SSD with pagefile question.

[Dreadbeard]

Hey guys, i need some advice.
My OS drive is an SSD, but a small one - i have a 64GB SSD for my OS.
I just had to change my computer to use up to 8GB of pagefile "due to game problems", and my drive was at 15GB before and now 12GB after.
And will fill to around 7GB remaining if the pagefile is used.
Is this a bad thing?, the pagefile had to be changed due to some games capping out the virtual memory in my machine, but unfortunitly i cant afford a bigger SSD at the moment.

 

[Snipergod87]

You shouldn't your main hard drive if its completely full, Windows wont function properly. In general its bad to have a SSD completely full due to wear-leveling but for a short period of time it is fine.
Do you have a mechanical HDD you could put the page file on instead? or split the page file 4GB on C: and 4GB of D:

 

[geofelt]

Your ssd is really too small for windows.
As a ssd approaches full, it will slow down and lose endurance.
You likely need more of a page file because you only have 4gb of system ram.
You might solve your problem by adding ram.

Look at your task manager hard page fault statistics.
If you see anything like one per second, lack of ram is hurting your performance.

 

[Dreadbeard]

You shouldn't your main hard drive if its completely full, Windows wont function properly. In general its bad to have a SSD completely full due to wear-leveling but for a short period of time it is fine.
Do you have a mechanical HDD you could put the page file on instead? or split the page file 4GB on C: and 4GB of D:

The SSD isnt full at the moment, but i think it will hit about 7GB remaining on the drive.
My only other hard drive is an external drive.

 

[Dreadbeard]

Your ssd is really too small for windows.
As a ssd approaches full, it will slow down and lose endurance.
You likely need more of a page file because you only have 4gb of system ram.
You might solve your problem by adding ram.

Look at your task manager hard page fault statistics.
If you see anything like one per second, lack of ram is hurting your performance.

Please excuse my signature - i had upgraded my ram some time ago, its actually 8GB corsair vengance.

 

[Dreadbeard]

Does disabling the Hibernation feature of windows help? in another thread i was reccomended to do so to save space.

 

[mjslakeridge]

Yes, if you don't plan to put your computer into hibernation, disable it.

 

[Dreadbeard]

Yes, if you don't plan to put your computer into hibernation, disable it.

I dont use sleep or hibernate - my pc is on almost all the time, unless i restart just to refresh the system.
So disabling hibernation, will that have any negative effects on the system?

 

[mjslakeridge]

None at all. It just allows a little faster startup if hibernating vs turning the computer off. You probably wouldn't even notice the speed difference with your OS on an SSD.

 

[Dreadbeard]

None at all. It just allows a little faster startup if hibernating vs turning the computer off. You probably wouldn't even notice the speed difference with your OS on an SSD.

Awesome, well ive disabled that which freed up a fair chunk of space on my SSD, and now with the pagefile in place i should be able to game without too many problems.
Thanks.

 

[mjslakeridge]

You can use WinDirStat to see what all is on your storage devices, possibly allowing you to free up more space if needed. Try to leave 10% or so free on any SSD.

 

[Dreadbeard]

You can use WinDirStat to see what all is on your storage devices, possibly allowing you to free up more space if needed. Try to leave 10% or so free on any SSD.

Well out of a 64GB SSD "55gb of which is usable" i have 18GB left, so i think im ok.

 

[mjslakeridge]

Yes, you are OK. Just keep an eye on it from time to time, as Windows updates will slowly eat away at the free space. You can go into Disk Management and delete temp. files if need be.

 

[Dreadbeard]

Yes, you are OK. Just keep an eye on it from time to time, as Windows updates will slowly eat away at the free space. You can go into Disk Management and delete temp. files if need be.

Awesome! i tend to do that regularly just to keep as much space as i can - i even go into appdata and delete the unused game files in there.

 

[geofelt]

Does disabling the Hibernation feature of windows help? in another thread i was reccomended to do so to save space.

Yes, if you allow hibernation, a space equal to the amount of ram you have will be reserved to copy the contents of ram to the hiberfile.
It is a bit more complicated than just turning off the feature; you also have to get rid of the hiberfile.
I do not exactly know the procedure, google should find it for you.

