RAID level for paging

[DynV]

Which RAID level would be best for paging? AFAIK the paged content doesn't matter, is it so? If so, case fault tolerance wouldn't matter IMO. Does paging behave differently for Windows and *nix?

Thank you kindly

 

[Rogue Leader]

Which RAID level would be best for swap? AFAIK the swap content doesn't matter, is it so? If so, case fault tolerance wouldn't matter IMO. Does swap behave differently for Windows and *nix?

Thank you kindly

What do you mean by swap? Do you mean you want to be able to hot swap a drive? Are you looking for performance? What do you need this to do?

 

[DynV]

I've updated the OP and basically replaced swap for paging. So a storage solution expressly made for when the main memory (RAM) isn't sufficient.

Update 1:
ie: A RAID the size of ~2 X RAM specifically assigned for swap. I don't know exactly how that would work on Windows but I think for a customized one, a user create a file and point to it in the appropriate setting. For *nix it's pretty easy, just make a partition taking the whole disk and have the file system set to swap.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I've updated the OP and basically replaced swap for paging. So a storage solution expressly made for when the main memory (RAM) isn't sufficient.

The answer to that is none. Use an SSD for your swap file.

Realistically, RAID 0 is a little faster than a regular drive, but if 1 of the 2 drives fails your whole array fails. RAID 1 is just mirrored redundant data to account for drive failure. RAID 5 allows you to stripe like RAID 0 but you need more drives so you can remove 1 in the case of failure and not lose the array.

Anyway in the end the pagefile on ANY hard drive in RAID or not is a huge drag. Now you could RAID SSDs except that has been continually proven to not gain much performance at all, and in fact sometimes diminishes it. If you want the fastest pagefile, use an NVMe SSD, otherwise a regular SSD will do.

Update 1:
ie: A RAID the size of ~2 X RAM specifically assigned for swap. I don't know exactly how that would work on Windows but I think for a customized one, a user create a file and point to it in the appropriate setting. For *nix it's pretty easy, just make a partition taking the whole disk and have the file system set to swap.

Why are you making this way more complicated than it needs to be? Get an SSD leave the page file on it, and let Windows manage it. Any manual manipulation is a zero sum effort.

 

[USAFRet]

Which RAID level would be best for paging? AFAIK the paged content doesn't matter, is it so? If so, case fault tolerance wouldn't matter IMO. Does paging behave differently for Windows and *nix?

Thank you kindly

RAID level for the page file?
None.

What actual drives do you have in this system, how much RAM, and what do you use it for?

 

[DynV]

I wanted to use a HDD RAID expressly for paging, so there would be none of it on my main secondary storage. I'd prefer to spare my SSD.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I wanted to use a HDD RAID expressly for paging, so there would be none of it on my main secondary storage. I'd prefer to spare my SSD.

Why? Your SSD will last forever, despite old articles claiming otherwise. This is a massively complicated solution that will waste space, electricity, and give you extremely poor performance in comparison to your SSD. Or just buying a cheap SSD to use for your page file.

 

[stdragon]

Yes, use an SSD as your paging volume. Otherwise a RAID-0 of HDDs would be appropriate.

 

[USAFRet]

I wanted to use a HDD RAID expressly for paging, so there would be none of it on my main secondary storage. I'd prefer to spare my SSD.

A small $50 SSD will blow away whatever RAID config you could make with HDD's.

 

[DynV]

What actual drives do you have in this system

275 Gb M.2
300 Gb 7200 RPM

how much RAM

16 Gb

what do you use it for?

Personal: streaming videos, playing mostly 2D games, etc.

Why? Your SSD will last forever, despite old articles claiming otherwise. This is a massively complicated solution that will waste space, electricity, and give you extremely poor performance in comparison to your SSD.

I'm not looking for performance. I'm hoping there will be little paging, I want to know when it happens, which would be much less obvious on a SSD, and I don't know how much there will be; what would happen if I need to reload my browser but it continuously swap to keep a bad instance running, I know it can happen as ATM I have 8 Gb and I have to reload my browser sometimes every 2-3 days, sometimes 2 X / day, I'd need to have more things running for this to happen but it could very well be, and I want to make sure I know when it happens.

Update 1:
3 first quotes were attributed to the wrong user.

