is it safe to use pagefile on ssd (while all day gaming, with 4GB Ram)

[Hashimx10]

what will happen if i (buy, because i never had ssd) use ssd as my windows drive and make 16GB pagefile on it? is it bad for ssd life? is it going to die much sooner?
i means pc with very low Ram(4GB to 8GB) and no graphics card (thanks to AMD APU, which still provide even feature level Direcx12 with many older processors too) but playing (or just trying to play with potty fps) heavy games and hard disk is always staying under stress when playing(because pagefile is using HDD as ram, continuously read and write)
what will happen if i do it 8+ hours daily?

[Chiyawa]

Well, it's hard to predict how your SSD usage will be because it depends on the work load of your system. If you are constantly out of physical RAM and your system constantly swapping data in and out of the SSD, then your SSD will be under stress and might fail prematurely (remember, SSD can only write to a memory cell so many times before the memory cell is burnt out). If that is your use case, you might need to get a good SSD with DRAM cache and preferably using TLC NAND flash instead of QLC.

 

I would strongly suggest you to upgrade your RAM if possible.

[mariushm]

Your SSD is rated for an amount of writes, let's say 100 TB for a 120 GB SSD. 

 

As you get close to that 100 TB of writes, some memory cells on the SSD become unreliable (can no longer accept new data, they become read only, sort of)  and the SSD controller can no longer use that portion of flash memory. The SSD has a portion of flash memory hidden from you from the moment you buy it, and as such areas degrade and can no longer accept writes, the ssd controller replaces those portions with portions of the memory hidden from you, to extend the life of the SSD.

 

As a regular home user, you are unlikely to write hundreds of GB of data each day. You may install a 50 GB game one day, and then play the game for a week or two, then install another game - over time, in a month, the average would probably be a few GB of writes per day.

 

A page file is supposed to be used by the operating system to hold data that has to be moved from ram to make room in the ram for the game or applications you currently use. Stuff gets dumped there, there's room made in the ram, you use the ram, then when you alt-tab back to that application, the operating system reads the data from the page file and puts it back on ram.

 

I have no clue about how much data is saved to page file daily as you regularly use your computer, but you can simply use a software like Aida64 or HWInfo to read the SMART information for your SSD and one of the records will be amount of data written to Flash memory.

Log the measurements (take a screenshot or write them down), then use your computer normally, and after eight hours, measure everything again, and you'll see how much was written to the ssd during that period of 8 hours.

You can then multiply that amount of MB or GB and estimate how many days the SSD would last.

 

Here's for example what Aida64 shows for my boot drive, a Sandisk X400 SSD - it's a 128 GB ssd with MLC memory, which means memory cells support more than 2-3000 erase cycles, and this particular drive is rated for at least 100 TB of writes : 

 

I keep my pc running 24/7, and that's why you see 955 days of power on time, yours will be much smaller.

You can see NAND GB Written at 37747 GB ... that's 36 TB of writes over the life of the drive, in my case 3 years.

You can also see (your SSD may not report all these, or may be written differently) the minimum p/e cycles, maximum p/e cycles, average p/e cycles ...  those tell me that the average number of erase cycles for chunks of flash memory is around 317... out of 2-3000 maximum erases in my case.... so there's still plenty of life remaining on the memory chips.

Drives with TLC memory have lower erase cycles, usually around 1000, and for QLC memory, the number of erase cycles drops to around 300-800 ... but closer to around 500.

 

 

 

 

 

[Hashimx10]

Looks like i can't use ssd as "virtual Ram for gaming" because they made it to die after specific usage(same as hp printer cartridges)

maybe i better get some more Ram and skip ssd? 8GB used Ram(1600mhz) cost 30$ here

or maybe build my own ssd, based on DDR5 which could be used as Ram for more than 100 years (in my dreams )

is Hard Disk is ready to read and write for unlimited times??

[Hashimx10]

Lexar 128GB NS100 SATA SSD (new one) is at the price of used 8GB DDR3 1600mhz Ram

[Hashimx10]

what will happen when i read and write the "allowed" amount of data on ssd (100TB or what ever)... sudden death of ssd? or slow speed? or reduced usable memory size? or maybe mostly use memory sectors will become bad sectors?(and quarantined for sick-urity reasons )

[Chiyawa]

On 9/12/2021 at 6:30 PM, Hashimx10 said:

is Hard Disk is ready to read and write for unlimited times??

Hard disk, as long as there are no sudden vibration shock, can theoretically read and write for infinity. However, if the platter or the disk began to corrode, it will also consider dead as the data will be corrode along the platter. Also, another thing to keep in mind that the magnet can wore off, but it'll take a very long time for it to do so. Technically, many data scientist still believe magnetic media can retain data for a very long time and the data stored in there may be preserved virtually for centuries, although we have no means to verify it.

 

On 9/12/2021 at 6:30 PM, Hashimx10 said:

or maybe build my own ssd, based on DDR5

When comes to SATA, even an old SDRAM can still keep up the speed. SATA 3rd Gen can only transfer up to 6Gbps of data (4.8 Gbps if included the line code, an error sensing mechanism). So you don't need DDR5 for SATA. SDRAM Can transfer about 6.4Gbps.

 

On 9/12/2021 at 6:46 PM, Hashimx10 said:

Lexar 128GB NS100 SATA SSD (new one) is at the price of used 8GB DDR3 1600mhz Ram

Yeah, that's about right. Although, I think you can still get a better deal.

 

On 9/12/2021 at 7:18 PM, Hashimx10 said:

what will happen when i read and write the "allowed" amount of data on ssd (100TB or what ever)...

You can still use your SSD as usual, however, you may need to find replacement soon as the die cell may become degrade and the SSD can become unstable or failing.