HDD to SSD on an old laptop

Hello. I plan to replace the 1 TB boot drive in my old laptop by a 1TB SSD
drive and I have a few questions how to go about it. The laptop is an Acer
TM7720 Core2Duo with 4 GB ram, Windows 7-64 bits, USB 2.0, Sata II. The
laptop has 2 1TB internal drives and the boot drive is partitionned in 2 (C
and E, the other drive is D).

I am planning to use a stand alone duplicator because I think it will be
faster this way (actually it's a 2 ports Sata docking station with stand
alone cloning capacity) .

My questions are 1- How do I go about the TRIM or alignement that SSD
needs? I've never done this type of transfer before.

2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB ram I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile PM965
Express Chipset).

I'm aware it will work at Sata II speed.

TIA

Dominique wrote:
Hello. I plan to replace the 1 TB boot drive in my old laptop by a 1TB SSD
drive and I have a few questions how to go about it. The laptop is an Acer
TM7720 Core2Duo with 4 GB ram, Windows 7-64 bits, USB 2.0, Sata II. The
laptop has 2 1TB internal drives and the boot drive is partitionned in 2 (C
and E, the other drive is D).

I am planning to use a stand alone duplicator because I think it will be
faster this way (actually it's a 2 ports Sata docking station with stand
alone cloning capacity) .

My questions are 1- How do I go about the TRIM or alignement that SSD
needs? I've never done this type of transfer before.

2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB ram I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile PM965
Express Chipset).

I'm aware it will work at Sata II speed.

TIA


If you use the latest Macrium Reflect (Image, not clone), it will
recognize the SSD and trim accordingly. You might want to download the
tool your SSD manufacturer provides to monitor the SSD's health.

On 23/10/2018 21:42, Dominique wrote:
2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB ram I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile PM965
Express Chipset).

I normally put the swap file on the SSD.
But if you suspect there is sometimes thrashing (different code is
swapped in and out rapidly rather than just when you move from using one
program to using another, and the system typically seems very slow when
that happens with the swap file on an HDD) then it may be a bad idea.

How about starting with the swap file on the SSD and keeping an eye on
the total bytes written relative to the specified total bytes written
over lifetime spec of the drive. Hopefully the SSD manufacturer will
provide software you can use to monitor this.

--

Brian Gregory (in England).

Weatherman écrivait news
Dominique wrote:
Hello. I plan to replace the 1 TB boot drive in my old laptop by a 1TB
SSD
drive and I have a few questions how to go about it. The laptop is an
Acer
TM7720 Core2Duo with 4 GB ram, Windows 7-64 bits, USB 2.0, Sata II. The
laptop has 2 1TB internal drives and the boot drive is partitionned in 2
(C
and E, the other drive is D).

I am planning to use a stand alone duplicator because I think it will be
faster this way (actually it's a 2 ports Sata docking station with stand
alone cloning capacity) .

My questions are 1- How do I go about the TRIM or alignement that SSD
needs? I've never done this type of transfer before.

2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB ram
I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile
PM965
Express Chipset).

I'm aware it will work at Sata II speed.

TIA


If you use the latest Macrium Reflect (Image, not clone), it will
recognize the SSD and trim accordingly. You might want to download the
tool your SSD manufacturer provides to monitor the SSD's health.

So if I understand well, a stand alone hardware disk cloner is not a good
idea for that job? Oh well I will do the "imaging" process on my faster
desktop using the "cloner" as a HD docking station using USB 3. That will
be still faster than doing it directly on the old laptop.

I thought I could clone it externally and then change some Windows
parameters but your solution seems safer. Thanks.

Brian Gregory écrivait
:

On 23/10/2018 21:42, Dominique wrote:
2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB ram
I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile
PM965
Express Chipset).

I normally put the swap file on the SSD.
But if you suspect there is sometimes thrashing (different code is
swapped in and out rapidly rather than just when you move from using one
program to using another, and the system typically seems very slow when
that happens with the swap file on an HDD) then it may be a bad idea.

How about starting with the swap file on the SSD and keeping an eye on
the total bytes written relative to the specified total bytes written
over lifetime spec of the drive. Hopefully the SSD manufacturer will
provide software you can use to monitor this.