 

[USAFRet]

Why would use of the pagefile be less obvious on an SSD vs a RAID (whatever) on HDD's?
And why does it matter?

 

[DynV]

Why would use of the pagefile be less obvious on an SSD vs a RAID (whatever) on HDD's?

I'd think even a HDD RAID would be slower than a SSD.

And why does it matter?

See my previous post, the answer to Rogue Leader.

 

[USAFRet]

Why would use of the pagefile be less obvious on an SSD vs a RAID (whatever) on HDD's?

I'd think even a HDD RAID would be slower than a SSD.

And why does it matter?

See my previous post, the answer to Rogue Leader.

Yes, a HDD RAID 0 is slower than a typical SSD.
That's what we've been saying.

Yes, pagefile use happens sometimes/rarely.
Wanting to know when it happens is the question not answered. And how the drive type would make a difference in knowing when.

 

[TJ Hooker]

I'm not looking for performance. I'm hoping there will be little paging, I want to know when it happens, which would be much less obvious on a SSD, and I don't know how much there will be; what would happen if I need to reload my browser but it continuously swap to keep a bad instance running, I know it can happen as ATM I have 8 Gb and I have to reload my browser sometimes every 2-3 days, sometimes 2 X / day, I'd need to have more things running for this to happen but it could very well be, and I want to make sure I know when it happens.

It sounds like you're describing some sort of issue you're having here, but I don't understand what it is. Although without even knowing your issue, I'm confident in saying that creating an HDD array to use as swap/paging space is not the answer.

If you expand on what your issue is, people can probably tell you what the actual answer you're after is.

 

[DynV]

The issue of this thread is detailed at the end of my 4th post http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3729038/raid-level-swap.html#response-21074348 after the Rogue Leader quote. A 2nd try at it:

■ SSD is fast, it would be hard for me to detect paging is going on compared to the 7200 RPM mentioned in the same post I'm currently using.
■ I know very well a lot of paging can occur; it does for me with the system I'm using to write this, my personal system that I'd replace once I figure how to set it up. I'd need more memory to be used in order for it to happen on my replacement system but I'm sure once I'm used to 16 Gb and software needs get even larger, that it will happen (a lot of paging).
■ Once I pay a RAID controller, which is a long-term expense, it will be cheap to get HDDs with the size for my paging.

 

[USAFRet]

The issue of this thread is detailed at the end of my 4th post http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3729038/raid-level-swap.html#response-21074348 after the Rogue Leader quote. A 2nd try at it:

■ SSD is fast, it would be hard for me to detect paging is going on compared to the 7200 RPM mentioned in the same post I'm currently using.
■ I know very well a lot of paging can occur; it does for me with the system I'm using to write this, my personal system that I'd replace once I figure how to set it up. I'd need more memory to be used in order for it to happen on my replacement system but I'm sure once I'm used to 16 Gb and software needs get even larger, that it will happen (a lot of paging).
■ Once I pay a RAID controller, which is a long-term expense, it will be cheap to get HDDs with the size for my paging.

So you want a purposely 'slow' pagefile location, so that you can know when it happens?
But not too slow, hence the RAID 0.


My system has 32GB RAM. The previous one had 16GB.
I'm sure the page file kicked in once in a while. Knowing 'when' it may have happened did not change my system usage.


What is going on that you need to know when?

Why buy a RAID controller, when SSD's are faster?

 

[DynV]

If you see the same post I referred to, I mentioned I reload software that are taking a lot of memory. If you look at my previous post point #2, the--large--amount of paging that can (and probably will) occur would be on a less valuable drive.

Anyway, is RAID 0 the actual reply to the thread OP 1st sentence?

 

[USAFRet]

If you see the same post I referred to, I mentioned I reload software that are taking a lot of memory. If you look at my previous post point #2, the--large--amount of paging that can (and probably will) occur would be on a less valuable drive.

Anyway, is RAID 0 the actual reply to the thread OP 1st sentence?

The question we out here have is..."Why a RAID of any type for the pagefile?"
Different RAID levels have different uses and performances.

What 'performance' are you looking for?

