HDDs vs SSDs

Mohamed,
the reccomeded size of microsoft is related with complete kernel dumps. If you use minidumps you do not need very large page file.

My brother in law has two systems with ssds and 16gb of ram (each) for the last 1 1/2 year. Since I helped him to configure his systems I set his page file to 4 gb and he never reported any problems (he does a lot of HD video editing).

Panagiotis

 

Dear Panagiotis,

Thank you for the above. How one goes to set up the above?

4GB Pagefile.sys is pretty good and wouldn't create the erratic boot up behavior, such as 10-30 seconds freezing associated with SSDs and the mouse cursor uncontrollably going every where. After this time period the system stabilizes. This behavior happens if the Pagefile.sys is set too low.

I have four computers of my own, not my wife or children. Two desktops and two laptops and all these four computers are super duper with lots of memory and all of them have SSDs. I have tried various sizes of Pagefile.sys on them.

If one goes to Newegg.com and read the reviews of SSDs, one will find them complaining about this erratic behavior. Most sites which supposed to be experts on SSDs advise a very small Pagefile.sys or no Pagefile.sys, thus resulting in this erratic behavior on boot.

Best regards,

 

Panagiotis,

My guess is with 16 GB RAM, a pagefile of 300 MB would be sufficient.

 

A guess? You are going on a guess when dozens of Microsoft engineers using super-computers and years of experience and data have spent years fine-tuning Windows?

I am not going to pretend I am smarter than the Microsoft engineers.

And those people are ignorant too. Note that "programs" don't use the PF, the OS does. Why take resources away from the OS? It is wrong to assume by shutting down the PF, the OS will be forced to use faster RAM. That is not how memory management works. By shutting down the PF, you force the OS to use the slow hard drive in a less efficient manner.

Unless you really know your particular system inside and out, unless you know Windows inside and out, leave the PF alone.

That 20% has to do with hard drives and the boot drive at that. This link does NOT address the claims. Sorry.

 

See here
http://blog.nirsoft.net/2010/07/27/how-to-configure-windows-to-create-minidump-files-on-bsod/

Panagiotis

 

Could be, even with no paging file, but usually I prefer to assign as minimum the same amount of memory to the paging file with the minimum system requirements. For win7 64bit is 2gb... and I doubled it just in case.

Remember that even on systems with lots of ram a memory leaky program will eventually cause a bsod. Having a paging file in place helps to identify that something goes wrong since the system will start at some point to become lazy and unresponsive. But if you have no paging file or a very small one you the system will crash before the user notices it.

Panagiotis

 

Interesting . . .
All this talk about SSD makes me want to buy one.

 

cheers for that info, had never thought of that before

 

I don't think anybody said that. Some free space is always desirable because files are constantly being modified so there needs to be some room to handle that. However, once again, it is where and how the drive is used that matters most. More free space is needed on the boot drive, for example, than a drive used to store your family photos, backups or tunes.

You should ALWAYS buy more space than you need.

BSODs are typically (but not always) caused by hardware and/or HW driver problems, not memory leaks. However, a memory leak, which "roughly" is when a program refuses to release RAM it is no longer using and continues to consume more and more, will eventually bring even the most powerful computer to its knees.

 

You are welcome.

Memory Leaks can lead to BSODs.
A win7 example is the memory leak in the power manager of the OS
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/979444/en-us?fr=1

Panagiotis

 

They've tweaked it for the majority of users. That doesn't mean it's right for individuals. That's impossible.

Microsoft always has to take the safe route that solves everyone's needs the best. They're not tweaking Windows for super performance - when you install it it doesn't detect your CPU and compile for SSE4. It just works based on statistic averages and taking the safe route.

Anyways, if you're so interested in Microsoft's word I'm quite certain that they've blogged about not needing a page file after 12GB of RAM for the typical user.

Stop worrying about what MS is saying. No one should care - there's no secrets here, we all know what the page file does. Start thinking about what it actually does and it should be pretty clear whether you need it or not.

 

You are correct. I did not dispute that. Note your example is to just one stop code error. There are dozens of stop code errors and causes.

Memory leaks are due to programming errors (including the one in your example) and are pretty rare in the grand scheme of things. Those type bugs are normally - not always, but normally worked out during Beta testing. I am just saying that device or driver issues (something to do with hardware - like a RAM error, vs a leak) are more often the cause of the BSODs. Heat and incorrect voltages (some times from wayward over or underclocking, or an out-of-spec power supply.

Oh? I don't think so. I sure would not make such a claim unless I could link to it.

Windows will use the page file, regardless how much RAM you have. That is not a bad thing.

I do agree that the default settings are there to support the vast majority of users. My point is, that includes the vast majority of us too. I say don't dink with it, unless you truly are a Windows and Page File expert, or, you are desperately low on free disk space - then understand it is only a temporary measure.

It is important to realize, understand and accept that Windows 7 is not XP.

 

as evidenced here

 

According to that, I would think SSD's would be the preferred hard drive for laptops and the like, and HDD's would be fine for desktops because they are more likely to sit in the same spot for the life of the computer.

 

I agree. And many people are actually doing just that. But many others not bothering abut SSDs because of it's high price and other disadvantages.

 

I have an SSD in my laptop because I really do need the fast bootup. I drag my laptop into many meetings and often I have to present or sometimes I just need to pull it out at the last minute for an ad-hoc demo. Since I upgraded to an SSD, it made a huge difference in my readiness. I was considering using an iPad instead, but the SSD in the laptop changed the plans.

As for the desktop, it can take 5 mins to boot up or 15 mins, I really don't care. I'm out to get a coffee while it boots up. Once it's up, it is up for hours on end. Sometimes for days. I don't need blazing fast bootups on the desktop.

So I can relate to the comments above.

 

I install/uninstall lots of software which require reboots. So, for it is very much important to have SSDs on all my computers, whether Desktops or Laptops.

BTW, I keep the same configuration on all my computers.

Best regards,

 

http://www.corsair.com/en/support/faq/solid-state-drives/


Scroll down to the Do I need to tweak, and read the Answer,"Enough Said"

 

Yes I might agree with that. First now we are seeing drives that are consumer ready. First now are we beginning to see storage devices becoming maintenance-free black boxes. This is a good thing! By next year this philosophy should be in full swing across the industry. And older SSD's will be upgraded or have failed their way out of the field.

The only thing I will recommend is always to have some free space available.

This is good practice on any computer & its storage device; if nothing save for temporary files the o/s and applications might create. Or perhaps on a whim the user might come across some big project where they immediately need the room for whatever reason. This is advice that I believe will always be a part of computing, like oil changes and petrol is a part of owning a car.

Regarding indexing, sector interleaving, pre-fetching, cluster sizing, write-caching, defrag, $MFT utilities, windows tweakers, all that stuff we used to do to "Beef up" the performance of spinners is rapidly falling away. Knowledge of these things is fading in importance to the everyday user quicker than a dropped HDD gets crashed heads.

Understand the the first hard disk was the RAMAC engineered and built in the 1950's. That's like 60 year ago! And any mechanical hard disk is simply an evolution of these beasts.

http://gizmodo.com/5494858/ibm-305-ramac-the-grandaddy-of-modern-hard-drives
http://learntechnologiesonline.blogspot.com/2011/01/evolution-of-hard-drives-and-storage.html

SSD's do the same thing, just in a completely different way. As different as the plastic 787 is from the early canvas bi-planes.