Page Files... should I optimize for it?

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z5556792

n00b
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Mar 22, 2009
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Vista Home Premium
4 GB RAM
320 GB Seagate (old)
1.0 TB Western Digital (new)


My OS was installed on my 320 GB drive. I have been told that Vista runs better if I move the page file to a physically separate drive. It's my intent to upgrade to Windows 7 later this year, which would finally allow me to install 8 GB of RAM on my system.

Need some advice:

Should I create a separate partition on the new drive dedicated to the Vista page file? I'm told this would prevent fragmentation. How big should my page file be? I'd rather not have to repartition the drive later this year, when I upgrade to 8 GB RAM + Windows 7.

It seems to me that a page files will become less useful as RAM goes up. Are Page Files even worth optimizing for?
 
I'm not going to be the last to say this in this thread...

LEAVE IT ALONE

;)
 
Well, well well ... don't know how to call you, you have a funny screen name.

Page File is a science for itself. I have discussed this topic a few times in different forums and the opinions are very diverse indeed here.

I can only tell you what I have decided for myself: to switch off the page file completely.
Since this has been done about 1 month ago and having my PC in usage almost 12 hours a day, I can say that not a single problem has happened so far ... on both, Windows Vista x86 and Windows 7 x64 (build 7048).

If you feel confident to look up some tweaking, check this pdf file if you like.

Windows Vista Supercharged
 
I have my pagefile split 1GB on each physical drive. This seems to work for me.

Others will say Leave it Alone

And then you'll have those that just tell you to disable to completely.
 
A static 1GB page file on each physical hard drive (if you have multiple drives in RAID arrays this doesn't apply) is about the only thing you can actually do to give Windows a slight performance boost - it can read/write to one page file while reading/writing to another at the same time as required, which boosts the multitasking efficiency.

Any and all other tweaks, including disabling the page file or even attempting to do so, are simply not recommended.

(Yep, he'll post something here too...)
 
If you disable your pagefile, make absolutely sure you have enough ram. I'd say 8gigs as a minimum.
I had mine disabled for a short time and things like larger software installs on 4gigs would definitely throw an error.
 
I would advise leaving it alone.

People will tell you all sorts of voodoo on how to speed up your pagefile/memory. Some will even tell you to run with it off. My personal belief is most of the people who come up with these tweaks have never ever taken one programming class or operating system class. I used to have a link to some great slides showing how pagefiles and virtual memory is just another layer of caching, but I can't find it.

In today's world, the only tweak I can advise is putting it on a disk with fast random access speeds. (SSD drives are wonderful)



This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
I just leave it alone. I've never experienced any noticeable boost from tweaking it, and turning it off can cause a few programs, especially memory hungry ones, to throw fits.
 
Thanks for the advice guys.

Vista is limiting me to only 4 GB until I upgrade my OS, so disabling the Page File is out of the question. It seems like keeping a Page File on two physically separate drives is most sensible, if only because it allows Vista access to both files simultaneously. If there were any drawbacks to that method, I'd just leave the default settings alone to play it safe. But really... I don't see how moving the page file can be a bad thing at all, so that's how I'll do it.
 
z5556792 said:
Thanks for the advice guys.

Vista is limiting me to only 4 GB until I upgrade my OS, so disabling the Page File is out of the question. It seems like keeping a Page File on two physically separate drives is most sensible, if only because it allows Vista access to both files simultaneously. If there were any drawbacks to that method, I'd just leave the default settings alone to play it safe. But really... I don't see how moving the page file can be a bad thing at all, so that's how I'll do it.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, why are you "limited" with Vista? Your license key for 32bit will work with 64bit. . .
 
Leave it alone may be good advise to the layman, but if you have another physical drive in your machine you can DEFINITELY achieve tangible benefits by moving it to this drive versus keeping it on the same drive as Windows.
 
what about 1gb on an external USB drive? ...not so good idea? or being that it would be way slower than the Raptor main drive , that it would never get accessed anyways ...?
 
I can't see or tell a difference wven when moving it to a physical, internal drive other than my primary system drive, so I wouldn't even think about putting it on a much, much slower USB drive.
 
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