pagefile stuff is confusing the heck out of me

[Spindoc]

16gb ram
1tb hdd (music, photos, blah)
256gb ssd ( pretty much filled, gaming,OS,primary boot), only 4gb left, maybe relevant?
1tb ssd(gaming)

Need help with messing around with Samsung Magician menus and virtual memory, pagefile.

In the Samsung Magician program is has an option of 'RAPID mode' which enables a bunch of options that you can activate or deactivate, one of them being virtual memory, I started messing around with this and reading about it and have just confused myself even more. I keep reading 'well you dont wana set it too high or blahblah bad thigns will happen' and have NO idea whats too low. My worry is that my 256gb gaming ssd only has about 4gb left of space on it so i dont wana set the pagefile here too big, and then what happens when it IS too big and I set it to 5gb and it cant hold that much? does it goes to the next ssd? just it just blow up? OR since I pretty much have NO space left on the 256gb ssd should I just select NONE for that too and just put all of the recommended 'double my ram space' on the 1tb ssd (which is currently completely empty)?

I'm at the point where I just want someone to r/explainitlikeim5 and tell me explicitly what setting to enable to manually make my pagefiles for each of my 3 storage devices. From what I understand, youre supposed to custom set the limit of your OS ssd and then set the OTHER ssd to system managed (essentially using all the ram space for this), and then completely leave the HDD alone with 'none' selected for pagefile. my question is, is this correct, and what should my RANGE be for the OS ssd?

 

[madmatt30]

Disable the pagefile on both of your ssd's - enable it on the traditional 1tb drive.

With 16gb ram ,apart from the reserved 256mb bit for bsod error reports ,you will rarely need any pagefile usage whatsoever anyway.
Down to 5gb on a 240gb ssd is not a good idea - you will be losing a lot of performance on that drive at the moment.

 

[Spindoc]

Disable the pagefile on both of your ssd's - enable it on the traditional 1tb drive.

With 16gb ram ,apart from the reserved 256mb bit for bsod error reports ,you will rarely need any pagefile usage whatsoever anyway.
Down to 5gb on a 240gb ssd is not a good idea - you will be losing a lot of performance on that drive at the moment.

omg , thank you for your concise reply, seriously. So even though my OS is on my 256gb ssd I should still disable on both and put all 32gb of pagefile on my 1tb HDD? or maybe the OS being on the ssd has nothing to do with anything (purely curious).

you mention that it is not good to have only 4gb left. Could you explain a little more? Should my SSDs not be used in full before switching, essentially keeping an even amount on both? does that affect performance or something? Thanks for the help btw

Also, this is the first I'm hearing of 'put the pagefile on the slower storage device', I'm sorry to ask so many questions but could you explain the seemingly contradictory advice? or maybe im just an idiot and read those pages wrong haha xD

 

[madmatt30]

You only need a single pagefile - putting it on the least frequently accessed or largest drive is always going to be the best solution.
With an ssd (& especially one with the os installed) you should really keep a minimum of 10gb free IMO.

Do you have hibernate enabled on your PC ??
If you do but don't really use it ( I see no point with the 7-15 second boot times a decent ssd gives)
Then disable it , can give you anything between 5-20gb space back.

 

[Spindoc]

You only need a single pagefile - putting it on the least frequently accessed or largest drive is always going to be the best solution.
With an ssd (& especially one with the os installed) you should really keep a minimum of 10gb free IMO.

Do you have hibernate enabled on your PC ??
If you do but don't really use it ( I see no point with the 7-15 second boot times a decent ssd gives)
Then disable it , can give you anything between 5-20gb space back.

That makes absolutely total sense, thank you again! I do have hibernate/hybrid sleep disabled as I read something about it writing to your ssd and burning through the life of it so I checked to see and it had already been disabled, thankfully.

Though pressing on, it sounds like from what you suggest, SSDs lose performance as they collect more data. Does it then make sense to evenly distribute between my 2 SSDs, or even go as far to transfer EVERYTHING to the 1tb since the space is just bigger and only distribute evenly when the 1tb gets down to 256gb?

