@Jeffrey Nonken
Take a look at how much your swap file is actually used. My remaining Pi version 1 has 1GB of swap space, 252K of which is currently in use. It still uses its original 8GB SDHC card. The 7th field of /sys/class/block/mmcblk0p3/stat divided by uptime gives 52 sectors/day. SSD's are guarantied for years with the assumption of one complete drive write per day. 3½" disks are guarantied for years with the assumption of one spin up / spin down cycle per day. (If you want more cycles, pick a 2½" drive.)
That Pi started with one spinning disk, and currently has three. The oldest disk got replaced a few months ago when it started to make unusual noises. Pi V1 has only ½GB of ram. Just about everything under five years old has much more, and even less use for swap. If I had something writing huge amounts of data I would still prefer SSD for reliability, and if you are going over 6 drive writes per day, a spinning disk is probably too slow to read the data back even once per day.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
