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Solve : SD Flash used for SWAP Space ... Successful? |
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Answer» WARNING: While this appears to work, if you chose to set this up on your own system, use configuration at own risk! It wouldn't be good if the SD Flash were to be removed on the fly as well as while this works for me this comes at risk of crashing a system. I have multiple systems and can afford to take chances like this, however if it is your only computer its probably not a wise choice to implement this. So I was curious as to if I could move my Swap file off of my SSD drive to a SD Flash device and info on Google suggested NO for Windows, but YES for Linux. So instead of running with the NO for windows as fact, I chose to test this STATEMENT, and what I found out is that it does appear to work under Windows XP Home SP3 on my Toshiba NB205-N210 Netbook. * I have yet to test this on a newer Windows OS which may lock out this ability to use SD Flash as Swap file location. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So I got the Netbook running Windows XP Home SP3 to use the 8GB SD Flash card for the system page file ( aka virtual memory / swap space ). But... If you select the button for System Managed Size nothing happens, it wont accept this.... However if you select the button for Custom Size you can alter the settings and make it work, but the SSD drive had to be set to a minimum of 2MB of swap space allocated to it. It would not accept None or 0MB. This system which has 2GB of DDR2 RAM claimed that it Recommended 3057MB of Swap Space of which 1524MB was Currently allocated. So I set the 8GB SD Flash to a paging file size ( aka ..swap/ virtual memory ) to these settings manually. The system then needed to reboot to take the settings, and also to confirm that they actually stuck and the system did not revert back to the SSD being the primary space for the page file. Upon reboot there was no noticeable lag. System booted up fast on the SSD just like all other TIMES it booted off the SSD. And LOOKING at the virtual memory settings it showed that the current allocation was 2038MB and the 2MB SSD and 1524MB to 3057MB of the 8GB SD Flash settings were successful. [recovering disk space, attachment deleted by admin]Just curious, what's the purpose of doing this? SD cards are not faster than SSDs.Quote from: Calum on December 15, 2013, 02:22:26 AM Just curious, what's the purpose of doing this? Context here. In brief: it's a statistical outlay regarding how long SSD write times, which reaches it's conclusions by ignoring technologies such as Write Amplification Reduction, the Flash Translation Layer used in SSDs, SSD idle-time garbage collection, TRIM (which can reduce unnecessary writes since it prevents other SSD internal optimizations from moving data that isn't actually valid/needed). It also presupposes that WRITTEN data is never moved around, which would be accurate if wear leveling hasn't been built into pretty much every SSD in some form since their inception. Anyway, based on the conclusions reached there, Dave decided to move the pagefile off his SSD to allow it to last longer. I Don't think this really needed any substantiation through math and numbers with excessive sig-figs, however- it's more or less common sense that if you use something less it will last longer. A question- partly rhetorical, was raised regarding whether the pagefile could be moved to a Flash card. More or less the goal I think was to "to avoid excessive writes to the SSD to extend its life". My take on the entire thing is that it's just plain silly. All it is effectively doing is trying to avoid using the SSD on the premise that it will last longer, which is more or less common sense and could be said to apply to pretty much everything. If you left the SSD in it's Box, unopened, it would probably last longer still. I recently bought and installed an SSD myself (480GB Seagate). I've done nothing special with it. It was hardly cheap by any means, but I have the pagefile on that drive and I intend to keep it there, even though I could easily move it to my 4TB data drive. I bought this SSD to be used, not for me to install and then avoid using. It seems more like a sort of "paranoia" (though that's perhaps too strong a word) because SSD and other flash technologies have a technical limitation as to how many times a cell can be written to. Quote Just curious, what's the purpose of doing this? To prove that it can be done and works ... at least under Windows XP Home SP3 it does. Quote SD cards are not faster than SSDs. You are absolutely correct, they are quite slow even if its a class 10 SD Flash its nowheres near the performance of a SSD. Quote My take on the entire thing is that it's just plain silly. All it is effectively doing is trying to avoid using the SSD on the premise that it will last longer, which is more or less common sense and could be said to apply to pretty much everything. I agree that it is kind of silly I suppose, MAINLY due to the fact that why would you want to use a slow data rate SD Flash instead of your SSD. My intent was mainly to prove that it could be done when Google hits suggested that it couldnt even with a Microsoft MVP for Windows commenting on this on another forum. Instead of running with info on Google as factual with the statement of NO, I decided to test it and that's when I found out that it can work. Do I suggest running like this .... NO ... because not just is the data rate slower using SD Flash, but it could lead to problems if you for example accidentally ejected the SD Flash while the OS was running or accidentally dismount the SD Flash since its listed in the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" listing and one wrong click when removing a USB thumb drive and you just dismounted your SD Flash along with the in use page file. For the fact that I had to manually specify the size in order to make this work, it appears that Microsoft attempted to lock this out from the configuration with the option of System Managed Size not responding to the request to make this SD Flash the location of the page file. And my guess is that they forgot to remove this ability from the manual sizing configuration option in the Windows XP OS. I have since moved my page file back to SSD and removed and formatted my 8GB SD Flash to place it back into my digital camera. I dont use my Netbook enough to burn out the 90GB SSD drive really, although I will probably still upgrade it to Windows 7 32-bit for TRIM and Microsoft Security Updates beyond April 2014. Quote from: BC_Programmer on December 15, 2013, 03:26:38 AM it's more or less common sense that if you use something less it will last longer. I'm glad you said "more or less"! We had a a 3-drum colour laser printer in our office which failed because it wasn't used enough and some rubber rollers developed flats during the long idle periods. Likewise automobile tyres ("tires") I believe. Understood, trying it because Google suggested it couldn't be done - I like it! Well done on getting it to work then, interesting stuff.Quote from: Calum on December 16, 2013, 02:57:58 AM Understood, trying it because Google suggested it couldn't be done - I like it! I did some Google's and I got mixed results. Either way I think the addition of real empirical data on it is useful. It's likely that it only works when the bus being used is attached through PCI or PCI-E; eg. a Card reader attached via USB wouldn't work most likely. I'd give it a test myself but I only have two SD cards and they already have data on them. It might be worth noting that there is no Windows Expertise for the MVP Award program. Not that having one would by itself lend creedence to anything being said by an individual with one. if a person says something incorrect it would still be incorrect regardless of what Awards or certifications they have. |
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