 

[stdragon]

The issue of this thread is detailed at the end of my 4th post http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3729038/raid-level-swap.html#response-21074348 after the Rogue Leader quote. A 2nd try at it:

■ SSD is fast, it would be hard for me to detect paging is going on compared to the 7200 RPM mentioned in the same post I'm currently using.
■ I know very well a lot of paging can occur; it does for me with the system I'm using to write this, my personal system that I'd replace once I figure how to set it up. I'd need more memory to be used in order for it to happen on my replacement system but I'm sure once I'm used to 16 Gb and software needs get even larger, that it will happen (a lot of paging).
■ Once I pay a RAID controller, which is a long-term expense, it will be cheap to get HDDs with the size for my paging.

The more RAM you have, the less likely paging will occur. Of course, that's not true if your running MS SQL or MS Exchange depending of if either databases exceed the size or the available RAM (it will allocate as much as it can for application DB caching purposes.

But unlike the aforementioned scenario, games typically won't utilize 100% RAM. Though there's always exception to the rule I suppose. Windows is pretty good about managing memory these days to ensure little paging occurs if possible. In fact, Windows 10 will actually resort to RAM compression before it pages out to disk; because CPU cycles are cheap and incur less of a latency hit than the storage subsystem.

TLDR: get to learn and love Performance Monitor built into the OS. You can capture all sorts of metrics and record them. The link below is a pretty good starting place.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-performance-monitor-windows-10

 

[DynV]

What 'performance' are you looking for?

Doesn't a system read--and--write to a pagefile a good amount while its necessary to use it? If so, it's for that, if not it's for the other type of usage.

 

[USAFRet]

What 'performance' are you looking for?

Doesn't a system read--and--write to a pagefile a good amount while its necessary to use it? If so, it's for that, if not it's for the other type of usage.

If the system needs to write to a pagefile, a faster drive is beneficial.
But I think you're mistaken on the amount a system with a reasonable amount of RAM (16GB?) uses the pagefile.

In the RAID world, a RAID 0 array is the "fastest".

But if speed is what you're looking for (the "performance"), then an SSD is what you need.
As said earlier, an inexpensive SSD is faster, easier, cheaper, and more stable than 2x HDD in RAID 0.

 

[USAFRet]

Anyway, is RAID 0 the actual reply to the thread OP 1st sentence?

No.
The actual answer to that question is, as stated initially, "None"

 

[Rogue Leader]

What 'performance' are you looking for?

Doesn't a system read--and--write to a pagefile a good amount while its necessary to use it? If so, it's for that, if not it's for the other type of usage.

Windows pushes its memory load to the page file when something else needs to take its place. So for example if you switch between programs it moves them back and forth, assuming of course you don't have enough memory, so that the active programs are taking up the fast actual memory, and the rest are in the pagefile.

What you don't seem to be getting is you are taking a problem that can be solved by a $50 SSD (or just leaving the page file on your M.2 drive) and making it as expensive, complicated, and unreliable as possible, just so you MIGHT know when the pagefile is being used, because you may not be getting to that point.

The best answer for your initial question is RAID 0, but I would be failing in my duty as a moderator and adviser on this site by giving you advice to ever do that for this problem.

 

[DynV]

Which of those would you pick to put paging on?
Currently displaying the following but I think the content will change from day to day, so it might be better to look at the URL in case a better deal is added. Please consider the price for the pick.

• 
  ■ CAD 46.99 - ADATA Ultimate SU650 2.5" 120GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ASU650SS-120GT-C
  ■ CAD 42.99 - Team Group L5 LITE 3D 2.5" 120GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) T253TD120G3C101
  ■ CAD 46.98 - Silicon Power Slim S55 2.5" 60GB SATA III 3D TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SU060GBSS3S55S25NE

 

[USAFRet]

Which of those would you pick to put paging on?
Currently displaying the following but I think the content will change from day to day, so it might be better to look at the URL in case a better deal is added. Please consider the price for the pick.

• 
  ■ CAD 46.99 - ADATA Ultimate SU650 2.5" 120GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) ASU650SS-120GT-C
  ■ CAD 42.99 - Team Group L5 LITE 3D 2.5" 120GB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) T253TD120G3C101
  ■ CAD 46.98 - Silicon Power Slim S55 2.5" 60GB SATA III 3D TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SU060GBSS3S55S25NE

Of those 3, the ADATA.