It's a Samsung 860 EVO 1TB, I have the time to learn how to do it
correctly, my order is stock in a truck or a warehouse somewhere because of
a Canada Post labor conflict... :-/

I'll check the Samsung site for the monitor software.

Thanks.

Dominique wrote:
Hello. I plan to replace the 1 TB boot drive in my old laptop by a 1TB SSD
drive and I have a few questions how to go about it. The laptop is an Acer
TM7720 Core2Duo with 4 GB ram, Windows 7-64 bits, USB 2.0, Sata II. The
laptop has 2 1TB internal drives and the boot drive is partitionned in 2 (C
and E, the other drive is D).

I am planning to use a stand alone duplicator because I think it will be
faster this way (actually it's a 2 ports Sata docking station with stand
alone cloning capacity) .

My questions are 1- How do I go about the TRIM or alignement that SSD
needs? I've never done this type of transfer before.

2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB ram I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile PM965
Express Chipset).

I'm aware it will work at Sata II speed.

TIA

I installed a ssd in my work laptop a few months ago using Macrium Reflect.
It is strictly for work.
I prefer clone because if something goes wrong with a drive I can pop in the
clone in about 5 min or less and be back in operation.
I can also directly access files on the clone and copy to / from.
MR automatically trimmed and did the initial cloning and the weekly cloning.
Everything went smoothly with no hitches at all.
Be sure to make the MR rescue disk before hand just in case.
The laptop has 8gb ram so I turned off page file.
If it had two drives and I needed a page file I would test it on both
drives to see how bad the slow down was with pf on the spinner.

The speed increase was significant:
Jul 14, 2018 Lenovo T-420 Laptop
SSD: Samsung EVO 860, 500gb, SATA 2
HDD: Toshiba 320gb, 5400 rpm, SATA 2

Drive EVO 860 Tosh 320
Full boot, sec 0:39 1:36
Shut down, sec 0:09 0:19
MS Outlook: ON, sec 0:02 0:24
MS Outlook: OFF instant instant

HDD tune results EVO 860 Tosh 320
min MB/sec 178.4 5.0
max MB/sec 374.8 110.4
avg MB/sec 327.4 65.1
Access ms 0.1 22.4
Burst ms 126.8 103.2

Dominique wrote:
Weatherman écrivait news
Dominique wrote:
Hello. I plan to replace the 1 TB boot drive in my old laptop by a 1TB
SSD
drive and I have a few questions how to go about it. The laptop is an
Acer
TM7720 Core2Duo with 4 GB ram, Windows 7-64 bits, USB 2.0, Sata II. The
laptop has 2 1TB internal drives and the boot drive is partitionned in 2
(C
and E, the other drive is D).

I am planning to use a stand alone duplicator because I think it will be
faster this way (actually it's a 2 ports Sata docking station with stand
alone cloning capacity) .

My questions are 1- How do I go about the TRIM or alignement that SSD
needs? I've never done this type of transfer before.

2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB ram
I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile
PM965
Express Chipset).

I'm aware it will work at Sata II speed.

TIA

If you use the latest Macrium Reflect (Image, not clone), it will
recognize the SSD and trim accordingly. You might want to download the
tool your SSD manufacturer provides to monitor the SSD's health.

So if I understand well, a stand alone hardware disk cloner is not a good
idea for that job? Oh well I will do the "imaging" process on my faster
desktop using the "cloner" as a HD docking station using USB 3. That will
be still faster than doing it directly on the old laptop.

I thought I could clone it externally and then change some Windows
parameters but your solution seems safer. Thanks.

A mechanical cloner is exactly the wrong tool for this.

Let's take my favorite example, a 500GB HDD with 20GB of OS files
on it.

If I use the mechanical cloner:

1) The two disks must be the same size.
Yet, my HDD is 500GB, my SSDs come in
256GB and 512GB models. This practice varies
among brands.

You can use a mechanical cloner from a smaller
disk to a larger disk, but not vice versa.

