Virtual memory and Ramdrive

Danny101

Posts: 2,035   +842
I have a system with 16GB of memory, a 250GB SSD, and a 500GB hard drive. I want to disable vm, but understand that Windows 10 requires it for optimal operation. To save my SSD, I currently have vm set to the hard drive. It's finally dawned on me that I could create a ramdrive in memory and set vm to that. I'm not utilizing all the memory anyway, and if have to, I could boost it up to the 32GB. Does anyone have experience doing this and is this a useful technique?

Aside, I looked at caching, but iit would just interfere with my ability to move drives from system to system.
 
The sad pat is, the device that would support VM best, is the SSD as there is no SEEK or ROTATIONAL delay like a true HD, but it is known to degrade over time as the IO WRITE count climbs.
 
If I can't make Windows use Virtual memory on the main memory, lol, what a concept, then a very fast NVM would be the next best thing.
 
You've only got 16 GiB of RAM - I know this is quite a bit, but how big are you planning to make the virtual memory? If you're only planning to make it 1 or 2 GiB, you're not really making the most of it. If you have a spare M.2 slot on the motherboard, you could buy a 16 GiB Optane module and fill that with the VM (just don't use it as an Optane drive or Optane memory).
 
You've only got 16 GiB of RAM - I know this is quite a bit, but how big are you planning to make the virtual memory? If you're only planning to make it 1 or 2 GiB, you're not really making the most of it. If you have a spare M.2 slot on the motherboard, you could buy a 16 GiB Optane module and fill that with the VM (just don't use it as an Optane drive or Optane memory).
I would much rather invest in more memory....up to 32 GB. Not only that it's faster, but it can sustain the constant reads and writes.I haven't had time to study the matter for I am deployed for work and it's been days since I've been on this site. SSD's don't yet have the stamina for it, unless I'm distrusting a SSD's ability to error correct more than I need to.
 
You've only got 16 GiB of RAM - I know this is quite a bit, but how big are you planning to make the virtual memory? If you're only planning to make it 1 or 2 GiB, you're not really making the most of it. If you have a spare M.2 slot on the motherboard, you could buy a 16 GiB Optane module and fill that with the VM (just don't use it as an Optane drive or Optane memory).
I'll look into the Optane. Seems like a good solution.
 
I use a little 16 GiB Optane M.2 module for my virtual memory. I've not objectively tested the difference between using it and how I previously had the VM (just on my c:\ which is 500 GiB Samsung 850 EVO), but it 'feels' better with it.

On the other hand, I originally bought the Optane module to accelerate another system, which had a single HDD, and the process of setting up Optane Acceleration was so awful and glitchy, that I questioned my sanity for buying it in the first place.

Personally, I would argue that nothing really beats just leaving the VM under default settings, and just using a good SSD as your boot/OS drive.
 
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