SSD longevity

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file every
once in a while.

On 14/01/2013 6:36 PM, John Doe wrote:
My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file every
once in a while.

The worries about SSD longevity are way overblown, so leave the swapfile
on it if you like. However, it is a good idea to never defragment an
SSD. Not only is it useless to defrag an SSD, since it has no moving
parts, it does actually add to the write load on the SSD uselessly.

Yousuf Khan

Yousuf Khan bbbl67 spammenot.yahoo.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file
every once in a while.

The worries about SSD longevity are way overblown,

In my experience, that is not true. Longevity or quality, in my
experience, early SSDs sucked. I usually like your authoritative
opinion, but have you owned any SSDs?

so leave the swapfile on it if you like.

Apparently it's much better than a swapfile on a conventional hard
drive. So of course I like.

However, it is a good idea to never defragment an SSD.

Yeah, I know that. But my post has nothing to do about that.

Not only is it useless to defrag an SSD, since it has no moving
parts, it does actually add to the write load on the SSD
uselessly.

So you are concerned about SSD longevity, but you aren't concerned
about the swapfile (the most active reading and writing to a hard
drive)...

On 15/01/2013 01:39, John Doe wrote:
Yousuf Khan bbbl67 spammenot.yahoo.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file
every once in a while.

The worries about SSD longevity are way overblown,

In my experience, that is not true. Longevity or quality, in my
experience, early SSDs sucked. I usually like your authoritative
opinion, but have you owned any SSDs?

so leave the swapfile on it if you like.

Apparently it's much better than a swapfile on a conventional hard
drive. So of course I like.

However, it is a good idea to never defragment an SSD.

Yeah, I know that. But my post has nothing to do about that.

Not only is it useless to defrag an SSD, since it has no moving
parts, it does actually add to the write load on the SSD
uselessly.

So you are concerned about SSD longevity, but you aren't concerned
about the swapfile (the most active reading and writing to a hard
drive)...


I am sure I read somewhere that its not a good idea to have a swapfile
on an SSD drive, something to do with the number of read and writes on
the SSD.

As I say, I am not exactly sure, but that was the gist of it.

On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 23:36:43 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
wrote:

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file every
once in a while.
Except for very early hardware "automatic wear leveling" is applied by
the device to minimize wear at one spot, so in practice you don't have
to worry about "defragmenting" the swap file.

It might be useful to reallocate the swap file each time you boot
the system in order help the device optimize performance. (This
allows the SSD's TRIM stuff to act more efficiently and it is highly
likely that it results in less fragmenting in the logical view that
the operating system sees, which gives a slight performance
improvement. It also, depending on how the TRIM stuff works, allows
for the actual data on the SSD to be less fragmented, but
the location of the initial blocks doesn't matter. It is the location
of the written pages that matter, so it isn't clear to me if
performance gets better or worse. (With luck the initial new
allocation will be in many pieces and the freed stuff will have been
merged and defragmented by the device's TRIM support by the time that
the pages are actually written.

Note that most disk defragmenting programs don't actually defragment
the data on the SSD. However, if you did have a program that actually
caused the data to be defragmented on the SSD, you would likely find
that the improvement in performance for SSD's was greater than that
gained by defragmenting a spinning, cylinder oriented device, which
is the opposite of what most people think.

Defragmenting a
"Defragmenting" an SSD will normally not defragment the actual
device.

BobH bob despammer.com wrote:

John Doe wrote:

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter.
I could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if
that might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap
file every once in a while.

I am sure I read somewhere that its not a good idea to have a
swapfile on an SSD drive, something to do with the number of
read and writes on the SSD.

But, apparently it is a good idea if you are interested in speed.
That's why I made the above suggestion.

The reply authors (plural) should try reading the material that
they are replying to.

Firstly, just because I mentioned Windows XP's disk defragmenter
does not mean that I'm talking about defragmenting the SSD. I'm
not. As stated, I used it to view the drive contents. That's all.

I'm talking about decreasing the wear on an SSD, that is caused by
using a swap file. Anybody get that? That's why I posted.

And yeah, most people say that defragmenting an SSD is a bad
thing. That includes Intel, in their own SSD tools utility.
Obviously defragmenting an SSD is a bad thing. Everybody should
know that.

--











Mark F mark53916 gmail.com wrote:

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On Mon, 14 Jan 2013 23:36:43 +0000 (UTC), John Doe
jdoe usenetlove.invalid wrote:

My SSD swap file shows up in Windows XP's disk defragmenter. I
could move it simply by increasing its size. I wonder if that
might help extend the life of an SSD, to move the swap file every
once in a while.
Except for very early hardware "automatic wear leveling" is applied by
the device to minimize wear at one spot, so in practice you don't have
to worry about "defragmenting" the swap file.