 

[madmatt30]

They do indeed lose read & write performance once space gets low - & on an os drive background reading/writing is happening constantly.
Id be wanting around 15-20gb free on that smallest drive personally to ensure optimal performance

So yes ,seeing as you have both a secondary ssd & also a traditional drive it makes absolute sense to spread your data around a little.

 

[photonboy]

Windows Pagefile:
Use default settings.

I have a 250GB Samsung SSD and under "Virtual Memory" (from "Performance Options" found through Control Panel...) it shows:

a) non-OS drives as "NONE", and
b) Windows drive as:
16MB minimum
4593 recommended
1442 currently allocated

*The Pagefile is used when you run out of System Memory (i.e. 16GB DDR3). You can theoretically DISABLE it but it's really just best to let Windows use it. Unless you were really hurting for space and wanted to manually go 1GB max and min to save 3GB.


SSD overprovisioning:
Samsung Magician. Use recommended settings. You can REDUCE this for larger capacity drives. I have 10% for 250GB SSD and 5% for 1TB SSD.

Samsung Rapid:
Samsung chooses automatically unless that's been changed in newer version of Magician. Just choose Rapid Mode, reboot when prompted and leave it alone.

Other.. out of space?:
You said "all 32GB pagefile??" NO. Again, it should be about 4GB if Windows chooses though you can manually set 1GB max and min and should be fine.

**FREEING UP SPACE ON SSD:
1) Move some Steam games to HDD (will make new reply below)
2) DISABLE Hibernation:
(I think you can do this in Samsung Magician, and once you reboot it will free up the Hiberfil which might be around 10GB. Windows used to reserve the EXACT amount of system memory but it's dynamically sized now so it should be between 8GB and 16GB).
3) MOVE downloads, video files etc if you have any to HDD
4) Run cleanup (Windows Explorer, select drive... may find more unneeded files)

The main issue is games, hopefully STEAM games as they're easy to move...

 

[photonboy]

PRINT THIS FOR REFERENCE IF YOU WANT:

*GAMES don't benefit that much from an SSD aside from load times.

For most games it's just better to use the cheaper HDD (I've tested this EXTENSIVELY and have a 1TB SSD for games which in retrospect was a waste of money). Load speed improvements vary but it's not 10x. It's generally closer to 2X but it varies a LOT . It depends on what videos can be skipped, how much data is being moved to video and system memory etc.

SKYRIM is the poster child for using an SSD since it has frequent load points (jumping around map, entering dungeons etc). It's very important to note that games with MODS can't be moved as easily.

STEAM GAMES, MOVING:

ONE TIME:
Steam-> Create a new folder on the HDD
(Steam-> Settings-> Downloads-> Steam Library folders..). I call mine "STEAM2" so it appears in Windows Explorer as "E:\STEAM2" and I can go into the Steamapps folder to find games if I need to modify anything.

Move game:
1. Backup game
2. DELETE local content
3. RESTORE game, but now choose the other drive (not C: in your case but perhaps E
4. VERIFY game in Steam (right-click game, properties, Local Files-> "verify integrity of game cache")
5. DELETE backup (keep vanilla backup for modded games)

Other:
a) SAVES should still be there.
b) Keep a BACKUP for any game you mod so you can restore to Vanilla without downloading from Steam again. (Backup must be made before modding)
- I've had mod issues before so I wrote down my mod names, deleted game, restored vanilla, then reinstalled mods except for the last one that screwed things up.
c) IDEAL drive setup??

As I said, GAMES don't necessarily need an SSD. In your case I would:

1) MOVE games to HDD that don't benefit much (most games) which should leave plenty of space.
2) Use other cleanup tips from above if needed.
3) ADD another HDD, not SSD to get more space for games and/or other files.
*You can have a Steam folder for every drive. I recommend one on an SSD, and a second one on the fastest HDD. Perhaps:

a) 250GB SSD-> Windows, apps, Steam + some Steam games like Skyrim, and
b) add 2TB HDD if needed-> Steam games folder for most games (and other storage)
c) 1TB HDD (you already have) for whatever.

