SSD Pagefile or no?

[PoorlyHung]

Hi everyone, Happy New Year!

 

I was looking at the wear leveling in the Samsung Magician software, for the 840 Pro 256gb, in the system I built for my mother.  She literally does nothing but web surf, and edit a few photos.  So I was kind of alarmed when the wear leveling said 30 in magician, with only 2tb written to the drive, since it was purchased over a year ago.  WTF?  Superfetch is disabled, but I did notice a gargantuion (system managed) pagefile, of 24Gb.  I overbuilt her system, she has 16gb of Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133mhz memory, so a pagefile that big seems stupid......right?  Should I turn off the pagefile, or set it to like 800mb?  I have the recommend 10% over provisioning setup, and have RAPID mode enabled.

 

Please help a dumb redneck understand.

 

Thanks

 

sys specs:

 

i7 3770k @4.5Ghz

Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe mobo

Windows 7 64 Bit

16gb Corsair Dominator Platinum 2133mhz

Samsung 840 Pro 256gb

WD Black 2tb Storage

GTX 650ti Boost 2gb

Corsair AX 860 PSU

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

I have at least 4GB pagefile on my systems so it's there if I go over

[Boink]

Given what she is doing, turning off the pagefile should be fine. Otherwise just shrink it down.

[PoorlyHung]

Thanks for the replies. 

 

I'm just perplexed how the system determined a 24Gb pagefile was neccessary.  I'm guessing that large pagefile is the reason for the wear leveling score in Magician, and I'm assuming those numbers are actually accurate?

[DirkW]

Thanks for the replies. 

 

I'm just perplexed how the system determined a 24Gb pagefile was neccessary.  I'm guessing that large pagefile is the reason for the wear leveling score in Magician, and I'm assuming those numbers are actually accurate?

 

Once upon a time, there was a formula: recommended pagefile size = RAM size x 1.5 - and that's probably where those 24 GB come from - but it dates back to times, where much less RAM was common, so I wouldn't follow that formula with higher amounts of RAM. 3-4 GB should probably be enough for most systems / users. If there weren't reports about some software requiring the existence of a pagefile, regardless of the amount of available RAM, most systems with 16GB or above would probably not need any pagefile at all.

[typographie]

As an experiment I ran my system for a few weeks with the page file off and only 8 GB of physical RAM. The only problem I ever had was in Photoshop, and only when I was intentionally trying to see what it took to get the application to crash. While I wouldn't recommend doing it with only 8 GB, in my experience games, applications, Chrome, etc. all ran perfectly fine provided I wasn't abusing them on purpose.

 

With 16 GB and a light usage scenario, there should be absolutely no problem with just turning it off as far as I can tell.

[PoorlyHung]

Once upon a time, there was a formula: recommended pagefile size = RAM size x 1.5 - and that's probably where those 24 GB come from - but it dates back to times, where much less RAM was common, so I wouldn't follow that formula with higher amounts of RAM. 3-4 GB should probably be enough for most systems / users. If there weren't reports about some software requiring the existence of a pagefile, regardless of the amount of available RAM, most systems with 16GB or above would probably not need any pagefile at all.

 

As an experiment I ran my system for a few weeks with the page file off and only 8 GB of physical RAM. The only problem I ever had was in Photoshop, and only when I was intentionally trying to see what it took to get the application to crash. While I wouldn't recommend doing it with only 8 GB, in my experience games, applications, Chrome, etc. all ran perfectly fine provided I wasn't abusing them on purpose.

 

With 16 GB and a light usage scenario, there should be absolutely no problem with just turning it off as far as I can tell.

 

 

Great insight, thank you both. 

[FSBAlston]

Once upon a time, there was a formula: recommended pagefile size = RAM size x 1.5 - and that's probably where those 24 GB come from - but it dates back to times, where much less RAM was common, so I wouldn't follow that formula with higher amounts of RAM. 3-4 GB should probably be enough for most systems / users. If there weren't reports about some software requiring the existence of a pagefile, regardless of the amount of available RAM, most systems with 16GB or above would probably not need any pagefile at all.

this, and windows still does it.

Side note, you can set it as low as 800mb for kernal dumps (crash logs), but imo 2gb is the sweet spot. You do need pagefiling for legacy programs that assume you already have it.

[PoorlyHung]

I have it set to 800mb min, and 5Gb max.

[FSBAlston]

I have it set to 800mb min, and 5Gb max.

I'd recommend setting it to the same amount min and max on an ssd, whichever amount you set.

[PoorlyHung]

While I had a Samsung tech on the phone for my wife's Evo drive RMA, I asked him.  He said Samsung recommends setting it to 200mb min, and 2Gb max, for systems with over 4gb of system memory.