With the faster throughput achieved using SSD technology, the swapfile is a much less critical component. While still essential, it does not need to be a created based on the 1.5x ratio commonly used to determine the size of the swapfile on systems equipped with mechanical drives.
As SSD usage has not become widespread we do not have history to consult when configuring the size of the swapfile in a SSD system. What we do have is an understanding Video applications require more memory than Web Email Clients and there by a graduated scale is available to use to determine possible memory needs. Referencing this against User type, surfer/emailer through hard core gamer and the memory needs may be determined.
Swapfile use on the lower end could be handled by 4gb (and that number could serve as the lower limit for swapfile size). Users running database applications, massive spread sheets and similar software capable of generating high memory usage will need considerably more.
Before needing to make such determinations the management process can be handled by Windows. Allowing the User to review it during normal maintenance cycles to gain insight before making adjustments to increase performance.
I've checked my computer. It turns out that a long time ago I set the initial size to 16MB and the maximum size to 5,120 MB, on both SSD drives C and D. It's now working perfectly, with currently 32 MB allocated. – Avi – 2012-11-07T21:27:14.843
3I recall reading to not have a page file on an SSD because of the write wear issue (or whatever thats called). Has that problem gone away? – dkackman – 2012-11-07T21:38:55.263
1Agreed, if there is another drive without space constraints, that sounds preferable for the page file. In any case, when you have 32GB of RAM, unless you routinely run at 98% memory usage, I'd consider eliminating the page file altogether. The system will warn you if you're running low on virtual memory, and you can probably find a couple apps to close. Pagefile is just insurance nowadays. – Binary Phile – 2012-11-07T21:41:36.380
I'm on Win7 with 16GB RAM, and the windows "recommended" setting is 24GB. – Giscard Biamby – 2012-11-07T22:18:40.127
1Another similar change you can make, if you don't use hibernate, is to disable hibernate via the
powercfg -h off
command (requires administrator / elevated command prompt). c:\hiberfil.sys is roughly equal to the amount of RAM you have by default, so disabling hibernate saves that disk space. However, even though boot time is fast enough with an SSD that you don't need hibernate, I still use hibernate because I like to keep the state of my apps across sessions. – Giscard Biamby – 2012-11-07T22:21:26.2535A 1:1 ratio between physical RAM and pagefile size never made sense. It looks like Windows 8 fixes this behavior. My Windows 8 machine has 8GB of RAM and the automatic settings have the pagefile size as 16MB min, 4543MB max, and 1216MB currently allocated. – pseudosavant – 2012-11-07T22:21:36.460