*Other tips:
1. Don't use RAID0 ever (it's not as reliable, and real-world difference MAY not be that noticeable compared to single SSD.)
2. Use Acronis True Image or similar to backup main Windows drive (I bought the full version and setup an automated solution of Full backup + Incremental which deletes older copies)
3. Use Memtest www.memtest.org
4. Use CPU diagnotic tool. For Intel: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/19792/Intel-Processor-Diagnostic-Tool-64-bit-
5. HDD/SSD maintenance:
a) Run diagnostics (SeaTools-> DST Short for each drive).
b) For all HDD force a manual scan of each sector which will fix bad sectors (I'd just do once ever six months):
http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/how-to-scan-fix-hard-drives-with-chkdsk-in-windows-8/

(Windows 8/10 has basic automated drive check but it works like crap. Both OS's said my 3TB HDD was fine even though it was dying and SeaTools, mscanner and two other programs all reported within seconds that there was a problem).
6. For noise, make sure your motherboard fan software is installed and setup fan profile if you think it will help.

7. There's a lot of GAME TWEAKS you can think about as well:
a) Choose Adaptive VSYNC, normal VSYNC, or VSYNC OFF?
b) If say using "Adaptive VSYNC" (For AMD that's Dynamic via RadeonPro) on 60Hz monitor tweak for best quality that never drops, or drops RARELY (at which point you'll get some screen tear)
c) Other: modify INI for widescreen if not natively supported, or other INI tweaks... some games have weird issues. (Prototype #1 for example has several:

Prototype fixes:
- unhook keyboard/mouse and use controller or may see big frame rate drop (can unhook whilst playing). I think FEAR#1 has similar issue with USB. You can experiment with game benchmark and removing USB devices.
- game RESOLUTION capped for 2GB or greater VRAM. There's a file you replace with a HEX fix (I forget details but ask if you need to know. It's the ONLY game I know of). You then get native desktop resolution.
- AA has to be forced via video control panel as it's limited for some systems (probably same VRAM reason)
- VSYNC has to be forced?? (Not sure for this game, but do note there are several games that have no VSYNC option which have severe screen tear. I forced in NVidia Control Panel-> "Mangage 3D Settings"-> "Add game"-> "VSYNC..."

If I didn't miss anything that's THREE things you have to do for Prototype, or FOUR if VSYNC is forced.

*On my 60Hz monitor one of my older games ran at roughly 300FPS (on GPU) so the monitor showed parts of FIVE different frames at the same time. Not only did VSYNC sort this out but my card was far less noisy since it dropped to about 20% GPU usage instead of 100%.

(GSYNC is too much to discuss here, but my current expensive favorite is the Acer Predator with-> IPS, GSYNC, 144Hz, 4ms G-G, 2560x1440. It's awesome)

SUMMARY:
I wrote a lot of info here. Long story short is that again GAMES are likely your main problem eating up so much SSD space. Move games to HDD as recommended, and apply other space cleanup tips if you need to after that though that's unlikely.

Don't buy another SSD, just buy another HDD if you need the space. Main games folder on the fastest HDD, games that benefit from LOADS on the SSD.

Finally, make sure your Windows drive is being backed up and that you've run basic diagnostic tests.

UPDATE:
You can also move OTHER games aside from Steam:

1. ORIGIN-> I found tips online to move games without reinstalling
2. BLIZZARD-> I could move these manually as well.
(I've heard Diablo 3 may run better on SSD. If true, that's poor game design as any code being processed during gameplay should ideally all be in Video for GPU and System for CPU).
3. DVD Install-> Uninstall game. Install to new drive. Apply any game patches.
4. UBIPLOP-> Some use Steam. For non-Steam I'm not sure how to move if that's needed. It may be possible without removing and reinstalling.