2) The mechanical cloner copies *all* sectors.
A 500GB source drive needs 500GB of copying.
Yet, the source disk only has 20GB of real
content. That's 480GB of "wasted writes" on the
new SSD. If the two devices were both HDD, we
wouldn't care about this (relatively speaking).
Mechanical drives do have wear ratings, but this
topic doesn't come up all that often.

Whereas Macrium will only do 20GB of writes, when
cloning the 500GB with 20GB files, to either a
256GB SSD (different size) or a 512GB SSD (big enough
in any case). Macrium will offer to resize the last
partition - if the "big C: " is on the end, that makes
size differences in drives, easier to deal with.

Macrium is not a "Partition Manager". You *can* abuse
Macrium so it is a Partition Manager, but if you do
so, you lose the benefits of handling boot identifiers
properly. When you move partitions one at a time,
Macrium is not in a position to "out-think" you, and
so it does not do anything nifty on your behalf. If
you command it to "do a whole disk", then the automation
handles things for you. Because your intent is understood.

Macrium will alter the BCD file and the disk identifiers for you.

+-----+--------------+--------------------------+ ID=1234
| MBR | C: | System Reserved (Active)|
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+

/------------- 20GB total writes --------------\
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+ Clone=5678
| MBR | C: | System Reserved (Active)|
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+
^ | BCD altered so it
| | "boots to itself"
+----------------+ New GUIDs are unique.

By altering whatever passes for a disk identifier, both
of the disks can be in the same machine, without
Disk Management putting one disk "offline". That is convenient.

In addition to Macrium doing the right thing with the BCD
and disk identifiers, the Macrium emergency boot CD also
has a "boot repair" menu item. If the SSD is placed in the
laptop, and for some reason it did not boot, you can insert
the Macrium Emergency Boot CD and use the "boot repair" to
fix it. Without having to clone, all over again (even if it
is only 20GB of writes).

In a typical scenario of "not booting", you run the
Macrium boot repair first, then run a Windows repair after
it. Windows attempts to fix non-booting system disks, but
it isn't always successful. My experience is, running the
Macrium boot repair first, more often results in
recovery when Windows tries to fix things afterwards.
In some cases, Windows doesn't need to do anything extra.

Macrium cannot recover a boot issue causes by using the
wrong disk driver. That's a bitch to fix (because the
StartOverride key method changes in various releases
of Windows 10, and who can keep track?).

Macrium also doesn't fix broken file systems. And neither
should it be expected to do that. It will make an examination
of the volumes before cloning. If the "dirty" bit was set,
it would refuse to clone for example, and you'd have to
run CHKDSK first to clear the dirty bit, before it
would continue.

It's just a better all-round tool for the job.

*And* it supports the issuance of TRIM, and it's done
that for several releases, not just version 7.

The parts of Macrium that are non-free, well, I've
survived to date quite nicely without them :-) If you
want to reward the company, you can always buy a copy.

The tools that come with SSDs, vary "wildly" in quality.
Some "toolboxes" are utter ****, and should be removed
from Program Files at your earliest convenience. You'll
know that, when you see what they (can't) do. The only
one I could recommend offhand, is the Corsair Neutron
I bought and returned to the computer store, the
Secure Erase actually worked in the toolkit. Which is more
than can be said for the Samsung kit. Many companies
offer "toolboxes", but their heart really isn't in it.
They didn't want to give away software with it,
but the competition forced them to put "something"
in the box - something that's not worth leaving
installed...

And then you're left to hunt around on your own,
for something to read out the SMART table.

On some toolkits, the toolkit is *only* for a percentage
of their model line. Certain models with obscure controllers,
the kit will tell you to **** off. Nice.

I was surprised at just how bad this stuff is.

Paul

Paul écrivait news
Dominique wrote:
Weatherman écrivait newsqo2v4$1c7n$1
@gioia.aioe.org:

Dominique wrote:
Hello. I plan to replace the 1 TB boot drive in my old laptop by a
1TB
SSD
drive and I have a few questions how to go about it. The laptop is
an
Acer
TM7720 Core2Duo with 4 GB ram, Windows 7-64 bits, USB 2.0, Sata II.
The
laptop has 2 1TB internal drives and the boot drive is partitionned
in 2
(C
and E, the other drive is D).

