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I was debating with guys about necessity of SSD for me.

I'm Salesforce Developer. My tools are Eclipse, Firefox/Chrome, Git. Eclipse does only editing files, saving them locally and sends them to cloud, gets them back. So no code compiling or heavy servers on my local machine. I start Windows 7 on Monday and restart it when new updates are installed and Windows need to be restarted to apply updates.

Basically, I don't care about how fast apps are starting. I don't care about temperature, energy consuming, noise, etc. I have Dell laptop with i5, 16GB RAM and 2.5-Inch 500GB 7200RPM SATA III 32MB Cache SATA 6Gbps HDD. I saw, that my PC uses max 5-7GB of RAM. So I thought, why do I might need and SSD when I have free 10GB of RAM.

So, guys said, that all apps read/write stuff on HDD even if you have a lot of free RAM. Is this true? How to check what is written/read to/from HDD during my work?

EDIT1:

I don't use swap or page file in my Win 7 64.

Andrii Muzychuk
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    procmon can show you I/O activity: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb896645.aspx – EBGreen Mar 25 '15 at 18:39
  • Yes; Of course applications read and write to the system's storage device. – Ramhound Mar 25 '15 at 19:04
  • Yes, when you say to save a file or exit an app. Why to store it during work and not in background? – Andrii Muzychuk Mar 25 '15 at 19:17
  • possible duplicate of [Should I disable swap file if I have lots of RAM or should I move it to a virtual RAM drive?](http://superuser.com/questions/810170/should-i-disable-swap-file-if-i-have-lots-of-ram-or-should-i-move-it-to-a-virtua) – Yorik Mar 25 '15 at 19:21
  • @yorik While I can see why you feel that's related and a possible duplicate, he's not asking about disabling the swap file. But hey, like I said I can understand you flagging it. ;) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Mar 25 '15 at 19:25
  • He seems to actually be asking "why is the HDD even being accessed when I have disabled page file and have 10GB ram free" – Yorik Mar 25 '15 at 19:26
  • I think, yes, my question from "do I need ssd" is becoming "how ssd is making OS and apps working faster". – Andrii Muzychuk Mar 26 '15 at 08:13

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So, guys said, that all apps read/write stuff on HDD even if you have a lot of free RAM. Is this true?

Yes, in general, that's true. How much and how often will depend almost completely on the specific application(s).

Not to mention the Page File usage (which SSDs are awesome for, BTW). For more specific information on that, perhaps check out this other SU question and answers:

Why does Windows 7 use the page file when there's free physical RAM?

How to check what is written/read to/from HDD during my work?

Windows 7's in-built Resource Monitor will show you live disk I/O activity. Look at it, and judge for yourself.

Windows' Resource Monitor

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Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
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  • BTW, I don't use page file at all. Why, if I have free 10GB all the time. – Andrii Muzychuk Mar 25 '15 at 19:16
  • Why? Check these SU questions out: [Should I disable swap file if I have lots of RAM or should I move it to a virtual RAM drive?](http://superuser.com/questions/810170/should-i-disable-swap-file-if-i-have-lots-of-ram-or-should-i-move-it-to-a-virtua), and [Windows Swap (Page File): Enable or Disable?](http://superuser.com/questions/14795/windows-swap-page-file-enable-or-disable) :) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Mar 25 '15 at 19:22