pagefile.sys Options

[pandy]

My SSD is getting a little crammed. I could of course put seldom used programs on another drive, but I went for cleaning up since I know I have a lot of debris. Then I discovered my pagefile is 11 GB which seemed enormous to me.

But I found this.
https://www.poweradmin.com/blog/paging-file...-usage-counter/
It says the pagefile should ideally be between 1.5 and 8 times the size of your physical memory. I have 16 GB RAM, so mine should be between 24 and 64 GB!

Is what they say at that page correct and should I interpret it as I have more than enough RAM for my activities and therefor have a tiny (well...) pagefile? Or does it mean the pagefile is too small and I should increase its size?

Just trying to learn how this works. I have no performance issues. I guess my most resource intensive activity is image editing. I don't play games and such. OK, I've tried an AI software (Topaz) that took incredibly long time to process an image (like 5 minutes or more), but that could have been due to me not reading the manual and not using optimal settings. I didn't like it so I gave up and uninstalled it. I do use another AI program for noise reduction and it's fast enough, matter of seconds. So apart from this one program - no issues.

[pandy]

So you lowered it. You got what you deserve then, fiddling with Windows defaults! 🤗

[Christian J]

I see it more as a clash between a poorly optimized game and a poorly optimized OS.

[pandy]

About SSD drives losing data, I found this.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/427602/debu...-after-all.html

If that's true it's a myth, at least when it comes to how we use them. If they are right that can happen at the end of life for the drive and if they are right again, a consumer never reaches that point. I don't know if I feel all that confident.

BTW this should probably mean that it's safest to buy a new SSD when we buy a new computer and not move the old one to the new, at least not use it for important stuff like the OS. Maybe use it as a secondary drive for other programs which would let us use a smaller drive basically for the OS alone.

[Christian J]

About SSD drives losing data, I found this.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/427602/debu...-after-all.html

Note that the article just debunks data loss happening "after a few days", only to quietly admit that an unpowered SSD will lose data after a 1-2 years further down in the text (just like I wrote from the start ):

"Even a worn-out SSD would still go a year without data loss, according to the original presentation, and that’s while being stored at 87 degrees Fahreneit the entire time."

the other article it links to also confirms this:

"If you store your SSD someplace that averages 72 degrees Fahrenheit, a far more likely scenario, you’re talking two-years-plus according to this table."

To me the "few days" scenario in these articles looks like a strawman, intended to distract from the real issue: that SSDs seem unsuitable for archiving, or for use in rarely run backup PCs.

If that's true it's a myth, at least when it comes to how we use them. If they are right that can happen at the end of life for the drive and if they are right again, a consumer never reaches that point.

What happens after a long service life seems unrelated to the issue with unpowered SSDs.

BTW this should probably mean that it's safest to buy a new SSD when we buy a new computer and not move the old one to the new, at least not use it for important stuff like the OS. Maybe use it as a secondary drive for other programs which would let us use a smaller drive basically for the OS alone.

Perhaps the old one could be used for pagefile.sys in the new PC.

If you used the SSD for archiving in the old PC, moving the SSD to the new PC build should make the data on it last longer than if you left the SSD unpowered. Or you could copy the data to another backup medium, of course.

[pandy]

If that's true it's a myth, at least when it comes to how we use them. If they are right that can happen at the end of life for the drive and if they are right again, a consumer never reaches that point.

What happens after a long service life seems unrelated to the issue with unpowered SSDs.

The interviewed guy says the data loss only happens when the drive's end of life, not when it's fit as a fiddle. So I read it anyway.

[Christian J]

Me: what if my unplugged SSD loses data after being unpowered for 1-2 years?

PC World: don't worry, your SSD won't lose data after a few days.




See instead https://www.pcworld.com/article/427435/deat...eliability.html (which the article links to):

"This is not to belittle the underlying message that non-volatile memory media isn’t forever, and in no way suitable for archiving.
...
ambient temperature of 87 degrees Fahrenheit as the cause of failure in data retention in client-side (consumer) SSDs after only a year. Notice that’s not a few days. If you store your SSD someplace that averages 72 degrees Fahrenheit, a far more likely scenario, you’re talking two-years-plus according to this table.
...
NAND can’t retain data forever, or even as long as other types of media (hard drives, optical)
...
NAND and SSDs have never been touted as archival storage, but those degradation facts are rarely highlighted. That’s why we have this discussion every couple of years."

[pandy]

Are you saying I misread?

[Christian J]

How would I know?

[pandy]

I interpreted it as data loss happens only when the drive is close to worn out, even if it's left without power for a long time.

[Christian J]

I interpreted it as data loss happens only when the drive is close to worn out, even if it's left without power for a long time.

That might be correct for Enterprise SSDs:

SSDs can lose data in as little as 7 days without power

"If a drive is stored at 25C or operated 40C, expected data retention for a client drive is 105 weeks, or nearly two years. Let the storage temperature creep up to 30C, or 86F, and the drive should still hold data for an entire year.
...
Enterprise SSDs, however, have entirely different characteristics. An enterprise drive stored at 25C and operated at 40C has a retention rate of just 20 weeks. In worst-case scenarios or high storage temps, the data on an enterprise drive can start to fail within seven days."

But how is an Enterprise SSD defined, is it the same SSD hardware as a Client SSD, just being run 24/7 in a server?