I am planning to use a stand alone duplicator because I think it
will be
faster this way (actually it's a 2 ports Sata docking station with
stand
alone cloning capacity) .

My questions are 1- How do I go about the TRIM or alignement that
SSD
needs? I've never done this type of transfer before.

2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB
ram
I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on
this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile
PM965
Express Chipset).

I'm aware it will work at Sata II speed.

TIA

If you use the latest Macrium Reflect (Image, not clone), it will
recognize the SSD and trim accordingly. You might want to download
the
tool your SSD manufacturer provides to monitor the SSD's health.

So if I understand well, a stand alone hardware disk cloner is not a
good
idea for that job? Oh well I will do the "imaging" process on my
faster
desktop using the "cloner" as a HD docking station using USB 3. That
will
be still faster than doing it directly on the old laptop.

I thought I could clone it externally and then change some Windows
parameters but your solution seems safer. Thanks.

A mechanical cloner is exactly the wrong tool for this.

Let's take my favorite example, a 500GB HDD with 20GB of OS files
on it.

If I use the mechanical cloner:

1) The two disks must be the same size.
Yet, my HDD is 500GB, my SSDs come in
256GB and 512GB models. This practice varies
among brands.

You can use a mechanical cloner from a smaller
disk to a larger disk, but not vice versa.

2) The mechanical cloner copies *all* sectors.
A 500GB source drive needs 500GB of copying.
Yet, the source disk only has 20GB of real
content. That's 480GB of "wasted writes" on the
new SSD. If the two devices were both HDD, we
wouldn't care about this (relatively speaking).
Mechanical drives do have wear ratings, but this
topic doesn't come up all that often.

Whereas Macrium will only do 20GB of writes, when
cloning the 500GB with 20GB files, to either a
256GB SSD (different size) or a 512GB SSD (big enough
in any case). Macrium will offer to resize the last
partition - if the "big C: " is on the end, that makes
size differences in drives, easier to deal with.

Macrium is not a "Partition Manager". You *can* abuse
Macrium so it is a Partition Manager, but if you do
so, you lose the benefits of handling boot identifiers
properly. When you move partitions one at a time,
Macrium is not in a position to "out-think" you, and
so it does not do anything nifty on your behalf. If
you command it to "do a whole disk", then the automation
handles things for you. Because your intent is understood.

Macrium will alter the BCD file and the disk identifiers for you.

+-----+--------------+--------------------------+ ID=1234
| MBR | C: | System Reserved (Active)|
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+

/------------- 20GB total writes --------------\
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+ Clone=5678
| MBR | C: | System Reserved (Active)|
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+
^ | BCD altered so it
| | "boots to itself"
+----------------+ New GUIDs are unique.

By altering whatever passes for a disk identifier, both
of the disks can be in the same machine, without
Disk Management putting one disk "offline". That is convenient.

In addition to Macrium doing the right thing with the BCD
and disk identifiers, the Macrium emergency boot CD also
has a "boot repair" menu item. If the SSD is placed in the
laptop, and for some reason it did not boot, you can insert
the Macrium Emergency Boot CD and use the "boot repair" to
fix it. Without having to clone, all over again (even if it
is only 20GB of writes).

In a typical scenario of "not booting", you run the
Macrium boot repair first, then run a Windows repair after
it. Windows attempts to fix non-booting system disks, but
it isn't always successful. My experience is, running the
Macrium boot repair first, more often results in
recovery when Windows tries to fix things afterwards.
In some cases, Windows doesn't need to do anything extra.

Macrium cannot recover a boot issue causes by using the
wrong disk driver. That's a bitch to fix (because the
StartOverride key method changes in various releases
of Windows 10, and who can keep track?).

Macrium also doesn't fix broken file systems. And neither
should it be expected to do that. It will make an examination
of the volumes before cloning. If the "dirty" bit was set,
it would refuse to clone for example, and you'd have to
run CHKDSK first to clear the dirty bit, before it
would continue.

It's just a better all-round tool for the job.

*And* it supports the issuance of TRIM, and it's done
that for several releases, not just version 7.