It might be useful to reallocate the swap file each time you boot
the system in order help the device optimize performance. (This
allows the SSD's TRIM stuff to act more efficiently and it is highly
likely that it results in less fragmenting in the logical view that
the operating system sees, which gives a slight performance
improvement. It also, depending on how the TRIM stuff works, allows
for the actual data on the SSD to be less fragmented, but
the location of the initial blocks doesn't matter. It is the location
of the written pages that matter, so it isn't clear to me if
performance gets better or worse. (With luck the initial new
allocation will be in many pieces and the freed stuff will have been
merged and defragmented by the device's TRIM support by the time that
the pages are actually written.

Note that most disk defragmenting programs don't actually defragment
the data on the SSD. However, if you did have a program that actually
caused the data to be defragmented on the SSD, you would likely find
that the improvement in performance for SSD's was greater than that
gained by defragmenting a spinning, cylinder oriented device, which
is the opposite of what most people think.

Defragmenting a
"Defragmenting" an SSD will normally not defragment the actual
device.

On Tue, 15 Jan 2013, BobH wrote:

Apparently it's much better than a swapfile on a conventional hard
drive. So of course I like.

However, it is a good idea to never defragment an SSD.

Yeah, I know that. But my post has nothing to do about that.

Not only is it useless to defrag an SSD, since it has no moving
parts, it does actually add to the write load on the SSD
uselessly.

So you are concerned about SSD longevity, but you aren't concerned
about the swapfile (the most active reading and writing to a hard
drive)...


I am sure I read somewhere that its not a good idea to have a swapfile on an
SSD drive, something to do with the number of read and writes on the SSD.

As I say, I am not exactly sure, but that was the gist of it.

And swap file is generally to "make more ram". People buying expensive
SSD drives for speed shouldn't need swap, since they'll have spent money
first on filling up the computer with loads of RAM. If it still needs
swap, then it hasn't got enough enough RAM for whatever is being done with
the computer. More ram means less writing to the drive, which is the
situation people want no matter whether it's a mechanical drive ("slow")
or a solid state drive ("too many writes").

THis isn't 1994 anymore, when a computer might have 8megs of RAM and
dedicating a few times 8megs of hard drive space for swap meant a lot more
capable computer, although slow. A lot of the time swap really was needed
back in that era.

Now with everyone having so much RAM, swap is a lot less important, except
for someone pushing limits.

In 2001 I didn't find 32megs of RAM was too little, I only upgraded as I
found more RAM in junk computers. There was even a period with that
computer where I forgot to turn on swap, and I didn't even notice it.

I didn't see a lot of swap used when I was running 512megs of RAM until
October, and this used computer replacement with 2gigs of RAM isn't really
using swap (so I suspect the few megs being used is just overhead).

Michael

Michael Black wrote:

a swap file is generally to "make more ram".

Bull****.

People buying expensive SSD drives for speed shouldn't need
swap, since they'll have spent money first on filling up the
computer with loads of RAM. If it still needs swap, then it
hasn't got enough enough RAM for whatever is being done with the
computer. More ram means less writing to the drive, which is
the situation people want no matter whether it's a mechanical
drive ("slow") or a solid state drive ("too many writes").

THis isn't 1994 anymore, when a computer might have 8megs of RAM
and dedicating a few times 8megs of hard drive space for swap
meant a lot more capable computer, although slow. A lot of the
time swap really was needed back in that era.

I have 32 bit Windows, usable RAM is 3.24 GB. But that is mostly
beside the point. If you really think that an SSD is not very
useful on ANY system, you obviously have never used one, or you
are blind and/or ignorant.

--












Now with everyone having so much RAM, swap is a lot less
important, except for someone pushing limits.

In 2001 I didn't find 32megs of RAM was too little, I only
upgraded as I found more RAM in junk computers. There was even
a period with that computer where I forgot to turn on swap, and
I didn't even notice it.

I didn't see a lot of swap used when I was running 512megs of
RAM until October, and this used computer replacement with 2gigs
of RAM isn't really using swap (so I suspect the few megs being
used is just overhead).

Michael

In the last episode of , John Doe
said:

The reply authors (plural) should try reading the material that
they are replying to.

Firstly, just because I mentioned Windows XP's disk defragmenter
does not mean that I'm talking about defragmenting the SSD. I'm
not. As stated, I used it to view the drive contents. That's all.

I'm talking about decreasing the wear on an SSD, that is caused by
using a swap file. Anybody get that? That's why I posted.

XP doesn't have a swapfile. It does, however, have a page file.

How often are you seeing pages get paged out to disk? If you're not
seeing writes on a regular basis (as is generally the case, unless your
system is actually running low on RAM) then it probably makes little
difference if you leave it on the SSD or not.

--
The nice thing about standards, there is enough for everyone to have their own.