS, I don't want the page file constantly writing to it or taking up space so I moved it off the C: drive and it it on my storage hdd... Job done


That's a possible route to take if the space on your SSD is at a premium. However, if the OP or anyone else wants to go this route, realize that a HDD is vastly slower than most SSD's today... So when the OS wants to grab that data out of the pagefile, it will do so at a much slower rate. This can cause performance to drop, vice keeping it on the SSD, especially in heavy multitasking.

In short, this is only a good route to go if you NEED that extra couple of gigabytes on your SSD. And even then, it *usually* makes much more sense to offload something else to your HDD to free up the space, such as documents, music, games, etc.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 10, 2017)

NdMk2o1o said:


> I have a 120gb ssd for my OS, I don't want the page file constantly writing to it or taking up space so I moved it off the C: drive and it it on my storage hdd... Job done


That's certainly better than disabling the PF but I agree with Papahyooie and would suggest you move something else off the SSD instead of the PF. You can create a new Documents and Download folders on your D drive and make them the defaults. And you can move your Temp file default location to the D drive too.

Remember, SSDs are ideally suited for Page Files (see Support and Q&A for Solid-State Drives and scroll down to, "_Frequently Asked Questions, Should the pagefile be placed on SSDs?_"). Assuming your SSD is not a legacy 1st generation SSD, you don't have to worry about too many writes wearing it out before its time.


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## Papahyooie (Jan 10, 2017)

Bill_Bright said:


> Assuming your SSD is not a legacy 1st generation SSD, you don't have to worry about too many writes wearing it out before its time.



Indeed. "Saving the SSD from too many writes" is old wisdom, and no longer relevant today. Today's SSD's have a comparable mean time before failure to HDD's. In other words, it will handle write cycles for enough time for it to become obsolete anyway.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 10, 2017)

Papahyooie said:


> Today's SSD's have a comparable mean time before failure to HDD's.


In many case, much longer. I note many SSDs are warrantied for 10 years. The number of writes they must endure is limited, but so is the size of our Sun.

For example, the Samsung 850 PRO 10 year warranty covers 300 terabytes written which equates to a 40 GB daily read/write workload over a 10-year period.


Papahyooie said:


> it will handle write cycles for enough time for it to become obsolete anyway.


Yeah, everything else is likely to wear out first, if not retired for something new long ago.


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## Papahyooie (Jan 10, 2017)

Bill_Bright said:


> For example, the Samsung 850 PRO 10 year warranty covers 300 terabytes written which equates to a 40 GB daily read/write workload over a 10-year period.
> .



I agree with what you said as a whole, but is your math correct? 40GB a day for a year equals 14,600 GB (14.6TB). Over ten years, that equals 146,000GB (146TB). Rounded, that's closer to twice that amount, 80GB a day. (Unless I'm crazy and doing this wrong....) 

So to drive the point to those listening at home, it's even MORE reliable than that. Warranty only covers what Samsung is guaranteeing... A decent sample will perform far beyond that.


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## Bill_Bright (Jan 10, 2017)

It's not my math. I quoted their page. From that link, scroll down to "Unmatched endurance" to see. I do note they say "daily read/write work load". Maybe that is 40 GB reads and 40 GB writes. Either way, it is typically many reads per single write and it is writes that were the problem for 1st generation SSDs. So again, it is much more likely a electro-mechanical device (hard drive with moving parts) will "wear out" long before any modern SSD (with no moving parts) will.


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## Papahyooie (Jan 10, 2017)

Ah yea, they probably mean 300TB as total read/writes. That makes sense, except like you said it is the writes that were the problem. Either way, as you say... A mechanical hard drive, having movable parts, is more likely to wear out. 

So kids, don't fall for outdated "limit your writes" bad information. Just keep your Page File on your SSD.


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## biffzinker (Jan 10, 2017)

W1zzard said:


> When you start any program in Windows, there are sections of the exe file that are never touched and will never touched during the lifecycle of the program, so effectively wasting memory that could be used for something else, even if it's just the disk cache.
> 
> With pagefile on, Windows will move these memory pages to disk.


You left out the recent compression of old memory pages Microsoft added in Windows 10. Windows 10 now stores those compressed memory pages in RAM until a certain threshold is met than there written out to the page file in the same compressed form.


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## nomdeplume (Jan 10, 2017)

nomdeplume said:


> Beyond that if I keep it enabled should I could consider bumping it up the recommended amount or higher?



Since we've come this far would anyone care to produce a rationale for going with the fixed max of 3x RAM?  Which in my case would be 24GB with 8GB currently allocated and managed by Windows.  SSD is 95% unused so space is no object.  Asking this a theoretical question in lieu of examining a real world usage requiring a PF that large.


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## Beastie (Jan 10, 2017)

nomdeplume said:


> Since we've come this far would anyone care to produce a rationale for going with the fixed max of 3x RAM?  Which in my case would be 24GB with 8GB currently allocated and managed by Windows.  SSD is 95% unused so space is no object.  Asking this a theoretical question in lieu of examining a real world usage requiring a PF that large.



The less RAM you have the more likely you are to need a big pagefile.


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## Papahyooie (Jan 10, 2017)

nomdeplume said:


> Since we've come this far would anyone care to produce a rationale for going with the fixed max of 3x RAM?  Which in my case would be 24GB with 8GB currently allocated and managed by Windows.  SSD is 95% unused so space is no object.  Asking this a theoretical question in lieu of examining a real world usage requiring a PF that large.


Let windows manage it. The "3x RAM" only comes into play if there are full system memory dumps that happen in the case of a crash. It won't use 3x your ram for swap. And if space is no problem, then there's no reason to change it.


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## Jetster (Jan 11, 2017)

Thank God we can change these settings. Microsoft could have been like Apple and just locked everything down.


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jan 11, 2017)

@Bill_Bright I'm not answering that. I will say M$ doesnt care what some users think.


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## R-T-B (Jan 11, 2017)

> How about you then? Show us any study, KB article, white paper, RAM maker, game maker, OS maker - any recognized technical expert who recommends turning off the PF!



Samsung Magician will turn it off if you go for "endurance" or whatever the mode is.


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## Mussels (Jan 11, 2017)

Jetster said:


> Here we go again. Leave it alone
> 
> As far as SSD Optimization?  I turn Defrag schedule off. That's it. (oddly enough in windows 10 its called disk Optimization)  Don't use that at all on an SSD



windows 10 calls it that because instead of defragging an SSD, it runs TRIM.


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## biffzinker (Jan 11, 2017)

nomdeplume said:


> Since we've come this far would anyone care to produce a rationale for going with the fixed max of 3x RAM?  Which in my case would be 24GB with 8GB currently allocated and managed by Windows.  SSD is 95% unused so space is no object.  Asking this a theoretical question in lieu of examining a real world usage requiring a PF that large.


Windows 7 is the only version of Windows I would bother with manually setting a smaller page file over the double/triple the RAM capacity it does. Windows 8/8.1, and 10 adjust the page file for you based on your usage of Apps/Programs in the first week or two weeks.


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## nomdeplume (Jan 11, 2017)

Interesting, the 8/10 part.  Going to actually look at improvements made in 10 without getting bogged down with the less salient 'features'.


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## Dethroy (Jan 11, 2017)

DeathtoGnomes said:


> @Bill_Bright I'm not answering that.


So you are agreeing then...


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## DeathtoGnomes (Jan 12, 2017)

Dethroy said:


> So you are agreeing then...


no, its baiting.


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