The parts of Macrium that are non-free, well, I've
survived to date quite nicely without them :-) If you
want to reward the company, you can always buy a copy.

The tools that come with SSDs, vary "wildly" in quality.
Some "toolboxes" are utter ****, and should be removed
from Program Files at your earliest convenience. You'll
know that, when you see what they (can't) do. The only
one I could recommend offhand, is the Corsair Neutron
I bought and returned to the computer store, the
Secure Erase actually worked in the toolkit. Which is more
than can be said for the Samsung kit. Many companies
offer "toolboxes", but their heart really isn't in it.
They didn't want to give away software with it,
but the competition forced them to put "something"
in the box - something that's not worth leaving
installed...

And then you're left to hunt around on your own,
for something to read out the SMART table.

On some toolkits, the toolkit is *only* for a percentage
of their model line. Certain models with obscure controllers,
the kit will tell you to **** off. Nice.

I was surprised at just how bad this stuff is.

Paul


Thank you very much. That's what I wanted to know. I guess I will
reorganize the way I use the storage on this computer before the imaging.
It should simplify the transfer process. The disk E: will be eliminated
The "READ ONLY" files will go on the SSD, I have about 700GB of musical
samples files that load in RAM and the "temporary files" will go on the
HDD (Documents, downloads, etc.); long job ahead. :-).

Lastly, should I put the pagefile on the mechanical drive or leave it on
the SSD? There are some quite large sample files that might be loaded in
RAM (Grand Piano for example).

Thanks again.

Dominique wrote:
Paul écrivait news
Dominique wrote:
Weatherman écrivait newsqo2v4$1c7n$1
@gioia.aioe.org:
Dominique wrote:
Hello. I plan to replace the 1 TB boot drive in my old laptop by a
1TB
SSD
drive and I have a few questions how to go about it. The laptop is
an
Acer
TM7720 Core2Duo with 4 GB ram, Windows 7-64 bits, USB 2.0, Sata II.
The
laptop has 2 1TB internal drives and the boot drive is partitionned
in 2
(C
and E, the other drive is D).

I am planning to use a stand alone duplicator because I think it
will be
faster this way (actually it's a 2 ports Sata docking station with
stand
alone cloning capacity) .

My questions are 1- How do I go about the TRIM or alignement that
SSD
needs? I've never done this type of transfer before.

2-Should I put the pagefile on the other mechanical drive? With 4 GB
ram
I
guess it will get used a lot with the type of applications I use on
this
computer and the chipset does not allow more than 4 GB(Intel Mobile
PM965
Express Chipset).

I'm aware it will work at Sata II speed.

TIA

If you use the latest Macrium Reflect (Image, not clone), it will
recognize the SSD and trim accordingly. You might want to download
the
tool your SSD manufacturer provides to monitor the SSD's health.
So if I understand well, a stand alone hardware disk cloner is not a
good
idea for that job? Oh well I will do the "imaging" process on my
faster
desktop using the "cloner" as a HD docking station using USB 3. That
will
be still faster than doing it directly on the old laptop.

I thought I could clone it externally and then change some Windows
parameters but your solution seems safer. Thanks.
A mechanical cloner is exactly the wrong tool for this.

Let's take my favorite example, a 500GB HDD with 20GB of OS files
on it.

If I use the mechanical cloner:

1) The two disks must be the same size.
Yet, my HDD is 500GB, my SSDs come in
256GB and 512GB models. This practice varies
among brands.

You can use a mechanical cloner from a smaller
disk to a larger disk, but not vice versa.

2) The mechanical cloner copies *all* sectors.
A 500GB source drive needs 500GB of copying.
Yet, the source disk only has 20GB of real
content. That's 480GB of "wasted writes" on the
new SSD. If the two devices were both HDD, we
wouldn't care about this (relatively speaking).
Mechanical drives do have wear ratings, but this
topic doesn't come up all that often.

Whereas Macrium will only do 20GB of writes, when
cloning the 500GB with 20GB files, to either a
256GB SSD (different size) or a 512GB SSD (big enough
in any case). Macrium will offer to resize the last
partition - if the "big C: " is on the end, that makes
size differences in drives, easier to deal with.

