[SOLVED] Moving File Paging Cache from Evo M.2 to Mechanical 500GB Hard Drive

ccoo84

Distinguished
Sep 10, 2013
434
5
18,815
I got a Evo M.2 & was wondering I set the paging to a mechanical drive will there be any kind of benefit? i'm not sure if its 7200 or 5200 rpm..

I heard that having a separate paging drive use to speed up mechanical drives I'm wondering if this still applies because my paging file starts to hit 100gb when my Evo is only 500gb

Thanks
 
Solution
I would keep the paging on the NVMe SSD. Set windows to limit the size to like 10gb, I highly doubt you need a huge page file.

Optane can be good if you need to accellerate a large HDD, but I still wouldnt put a paging file on there.

boju

Titan
Ambassador
Paging do you mean pagefile / virtual memory? If so i doubt its reaching 100GB?. See task manager under memory. Should see a value like xx/xx under committed. The left number of / represents combined physical and virtual memory out of total mapped size. Minus physical memory from used memory total if it exceeds physical memory to get remaining virtual memory.

Pagefile is best left on SSD for best performance.
 

gasaraki

Distinguished
Jun 11, 2008
1,298
14
19,665
One, as everyone said the pagefile should not be 100GB. With 32GB of ram, 4GB to 6GB of page file is PLENTY.

Two, yes move it to the mechanical not for performance but for the life of your SSD drive. With that much ram, the pagefile is not going to affect your performance.
 

boju

Titan
Ambassador
Two, yes move it to the mechanical not for performance but for the life of your SSD drive. With that much ram, the pagefile is not going to affect your performance.

  1. Pagefile wont harm an SSD's life span. Can write 20GB a day for 10 years before it fails, if it fails.
  2. Windows and applications/games can and will still use the pagefile somewhat, being on a mechanical drive is not a good idea.
 
I could be wrong...and recent releases of Windows10 may have 'fixed' it...but I seem to recall that there must be a page file located on the same partition as the Windows installation (the system partition) or it can become unstable.

But in modern systems, especially one with over 16Gb of RAM, page file accesses are extremely rare unless doing something extreme. I think the best advice you'll get is to just leave it on 'AUTO', on the system partition. The system will create a small one but rarely access it.

Don't ever try to out-dumb Windows. It wins, every time.
 
Last edited:

boju

Titan
Ambassador
I could be wrong...and recent releases of Windows10 may have 'fixed' it...but I seem to recall that there must be a page file located on the same partition as the Windows installation (the system partition) or it can become unstable.

You're right in a sense, it's not because of the pagefile being unstable but more to do with Windows 10 constantly changing pagefile size automatically depending on use while doing something like gaming. For the pagefile to be on a mechanical drive for this reason alone would degrade performance. Performance with Windows self managed pagefile size on an SSD isn't something to be concerned about albeit, bit of tweaking and setting pagefile limits can improve.
 

ccoo84

Distinguished
Sep 10, 2013
434
5
18,815
Hey guy's thank you.. You all have shed some light.
do you guy's think Intel's Optane memory m.2's worth checking out for their cache benefits?
Maybe installing it in the 2nd m.2 expansion slot using it as a Paging cache in a new install of windows 10, just for your guy's opinion on the matter?
 
Last edited:

RobCrezz

Expert
Ambassador
I would keep the paging on the NVMe SSD. Set windows to limit the size to like 10gb, I highly doubt you need a huge page file.

Optane can be good if you need to accellerate a large HDD, but I still wouldnt put a paging file on there.
 
Solution