 

[Dreadbeard]

Does disabling the Hibernation feature of windows help? in another thread i was reccomended to do so to save space.

Yes, if you allow hibernation, a space equal to the amount of ram you have will be reserved to copy the contents of ram to the hiberfile.
It is a bit more complicated than just turning off the feature; you also have to get rid of the hiberfile.
I do not exactly know the procedure, google should find it for you.

The person told me how to do it, using an elevated command prompt to turn it off.
But it cleared up 8GB on my SSD. So i think everything should be fine.

 

[USAFRet]

hibernation - turn it OFF> Evidently you've found the proper commandline function for this
pagefile - Dunno why yoou had to turn it up for that particular game. How much physical RAM do you have?

But bottom line...a 64GB SSD is simply too small.
What OS is this?

 

[mjslakeridge]

Geofelt: I think it can be deleted in WinDirStat, but it gives you a warning about deleting a system file (do you know what you are doing type of thing).

Funny thing is, when I check the size of my hibfile.sys in Windirstat it is 6 GB. I have 8 GB of RAM, (2x4 GB). Normally I don't have more than 50% in use and can successfully hibernate and wake up (just did it), but was wondering why the hibfile.sys is only 6GB? Previously I had 4GB of ram, but recently did a clean install of Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit, so I could increase the RAM.

 

[Kaitlin Kaschak459]

Hey guys, i need some advice.
My OS drive is an SSD, but a small one - i have a 64GB SSD for my OS.
I just had to change my computer to use up to 8GB of pagefile "due to game problems", and my drive was at 15GB before and now 12GB after.
And will fill to around 7GB remaining if the pagefile is used.
Is this a bad thing?, the pagefile had to be changed due to some games capping out the virtual memory in my machine, but unfortunitly i cant afford a bigger SSD at the moment.

i have a 256 gig SSD as my win 7 os drive and a 2TB HDD for all my games i put the page file on the 2TB drive to save space on my SSD so far no issues but them i have 16gigs of ram plus the page file

 

[USAFRet]

Geofelt: I think it can be deleted in WinDirStat, but it gives you a warning about deleting a system file (do you know what you are doing type of thing).

Funny thing is, when I check the size of my hibfile.sys in Windirstat it is 6 GB. I have 8 GB of RAM, (2x4 GB). Normally I don't have more than 50% in use and can successfully hibernate and wake up (just did it), but was wondering why the hibfile.sys is only 6GB? Previously I had 4GB of ram, but recently did a clean install of Windows 8.1 Pro 64 bit, so I could increase the RAM.

You can 'delete' the file, but unless you turn the hibernation OFF properly (commandline), it will just come back.

 

[mjslakeridge]

Yes, I understand that. I do use Hibernation, so I need the file. I think I may have found the answer to my question about the 6GB hibfile.sys vs my 8GB of RAM. If the Hibfile.sys is less than the amount of RAM, the excess gets written to the pagefile when hibernating. My clean install of Windows recently must have set the size at 75%.

I may just go ahead and increase the hibfile.sys to 100%.

 

[geofelt]

Why does one need to hibernate in the first place??
If you use sleep to ram, it takes less time to sleep(you do not need to dump the contents of ram to the hiberfile)
And wake.
What you lose is that in the event of a power outage, a clean boot will no longer have what you last saved.
Normally, that is of no consequence unless you have work in progress that you can not save.

 

[USAFRet]

Last time I used hibernation was last decade sometime.

 

[Dreadbeard]

hibernation - turn it OFF> Evidently you've found the proper commandline function for this
pagefile - Dunno why yoou had to turn it up for that particular game. How much physical RAM do you have?

But bottom line...a 64GB SSD is simply too small.
What OS is this?

Win 7. I completely agree the SSD is small, but it is the best i can do on short notice - i have 8GB system ram, but when playing some games ill get a message pop up from windows saying "low memory" and in it says that such and such are using all of the virtual ram "aka the pagefile", thats why i had to push it up.

 

[USAFRet]

If the only choice was a 64GB SSD, I'd fall back to a HDD. Rather than struggle through a drive that is too small.