Macrium is not a "Partition Manager". You *can* abuse
Macrium so it is a Partition Manager, but if you do
so, you lose the benefits of handling boot identifiers
properly. When you move partitions one at a time,
Macrium is not in a position to "out-think" you, and
so it does not do anything nifty on your behalf. If
you command it to "do a whole disk", then the automation
handles things for you. Because your intent is understood.

Macrium will alter the BCD file and the disk identifiers for you.

+-----+--------------+--------------------------+ ID=1234
| MBR | C: | System Reserved (Active)|
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+

/------------- 20GB total writes --------------\
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+ Clone=5678
| MBR | C: | System Reserved (Active)|
+-----+--------------+--------------------------+
^ | BCD altered so it
| | "boots to itself"
+----------------+ New GUIDs are unique.

By altering whatever passes for a disk identifier, both
of the disks can be in the same machine, without
Disk Management putting one disk "offline". That is convenient.

In addition to Macrium doing the right thing with the BCD
and disk identifiers, the Macrium emergency boot CD also
has a "boot repair" menu item. If the SSD is placed in the
laptop, and for some reason it did not boot, you can insert
the Macrium Emergency Boot CD and use the "boot repair" to
fix it. Without having to clone, all over again (even if it
is only 20GB of writes).

In a typical scenario of "not booting", you run the
Macrium boot repair first, then run a Windows repair after
it. Windows attempts to fix non-booting system disks, but
it isn't always successful. My experience is, running the
Macrium boot repair first, more often results in
recovery when Windows tries to fix things afterwards.
In some cases, Windows doesn't need to do anything extra.

Macrium cannot recover a boot issue causes by using the
wrong disk driver. That's a bitch to fix (because the
StartOverride key method changes in various releases
of Windows 10, and who can keep track?).

Macrium also doesn't fix broken file systems. And neither
should it be expected to do that. It will make an examination
of the volumes before cloning. If the "dirty" bit was set,
it would refuse to clone for example, and you'd have to
run CHKDSK first to clear the dirty bit, before it
would continue.

It's just a better all-round tool for the job.

*And* it supports the issuance of TRIM, and it's done
that for several releases, not just version 7.

The parts of Macrium that are non-free, well, I've
survived to date quite nicely without them :-) If you
want to reward the company, you can always buy a copy.

The tools that come with SSDs, vary "wildly" in quality.
Some "toolboxes" are utter ****, and should be removed
from Program Files at your earliest convenience. You'll
know that, when you see what they (can't) do. The only
one I could recommend offhand, is the Corsair Neutron
I bought and returned to the computer store, the
Secure Erase actually worked in the toolkit. Which is more
than can be said for the Samsung kit. Many companies
offer "toolboxes", but their heart really isn't in it.
They didn't want to give away software with it,
but the competition forced them to put "something"
in the box - something that's not worth leaving
installed...

And then you're left to hunt around on your own,
for something to read out the SMART table.

On some toolkits, the toolkit is *only* for a percentage
of their model line. Certain models with obscure controllers,
the kit will tell you to **** off. Nice.

I was surprised at just how bad this stuff is.

Paul


Thank you very much. That's what I wanted to know. I guess I will
reorganize the way I use the storage on this computer before the imaging.
It should simplify the transfer process. The disk E: will be eliminated
The "READ ONLY" files will go on the SSD, I have about 700GB of musical
samples files that load in RAM and the "temporary files" will go on the
HDD (Documents, downloads, etc.); long job ahead. :-).

Lastly, should I put the pagefile on the mechanical drive or leave it on
the SSD? There are some quite large sample files that might be loaded in
RAM (Grand Piano for example).

Thanks again.

If you will *always* have the mechanical drive, you
can put the pagefile on the mechanical one. I don't know
if it really likes that though (removing it from C: and
only having it on D: or something).

I haven't had perfect luck doing such things. Sooner
or later, you'll be doing something and forget the
arrangement and make a mistake.

That's probably why most everything in the house here,
has pagefile on boot drive. Self-contained.

