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Does SSD stop swap file beachballing?

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whitedragon101

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 11, 2008
1,349
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My System : Early 2011 17" 2.2ghz i7, 500gb 7200rpm, 8gb RAM
OS : Snow Leopard


I have 8gb of RAM but OSX loves using the swap file. I only restarted last night and already the swap file is 1gb and will quickly climb to its usual 7-8gb. I run a lot of web browsers with a lot of windows and always get beachballs along with the sound of hard drive chattering.

Has anyone switched to an SSD and noticed a reduction in beachballing when running and switching between a lot of web browsing windows and apps?
 
I used to get a bunch of beach balls in OSX, just like I would get a lot of Hourglasses in Windows. Switching to an SSD has basically eliminated both for me.
 
whitedragon101 said:
My System : Early 2011 17" 2.2ghz i7, 500gb 7200rpm, 8gb RAM
OS : Snow Leopard


I have 8gb of RAM but OSX loves using the swap file. I only restarted last night and already the swap file is 1gb and will quickly climb to its usual 7-8gb. I run a lot of web browsers with a lot of windows and always get beachballs along with the sound of hard drive chattering.

Has anyone switched to an SSD and noticed a reduction in beachballing when running and switching between a lot of web browsing windows and apps?
Click to expand...

First of all, I would check in the directory /var/vm to see if OS X is actually paging out to the drive.

If it is, then buy more RAM. That model can hold twice as much as you have now.
 
Well, I rarely see a beach ball on my MBA with 4GB of RAM and an SSD. Surprisingly 4GB of RAM has not caused me a single issue yet - even when running VMs. I originally was planning on selling my MBA to get an 8GB model when they came out and now that they did, I have no desire to switch, it runs that well.
 
corvus32 said:
First of all, I would check in the directory /var/vm to see if OS X is actually paging out to the drive.

If it is, then buy more RAM. That model can hold twice as much as you have now.
Click to expand...

The pagefile gets used even when OSX has more RAM to use. I have seen others disable the pagefile so only RAM can be used but if you run out of RAM the system becomes unstable.
 
whitedragon101 said:
The pagefile gets used even when OSX has more RAM to use. I have seen others disable the pagefile so only RAM can be used but if you run out of RAM the system becomes unstable.
Click to expand...

The pagefile is used to store the contents of RAM when the computer sleeps.

The swapfiles are used for virtual memory.
 
from my experience with a 2gb 2010 mba the answer is no. when i have 15 tabs in chrome open and 10 large pdf files open in preview swapping between them causes beach balling.
 
whitedragon101 said:
Not quite.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=143&pgno=1
Click to expand...

Sleepimage was what I was referring to, not pagefile. Pagefile is something to do with Windows.

You say your swapfile is 7-8GB in size. What swapfile are you talking about, and where is it located?

Because OS X should be using the directory /var/vm and it shouldn't be a single file. If it's paging out to the drive, their should be swapfile1, swapfile2, swapfile3, etc, in that directory.

Located also in there is a sleepimage file. That file is the same size as the amount of RAM you have installed, in your case, 8GB. That's the file it dumps the contents of RAM into when your computer sleeps.
 
corvus32 said:
Sleepimage was what I was referring to, not pagefile. Pagefile is something to do with Windows.

You say your swapfile is 7-8GB in size. What swapfile are you talking about, and where is it located?

Because OS X should be using the directory /var/vm and it shouldn't be a single file. If it's paging out to the drive, their should be swapfile1, swapfile2, swapfile3, etc, in that directory.

Located also in there is a sleepimage file. That file is the same size as the amount of RAM you have installed, in your case, 8GB. That's the file it dumps the contents of RAM into when your computer sleeps.
Click to expand...


When I say swap file or page file I am referring to the hard disk space which the operating system uses to store working runtime information. This information should generally be stored in RAM but sometimes there is not enough RAM and the OS placed it on the hard disk. Also bafflingly OSX regularly uses the swap file even when there is enough RAM.

I've never gone hunting for the swap file before but it does appear to be in the /var/vm directory as you say, which contains a number of swapfile1,swapfile2.... files. The activity monitor on OSX lets you know how much Swap has been used/created (under system memory) and how many page outs have occurred from it. I generally use iStat Pro for this as its a bit more convenient.

I was hoping because SSDs are so much faster at random access it would prevent the beachballs.
 
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