Put the pagefile on SSD or HDD?

[Venlord]

I was wondering where would be the best place to put the pagefile the SSD or the HDD. I have read that putting it on SSD could help with performance but reduce the lifespan. I am not sure how significant that is.

Right now have the pagefile on the HDD. I have already tried experimenting with no pagefile at all and then bad things start to happen like out of memory errors when I play Fallout 4.

System specifications:

OS: Window 10 Pro 64 bit
CPU: FX 6300
GPU: R9 380 4GB
MOBO: Gigabyte 970a UD3P rev 2.0
RAM: 2 X 4GB crucial ballistix sport 1600mhz
SSD: Samsung EVO 850 250GB <---OS is here
HDD: WD Blue 7200RPM 1TB

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Always the OS drive, regardless of being SSD.
The system can run into various issues if you put PageFile on another drive.
Just go to PageFile setting, set to None, click Ok out of those two windows to apply; then restart Windows. This rids your drive of the current Page temp file. Then once back in OS go back to that config and set Min & Max to the same amount, thus the file won't change size and or get fragmented. 4096 min & max is plenty. Otherwise go to 16GB RAM and then u won't need any page file. You get out of memory because for games like Fallout4, 8GB RAM is not enough, it will chew at your PageFile with that amount of RAM just to run a web browser and a game like Falllout4

[Scott (Australia)]

512MB on the OS drive, then +3,584MB to 16GB on the SSD.

Microsoft Windows contains special write back buffers for the pagefile when stored on an SSD and minimizes wear level using advanced algorithms.

It helps if the boot drive is an SSD, then just use 4,096MB minimum to 16GB max on that drive.

[Venlord]

Thank you for the help guys I will try putting the pagefile on the OS drive instead and see how it goes.

[Scott (Australia)]

Originally posted by Ossobuko:

You cannot put the pagefile in another place. It will be in C, where the Windows is. This is not a subject open to debate.

LOL, it's under Advanced Settings.

Has been for 16 years or more.

You can place a pagefile on each drive and run them in parallel to boost performance.

[sup]

Don't use a pagefile if you have 8 GB or more of RAM.
Extra info: You cannot change the location of hybernation file. But pagefile could be changed.
Also pagefile doesn't boost performance. It is a fail safe and extra allocation for ram in case you have less ram programs demands. All the pagefile does is it prevents windows from giving you a low memory warning and close programs or games you are running.

[Scott (Australia)]

Originally posted by Ossobuko:

Don't use a pagefile if you have 8 GB or more of RAM.
Extra info: You cannot change the location of hybernation file. But pagefile could be changed.

If you only have 8GB RAM and no pagefile then 64-bit games will crash with OUT OF MEMORY errors.

[Venlord]

Originally posted by Ossobuko:

Don't use a pagefile if you have 8 GB or more of RAM.
Extra info: You cannot change the location of hybernation file. But pagefile could be changed.

I have already tried turning the pagefile off, but I run into issues when I do.

[just.kamk]

Originally posted by Ossobuko:

Don't use a pagefile if you have 8 GB or more of RAM.
Extra info: You cannot change the location of hybernation file. But pagefile could be changed.

Do NOT deactivate the pagefile. There's no gain from doing so, but programs might run into issues.

Btw.: you can change the location of the hibernation file as well, just not this easily, and it's not recommended for a novice either.

[sup]

A pagefile in a SSD has possibility of being catastropic. But of course in most cases the extra writes added by the pagefile is a drop in the ocean. User must decide himself to balance the size of the pagefile. Without the knowledge of system specs, one cannot simply decide what to do.
Also a hybernation file in a SSD is a mistake. Should be turned of. Unless the user needs it desperately.

[Hawk Firestorm]

Put the pagefile on a HDD, it'll use a different Sata channel and unless you don't have much ram it won't be used or accessed that much, unless the system starts running out of Ram.

There's no real benefit to shutting off the pagefile even on systems with High ammounts of ram, and it leaves the system open to running out of Ram in applications etc, and having no where to swap stuff out to disk.

Windows will use Ram first then the pagefile.

And you can both specify a custom location/multiple locations and custom pagefile size.

Benefit of defining a custom pagefile size is the system doesn't ever resize it Automatically and it tends not to become defragmentated, but has the downside that you can specify too small a size.

You can also specify multiple system managed pagefiles on any drive you own.

Swapfile.sys can also be moved quite easily without editing the registry.

[Venlord]

I just removed the pagefile on the secondary drive and made on the OS drive. I had no idea there was a hibernation file too. But I guess that makes sense since data is stored on the drive when you set the computer to hibernate.

[Scott (Australia)]

Each SATA 6Gbps channel can do 572.2 MB/sec, it is almost never saturated at 100% load.

Tip: You can use POWERCFG to disable the hibernation file and reclaim the drive space.

[Hawk Firestorm]

Swapfile.sys (the Hibernation file) is only used when Hibernation is enabled, otherwise really you don't have to worry about it.

[Venlord]

Ok thanks for everybody who commented. Very useful input

[just.kamk]

Originally posted by Ossobuko:

A pagefile in a SSD has possibility of being catastropic. But of course in most cases the extra writes added by the pagefile is a drop in the ocean. User must decide himself to balance the size of the pagefile. Without the knowledge of system specs, one cannot simply decide what to do.
Also a hybernation file in a SSD is a mistake. Should be turned of. Unless the user needs it desperately.

Originally posted by Ossobuko:

No, the location of the hybernation file cannot be changed. Please show proof.

The Evo 850 will laugh at those few hostwrites due paging and hibernating. Nothing catastrophic will happen. A few more hostwrites, your "drops in the ocean", are by far better than some HDD slowing everything down, and constantly spinning up again - the latter will be a problem.

Yes, you can move the hibernation file, just google it.