There may be occasions when it pages out. The Windows 10
behavior is pretty good (in some test cases I've tried).
I don't know, right off hand, how good the Win7 policy is.
My Win7 is still on a HDD. Only Win10 gets SSD treatment,
because it's a pig with either HDD or SSD, but SSD is
a bit better behaved. It still takes too long booting.
I think the Win7 boots a little faster (when comparing
HDD to HDD boot, 7 versus 10).

I usually set the pagefile to a low number, like 1GB,
and make it a fixed size in the preferences. There will
always be attempts to write to the pagefile, but maybe
on the order of 300MB per session or so (of write only
files).

If you put your sample file on the SSD, maybe it
won't need to be in memory any more...

One problem with SSDs on old chipset, is you don't
have SATA III. If you have SATA II or SATA I ports
for the SSD drive, it takes a bit of "snap" out of them.
But the seek time will always be zero, so if you
read a sample file off the SSD, it's easy to refer
to it at any time in the future, without seek time
to ruin things. The seek time can be as low as
20usec (which is the time to read out a block and
put it in a buffer in the flash). Samsung has managed
to improve that to 10usec (once Intel showed off their
Optane, and Samsung had to match them). So some version
of Samsung flash, cuts that time in half.

Paul

On 24/10/2018 04:26, Paul wrote:

If you will *always* have the mechanical drive, you
can put the pagefile on the mechanical one. I don't know
if it really likes that though (removing it from C: and
only having it on D: or something).

That should be perfectly possible (I doubt if you need to be told how to
do this, but perhaps the OP might - this for W7 as stated by OP) ...
Control Panel
System
Advanced system settings
Advanced tab
Performance options
Virtual memory
UNCHECK Automaticallly manage ...
Select each drive and assign VM
None for SSD
Same as RAM for HD*

* Conventionally, one sets the amount of VM to be the same as the amount
of installed RAM, unless a user with advanced knowledge has reasons for
doing different. For myself, I set the initial limit to be equal to
installed RAM and the upper limit to be twice that, and that seems to
work pretty well. I nearly always manage VM with my own settings, to
confine Windows to using only the system drive or partition C: for VMN
and prevent it from putting any on my data drive or partition D:

I haven't had perfect luck doing such things. Sooner
or later, you'll be doing something and forget the
arrangement and make a mistake.

Can't say that I've ever found it to be a problem, once properly set up.
However, I can see that if there is no VM on the OP's system drive,
the SSD, and is all on another, the HD, and the latter goes down or for
any reason the PC is booted without it, then there will be problems.
Presumably Windows will grind exceeding slow until it is shut down and
the problem fixed.

On an old XP machine I have here, I just put the VM on the SSD as
normal. I reckon that by the time the SSD fails, the PC will be
redundant anyway. As it is, even now it's rarely switched on for any
serious purposes.

"Java Jive" wrote in message
news
* Conventionally, one sets the amount of VM to be the same as the amount
of installed RAM, unless a user with advanced knowledge has reasons for
doing different. For myself, I set the initial limit to be equal to
installed RAM and the upper limit to be twice that, and that seems to work
pretty well. I nearly always manage VM with my own settings, to confine
Windows to using only the system drive or partition C: for VMN and prevent
it from putting any on my data drive or partition D:

On my Windows 7 PC, I have "automatically manage paging size" and it says
"recommended 12 GB and currently allocated 8 GB" - for 8 GB of physical
RAM - ie 150% max and 100% min.

NY wrote:
"Java Jive" wrote in message
news
* Conventionally, one sets the amount of VM to be the same as the
amount of installed RAM, unless a user with advanced knowledge has
reasons for doing different. For myself, I set the initial limit to
be equal to installed RAM and the upper limit to be twice that, and
that seems to work pretty well. I nearly always manage VM with my own
settings, to confine Windows to using only the system drive or
partition C: for VMN and prevent it from putting any on my data drive
or partition D:

On my Windows 7 PC, I have "automatically manage paging size" and it
says "recommended 12 GB and currently allocated 8 GB" - for 8 GB of
physical RAM - ie 150% max and 100% min.

