I'm trying to clean up my SSD system disk after upgrading to Windows 10. I have a SSD and several hard drives in my desktop PC plus 16GB RAM. Do I need a page file at all and if I do, how big should it be and on which drive should it be located for best performance?
Also, how much disk space (in GB) should be devoted to System Restore on my SSD system disk?
Put it on the SSD and let the system manage it. You want the page file on the fastest disk to take advantage of the speed.
I like to keep System Restore to 10 to 15GB. I currently have 3 restore points available. 5/22, 6/5 and 6/11. That, along with weekly image backups using Macrium plus mirroring important files and folders every 4 hours give me all the protection and recovery I need.
Thanks. What utility do you use to mirror files/folders?
I have the same amount of ram you do and I've disabled it completely. pagefile was conceived at a time when PCs weren't powerful and couldn't hold much memory. They wouldn't have believed what we have today.
I haven't noticed any downsides.
Why then does Windows 10 assign a 3GB page file to my SSD when the OS knows I have 16GB RAM?
I use a program called Mirror Folder from TechSoft. I've been using it for years. Not free, but works great.What utility do you use to mirror files/folders?
This will give you an idea of the interface and capabilities:
I've seen some programs not install if they don't find Virtual Memory/paging file on the computer. I like using 2 drives and put 2GB on the C: [boot] drive and the rest of the written recommended 1.5 times the physical RAM [in Help and Support] on the D: drive.
I set PF to 1gb just so some programs requiring it don't complain, that's quite enough even with 8GB of RAM. Even with it turned off windows will do some writing on the system disk so it's not actually "saving" disk from lot's of writing to it, some space only (maybe).
5% reserved for system restore is enough to keep last 2 or 3 system restore points on my 240GB SSD.
Superfetch and prefetch are not real threat to SSDs either.
With current state of SSD technology there's no real reason to treat them any different than just as another Disk Drive.
I'll try your recommendation of having paging files on drives C: and D:. How and when does the OS decided to write to drive C: (SSD) and the larger pagefile on drive D: ?
The decision as to which pagefile to write to is based on how busy the drive is. It will use the drive that has the shortest write queue. But it does not take performance of the drives into consideration (at least I don't believe so). A secondary drive will usually be less busy. That means the small and fast pagefile on the SSD will rarely be used.
From a performance standpoint you don't want a pagefile on a secondary drive unless it has performance comparable to the OS drive.
