Even though I have an SSD for the O/S, my paging device is on D:, a conventional drive. So are all my SONAR projects and Word documents, download folder and anything else that gets updated frequently. I limit my E: drive exclusively to write-once-read-many data (e.g. sample libraries), so it's ready to go for SSD replacement once I can swing the purchase.
 
Lifetime specs keep getting better for SSDs, not just because the underlying technology is getting better (flash storage is actually a pretty mature technology, having been around since the 80's) but because manufacturers have gotten clever about mitigating their many limitations.
 
Still, even premium SSDs don't come close to the longevity of conventional storage. A million P/E cycles sounds like a lot, but for some applications it won't take you long at all to get there - and the SSD's performance will have significantly degraded long before you reached a million writes. Coming technology promises 100 million cycles, but no products yet exist based on that technology. And you can be sure that when/if they arrive you won't be able to afford them.
 
So yeah, they're getting better and cheaper. But I'll probably always have at least one HDD in the box.
 
 

I have been seeing more and more youtube videos on these newfangled SSDs called M.2 and NVME that supposedly plug into PCIe slots.  However I don't think any can be used as a C drive, but they look tempting for storage.  I don't know enough about them however.
 
My C:drive is a 480g SSD.  I thought a 240 was just too small. 

My C drive is a Samsung Evo 120 GB and there was a "fix" for it as the first gen had storage overwrite limitation bugs. But still all fingers point to mine bieng just way to small! Yes get the biggest one you can afford. 

Mine's 500 GB, but only 23% full. I could fit three more complete Windows installations on it. So yeh, 120 GB is cutting it close but entirely do-able if you're selective about what you store there.
 
I use a nifty utility called WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics) that makes it very easy to see what's eating up your drive's space, so you don't waste your time moving minor stuff while perhaps overlooking big items you don't ever think about. Like forgotten installation files.
 

Kev999

Keith Albright [Cakewalk]
SSDs work until they don't...limited..write cycles...

 
I was considering this issue when I was building my new PC. I had a old spare 120GB SSD lying around and I ended up using it for storing ephemeral stuff, such as:

• Sonar's picture cache
• Browser's temporary internet files
• Windows Pagefile
• Caches & temp folders for any programs that allow the user to specify filepaths for such use

Files included here tend to get written to disk, then deleted and replaced often. Having them on a less important drive saves wear and tear on the main system drive. And if this drive wears out before all the others, it won't cause any serious disruption.

Uh...unless I'm mistaken, using an SSD in this specific fashion & purpose WRT the pagefile is not a good idea.  You'd actually be taking a risk of getting corrupt data into the system that you may not even realize were a read/write "fail".  The pagefile is basically the system memory backing store, so the results of any such fail could be anywhere from a crash to a lockup to a warning message to no indicator at all (yet still incur corrupt data somewhere - in memory or in a file, etc).
 
Sonic

SonicExplorer

Kev999

Keith Albright [Cakewalk]
SSDs work until they don't...limited..write cycles...

...I had a old spare 120GB SSD lying around and I ended up using it for storing ephemeral stuff, such as:

• Windows Pagefile
• ...

Files included here tend to get written to disk, then deleted and replaced often. Having them on a less important drive saves wear and tear on the main system drive. And if this drive wears out before all the others, it won't cause any serious disruption.

Uh...unless I'm mistaken, using an SSD in this specific fashion & purpose WRT the pagefile is not a good idea.  You'd actually be taking a risk of getting corrupt data into the system that you may not even realize were a read/write "fail".  The pagefile is basically the system memory backing store, so the results of any such fail could be anywhere from a crash to a lockup to a warning message to no indicator at all (yet still incur corrupt data somewhere - in memory or in a file, etc).

 
So where would you put the pagefile?

My posts keep disappearing!

[duplicate post]

Kev999

SonicExplorer

Kev999

Keith Albright [Cakewalk]
SSDs work until they don't...limited..write cycles...

I was considering this issue when I was building my new PC. I had a old spare 120GB SSD lying around and I ended up using it for storing ephemeral stuff, such as:

• Sonar's picture cache
• Browser's temporary internet files
• Windows Pagefile
• Caches & temp folders for any programs that allow the user to specify filepaths for such use

Files included here tend to get written to disk, then deleted and replaced often. Having them on a less important drive saves wear and tear on the main system drive. And if this drive wears out before all the others, it won't cause any serious disruption.

Uh...unless I'm mistaken, using an SSD in this specific fashion & purpose WRT the pagefile is not a good idea.  You'd actually be taking a risk of getting corrupt data into the system that you may not even realize were a read/write "fail".  The pagefile is basically the system memory backing store, so the results of any such fail could be anywhere from a crash to a lockup to a warning message to no indicator at all (yet still incur corrupt data somewhere - in memory or in a file, etc).

 
So where would you put the pagefile?

If you have lots of RAM I would suggest considering RAM drive as store for things that could be discarded after session in OS. Like all temp files and pagefile. The thing about pagefile is unfortunately Microsoft didn't predict such solution and it is not very good implemented. While it is stable (I used it few years) sometimes/often it bothers on OS start and creates pagefile itself on disk, so as some session are with pagefile on RAMdisk and some on disk. As workaroud I use small pagefile on disk and big on RAMdrive.
 
About life of SSD cells I believe reading didn't decrease it, am I wrong? So I think keeping on secondary SSD all things like VTSi, loops (Sonar contents) and everything that is not changing or changing only a little is no problem at all. And it speed up work with VSTi and loops significantly.
Of course OS also needs SSD (for overall system performance gain) but just don't assign all space to OS, leave 2-3GB unassigned space for internal disk cells rotation when writing. It should help to keep it longer.

Correct. Reading from an SSD doesn't reduce its lifespan, only writing and deleting. VSTs, VSTi's, loops, samples and SONAR itself are mostly static and therefore good candidates for SSD storage. 
 
And honestly, I'd have no qualms about using an SSD for things like SONAR projects as long as I was backing them up regularly. And preferably not saving them to the same drive that hosts Windows, because replacing the C: drive is a hassle compared to replacing a data drive. 
 
To answer Kev's question, you can locate the paging file on any drive and even split it across multiple drives. You can also make its size fixed, saving the overhead of resizing it on the fly. Some will argue that paging to an SSD would be a performance boost, and that's (kind of) true. However, if you have 16 GB or more of RAM, the only time you're likely accessing the paging device is when you first start up a program, so using an SSD for it won't yield big performance boosts and putting it on an HDD won't significantly slow you down.
 
Regarding RAMDisks, they've largely fallen from favor for awhile now because disk drives are so much faster today than they were back when RAMDisks were popular. If you were to move the page file to a RAMDisk, it's sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul - you'd be reducing RAM to make the process faster that mitigates insufficient RAM.