Do you want to sit around while it pages out 12GB, 4KB at
a time ? I don't :-)

That's why I manage the pagefile, and not Windows.
If a job goes nuts, I want it to end quickly.

Paul

"Paul" wrote in message
news
NY wrote:
On my Windows 7 PC, I have "automatically manage paging size" and it says
"recommended 12 GB and currently allocated 8 GB" - for 8 GB of physical
RAM - ie 150% max and 100% min.

Do you want to sit around while it pages out 12GB, 4KB at
a time ? I don't :-)

That's why I manage the pagefile, and not Windows.
If a job goes nuts, I want it to end quickly.

So if you let Windows set the limits automatically, does it take longer to
page out than if you define the same limits (12 GB max, 8 GB min) yourself?
I never knew that. I thought the only difference was that you could choose
to change the limits from the 150% and 100% limits that "automatically"
uses.

NY wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
news
NY wrote:
On my Windows 7 PC, I have "automatically manage paging size" and it
says "recommended 12 GB and currently allocated 8 GB" - for 8 GB of
physical RAM - ie 150% max and 100% min.

Do you want to sit around while it pages out 12GB, 4KB at
a time ? I don't :-)

That's why I manage the pagefile, and not Windows.
If a job goes nuts, I want it to end quickly.

So if you let Windows set the limits automatically, does it take longer
to page out than if you define the same limits (12 GB max, 8 GB min)
yourself? I never knew that. I thought the only difference was that you
could choose to change the limits from the 150% and 100% limits that
"automatically" uses.

It's a question of whether operating with a high page fill,
brings out the best in Windows. My one test of an extreme,
showed it wasn't all that amazingly wonderful. (128GB pagefile,
40GB filled). I had to keep poking it (apply artificial memory
pressure, to cause garbage collection and make the application
purge unneeded stuff), to make the application produce output.
If left to its own, it seemed a bit lethargic after a while
(the processing speed might drop to 60% of normal).

The idea of a small pagefile of fixed size, is on an assumption
you won't try on purpose to swap programs in and out in a daytime
session.

If the page size was changed, to 2MB or 4MB chunks, my opinion
might change. 4KB pages lose their charm when larger quantities
of memory are paged out. (Page size choices, as this is virtual memory,
depend on the page size choices the CPU supports. The performance
can be a function of the number of TLB entries. Most of the TLB
cache is there for 4KB entries. There are fewer cache entries
for the larger pages.)

The speed does not change, when using a static or a dynamic
allocation scheme. The expansion Windows would do of the pagefile,
it might lead to (file system level) fragmentation, but that's a
non-issue if paging to an SSD. It would be more of an issue for an HDD.

When the page file is filled, and the uptime is long, the pagefile
can become internally fragmented. And that's the case you're trying
to avoid, so the machine stays snappy.

Intel makes a product, where their Optane SSD is used as
a memory extension. The product exists for Xeon only. It's
cheaper than main memory. But if you want 80% of your session
to be "living" on Intel secondary storage, Intel has engineered a
solution for that. One difference is, Microsoft is not handling
the paging, and the Intel driver handles virtual memory transparently.
One reason this is practical, is Optane (XPoint flash) has a higher
write cycle count than the TLC on a conventional SSD. Since it was
released, I haven't seen any tales of derring-do in the real world
with it. But then, Enterprise users don't make a lot of noise when
doing stuff. The Optane storage device has a PCI Express card
form-factor.

Paul

FWIW

A SSD may save on laptop battery power and not much more.

Speed improvement is entirely dependent on the chip set in the PC.
Older PCs will probably not give much speed improvement.

I have done four laptops and the speed difference between laptopss is
significant.
Each laptop had a different chipset and that made all the difference.

I prefer Samsung Pro SSD because of the very long warrantee.
There are two Samsung series out there so beware.
Read the fine print.

Samsung provides Magician (download from their website) to optimize the
SDD for the PC and will tell you about shortcomings/limitations of the PC.

One version of the Samsung SSD package provided a cable to use for image
or copy.
I used Macrium Reflect Free to do an image, not a clone, since doing an
image cleans up the HDD to SSD installation.
Make sure to create the Macrium Recovery CD.