2x 74gb 16mbcache Raptor Raid 0 PAGFILE What setting?

[ReTiCuLeX]

Hi all, I'm trying to figure out what's the best page file setting for my raptor raid 0 setup. I play games mostly on my rig and occasional video editing.

Here's what I have setup.

Two 74gb WD SATA Raptor 16mb Cache in Raid 0 Striped 64k
Partition C: 12GB (Windows XP Pro OS)
Partition D: 126GB (Program Files)

Two 250gb WD SATAII Caviar 16mb Cache Raid 0 Striped 64k
Partition G: 500GB total (Storage)

I tried my page file static size of 2048 x 2048 on my C: but the drive gets fragmented REALLY quick for some reason. What should I set my page file at for everything? Or should I turn it off (But photoshop wont work then)

Thanks in advance,
- ReT

 

[RavenD]

If your pagefile is static, then the drive is not getting fragmented due to the pagefile. What do you use to defrag? If you're using the windows defragmenter, check out DiskKeeper or PerfectDisk - the windows defragmenter only defrags files, but leaves free space fragmented so as soon as you start changing or adding files, you're back where you started. Both the programs I mentioned rearrange free space to be contiguous, so you dont run into this problem.
Also, drop the raid-0 for your storage drive, that's just asking for trouble. If you really want the storage drive to be one volume, do a jbod instead of raid-0, that way if one of the drives dies, you dont lose all 500GB of your data.

 

[ReTiCuLeX]

I do use perfect disk. What should my static page file be set at though? And as for doing Jbod, how can I go about it? Thanks for the quick reply btw.

 

[WhiteZero]

I do use perfect disk. What should my static page file be set at though? And as for doing Jbod, how can I go about it? Thanks for the quick reply btw.

A good size for your Pagefile is 1.5x ur RAM.
Static pagefile ftw!

 

[bbz_Ghost]

That 1.5x RAM is ridiculous nowadays. It was intended specifically for use on machines at a time when RAM was ridiculously expensive and hard to afford, and very small in terms of actual capacity. Having 256MB of RAM would obviously require significant paging activity if the OS consumed half of that just to boot to the Desktop.

Nowadays, with 1GB, 2GB and more being the "norm" for some people, having a pagefile with 1.5GB, 3GB or heaven forbid 6GB is just a waste of space - regardless of how big the hard drive is or how much you paid for it. Waste is waste, by any meaning of the word.

Depending on the amount of his RAM I'd say - just as a good setting - that if it's 1GB then a 1GB pagefile should be more than sufficient. Anything over 1GB of RAM will not require more than a 1GB pagefile unless the OP is doing massive massive Photoshop work, or something else that requires a lot of chip RAM and would force a lot of swap activity. Games really don't do that because they tend to load up the video RAM with textures. Besides, AGP style texture storage in system RAM is a thing of the past nowadays because of that same reason: video cards with larges amounts of RAM onboard.

As for the pagefile on his Raptors, well... I don't want this to turn into a "What do I do with my pagefile?" type thread because there's already a sticky for it iirc, and besides: those types of threads always turn nasty all too quickly.

Suffice to say: my advice is leave it alone. I mean that, seriously. Leave the pagefile alone.

Dude, you've got 2 Raptors - the fastest SATA hard drives on the fuckin' planet right now. Not only that but you've got them set up in a RAID...

Do you really think that doing anything with that pagefile is going to matter at all? The only way you're going to notice any performance benefits whatsoever in your system would be to run specific disk intensive benchmarks designed to point out such differences... and even so, it's going to be like 1-2% if that much.

I've been tweaking machines for a few decades now, and I finally had to come to the realization that it's idle most of the time anyway, even when I'm sitting at the machine half the time I'm awake if not all of it. Windows works just fine if you don't start dicking around with it, really. The assumption that it's going to be slow from the start doesn't necessarily have any truth to it, especially on today's "Godboxes"...

"How fast is fast?"