SSD for a swap/pagefile area

[deltamind]

I need some advice on using a swap/pagefile on an SSD device.

 

We have standardized on the Corsair Nova V32 SSD for our embedded linux solution, and are assembling our Linux distribution for this system. The question comes up as to whether or not to use a swap partition on the SSD. A quick Google search reveals that some people swear against doing that because you will prematurely wear out your drive. Other people say that the wear-leveling algorithms nowadays are good enough that you can safely use swap on an SSD without a significant degradation of lifetime.

 

Usually a page file is on a fixed & contiguous location on the disk. This brings up the question of whether or not the wear-leveling algorithms are able to move the page file's sectors around to effectively spread the writes out over the entire drive. Does any know the answer to this?

 

Is there an equivalent to the "SSD-life" application for Linux so we can test how the life of the drive is progressing with and without a swap partition?

 

Does Corsair have an official statement on whether or not using swap/page files on their SSDs is recommended?

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

[Wired]

Better question to ask would be is the SSD Life even reporting the life correctly, or better yet, does the drive itself even report the life at all?

[deltamind]

Well, given that the wear-leveling algorithms are all uber-proprietary and no one except some engineer hidden in a back room of the manufacturer offices can have any idea what's going on, maybe you have a point that SSD-life could be worthless. And since it's all proprietary secret knowledge, who can say whether or not SSD-life is worth the bits its made of?

 

I would still like to have some statement on whether or not putting swap/page files on an SSD is a good idea. No one seems to know, but it seems a reasonable question.

[RAM GUY]

It depends on how you use your system, in my case personal suggestion; the paging file AKA swap file is best if on your fastest drive.. However, you may on occasion have to image the drive and then use parted Magic to secure erase it and bring back the performance That being said there are some limitations in how SSD's drives function that may suggest using another drive with writing files that are temp files or continually get deleted and written; because this may degrade the performance of an SSD drive.