Using SSD as Memory

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I recently purchased an OCZ OCZSSD2-2AGT40G Agility 2 Solid State Drive – 40GB, 2.5″, SATA II for use with my XP SP3 system + 4GB RAM. Because of its limited size (SSD), I do not want to discard my current 1 TB HDD but instead, use the SSD as an extention to the 3.2 GB memory limitation on 32bit OS. In lieu of its fast access times and speed, I am planning to place the page file system on the SSD and use it exclusively for that purpose, essentially mimicking an additional 40GB of memory or at least speeding up my PC during periods of heavy memory requirements. I realize that with XP, I cannot access the TRIM function (Windows 7 available), however, does anyone think this is a viable setup? Open to any suggestions
Thanks,

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Nothing that I would ever consider doing.

1 The less pagefile usage the better, even if that pagefile is on an SSD. You will not see any performance improvement in this way, except
maybe in some gaming applications that rely heavily on PF usage. Even then you would be better off using the drive as intended and only
allowing the PF to grow when needed.
2 SSDs have a finite number of writes and usage in this manor is only gonna eat into it’s total MTTF.
3 You can’t exceed the 32 bit memory limitations with an SSD and Pagefile as we know it, will always be inferior to memory.
4 You can get a form of TRIM in XP, albeit limited, but still very usefull and you will see decent performance gains, but at the cost of a somewhat
shorter drive lifespan. Many SSD manufacturers will offer a tool for performing some form of TRIM function under Windows XP.

Use the SDD as your sole primary os drive and move as much of the personal data you can to the 1 TB drive.
Control your PF to grow only if needed. You won’t get much better than that unless you dump XP and go 64 bit.

Appologies if I seem stern, I do have my opinions …and you asked.

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I agree for the most part, the most advantageous use would be for markedly faster boot times of an OS and large app opening, large game level loading, anything that would hit the hard drive sudden and demanding. Just using it as a pagefile is sort of a waste and it may very well go up in smoke permaturely at that.

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Thanks for your replies and opinions. My dilemma: An upgrade to Win 7 is not in the future for this rig. It would require a hardware upgrade as well as the inability to use a couple of essential programs as indicated by Win 7 Upgrade Advisor. The added upgade expense coupled with the cost of the OS would outway the expense of the SSD itself. Excluding the effort into a total OS rebuild to transfer from the 1 TB HDD to the SSD which is only 40 GB, seems that my existing setup will not change. I agree, I will loose the benefit of not having the OS on the SSD, however, I leave my computer on most of the time so boot up speed is not a concern. I also keep my OS tuned and defrag often to minimize seek times. So, what to do with the SSD? Should I use it as a data drive? Now that seems to be a waste. Since seek times are eliminated, in theory, Windows should be able access the page file on an SSD faster than an HDD. Having 4 GB of memory is not supreme but certainly has decreased the amount of HDD used as memory. Hopefully, this will slow the wear to MTBF. My thoughts are that this setup is less demanding (wear ‘n tear) on an SSD than having both the OS and the page file on that drive. If the OS/programs were on an SSD with the swap file on the HHD instead, then that will defeat the purpose in that the page file will negate the benefits of the SSD during intense memory usage.

My goal here is to use the SSD I have in hand to speed up my system during high memory usage without incurring additional expenses of effort. I am projecting that the life of the SSD will keep in par with the longevity of my current system. If the SSD was larger (>=80GB), I would whole heartedly agree with you and make the transition. Perhaps, I should have waited and got a larger drive when the price drops. The points you make are very well taken and respected. The reason for this post was to ask if this setup will work after reading some blogs that the page file and the OS must be on the same disk. This conflicts with the fact that XP offers the options to configure the swap file to a different disk. Since I have never ventured into this area, I wanted to avoid a potential scenario of damage to my system. Whether or not this setup will be efficient, I will keep your thoughts in mind and give this a try. I will post in the future on its performance.

Again, your feedback and/or any foreseeable concerns that I may run into are most welcome.

Thanks,
Ted

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Ted, hello. ( another Ted here ? )

From your last message : >>> the inability to use a couple of essential programs as indicated by Win 7 Upgrade Advisor.

Do not let this worry you. I use some old programmes, amongst them Acrobat 5, Paintshop Pro 6 and also Personal Finance 2000, I run Office 2000 on both my Win-7 machines and all of 4 XP Pro ones, two of them are Thinkpad laptops. The Win-7 on a Toshiba laptop is a 64-bit OS and it still runs all of them.

Be daring ! Jean.

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The problem with the proposed useage is, I think, that you’re only going to see a benifit in very isolated usage senarios. 4 gigs of RAM (about 3 usable on a 32-bit system) is already a heck of a good buffer betwen the processor and hard drive. Essentially using a SSD as a buffer to the buffer is seemingly pointless.
Now if you were going to run some of the older games that would have to pause and load in massive levels to continue (that could not be prefetched or were not designed to be prefetched efficiently) I’d imagine that pause would be greatly reduced or even almost eliminated, but even there, where I imagine it would have a good use, it is still a very small advantage when considering total time saved or increased performance.
That’s why its so good for boot times as well; that initial loading into memory goes a lot faster, but then system managed RAM takes over and that advantage is mostly nullified by good management and most calls will probably come for stuff on the hard drive proper with 3 gigs of usable RAM, not so much from the swap drive.

Side note: Wow! Jean, 2000 Office is one thing (I run it too ) but PSP 6!? I cut my editing teeth on the trial version of 6, moved quickly to 7 and only went back to 7 once in a fit of nastalgia. Hmmm, wonder if I could find a copy of 6 in some dark dusty corner of one of my drives somewhere….

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Byron, good morning to you.

It has been said that great minds always think alike !

>>> Wow! Jean, 2000 Office is one thing (I run it too ) but PSP 6!? I cut my editing teeth on the trial version of 6, moved quickly to 7 and only went back to 7 once in a fit of nastalgia. Hmmm, wonder if I could find a copy of 6 in some dark dusty corner of one of my drives somewhere….

I got a paid copy of PSP X2, tried it but went back to V 6. It does all that this meek user needs. Also, I have been told that the newer versions of Office, unlike O2K, have been coded to exclude the capability to install on more recent OS, grand highway larceny from MS, no less. Like O2003 or 2007 would not install on W-7. What do you know in this regard ?

Long live O2K ! And you ! Jean.

Edited a typo.

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No I think they’re compatible with Windows 7, Office 2007 for sure because I won a copy of Ulitmate in a entry drawing and installed it. Its more likely to work the other way around, where MS intentionally makes programs like IE9 and Live Essentials 2011 incompatible with XP.

I found my eval version of PSP6. Its not bad, better than I remember…I think. Layers and frames and Tubes and basic advanced (if that makes sense) editing tools are all there. Its probably as good and Paint.net is today. Even the ability to customize the toolbar is there already in 6.

I have to have the clarify (now called local tone mapping I t hink) tool and the additional “fine tuning” tools of High Pass Sharpen and Edge Preserve Smooth and a few others. Also besides customizing my toolbar for maximum workflow, X3 has a feature now where I can apply a series of edits to one photo and if it is part of a batch that needs the same edits, I can apply them all at once in batch mode. That’s something I’ve been looking for since PSP10.

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Good morning everybody!

Office 2003 is good to go on Windows 7. I have it installed on two machines and it works great with no issues.

Have a great day and an even better weekend.

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