Quick paging file question

D

deadman_uk

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 30, 2003
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I have 2 IDE hard drives, Windows XP Pro with SP2 and 1 GB ram.

Whats the best way to set up the paging file? Can you give me all the details for the best setup.

thanks
 
Permenant (same fixed max & min size) paging file on the second drive, with it on a seperate controller. PF should be about 1GB, larger only if you know for sure you need it to be. Kill the PF on C: after this is done. You're going to have to reboot.

If you want you can partition the second drive, but if so PF goes on the first one. It's best if the drive's blank when you create it so the permenant PF can permenantly assign itself the fastest spot. If cluster size comes into question leave it at the NTFS default of 4kb, bigger or smaller will degrade performance.
 
This is what I just did with 2 120GB SATA drives, and I am very happy.

Drive 1
C-10 GB Everquest 2 Installation (beginning of drive for fastest spin/best performance)
E-10 GB Windows XP Home Installation
F-100 GB Storage (Formatted to NTFS)

Drive 2
G-5 GB Paging File (beginning of drive for fastest spin/best performance)
H-105 GB Storage (Formatted to FAT for Windows AND Linux Access)
I-10 GBLinux Installation

Obviously D is the optical drive

The paging file is set to 3 GB for me with 2 GB of RAM, with 2 GB extra for later use.
Before this, Everquest would really screw up my drives and need to defrag after every update. Now I have had zero problems.
 
Well im not sure what a controller is but my hard drives are on primary master and secondary master.

My other hard drive is almost full and i had the paging file on this last week at 1GB and it was fine for a few hours then my pc kept going slower than normal.

My main hard drive with windows on is split into 2 partitions, would it be a good idea to stick the paging file on the partition?
 
First, read the sticky.

When you know how large a PF you require, you can make a better decision. Chances are with 1GB of RAM you're not paging much if any at all and the location will be irrelevant.

 
upriverpaddler said:
This is what I just did with 2 120GB SATA drives, and I am very happy.

Drive 1
C-10 GB Everquest 2 Installation (beginning of drive for fastest spin/best performance)
E-10 GB Windows XP Home Installation
F-100 GB Storage (Formatted to NTFS)

Drive 2
G-5 GB Paging File (beginning of drive for fastest spin/best performance)
H-105 GB Storage (Formatted to FAT for Windows AND Linux Access)
I-10 GBLinux Installation

Obviously D is the optical drive

The paging file is set to 3 GB for me with 2 GB of RAM, with 2 GB extra for later use.
Before this, Everquest would really screw up my drives and need to defrag after every update. Now I have had zero problems.
Click to expand...
That's a nightmare and a half of a configuration. Most people will tell you that the performance increase of data on the edge of the disc isn't even really measurable anyway, it's that trivial. However, there are quite a few people who feel over-partitioning can lead to a higher risk of data corruption. I'm also getting the feeling you didn't really know what you were doing (or you were rushing) when you installed XP because your system volume is E.
 
Ive read the sticky and now i am more confused than ever.

Some people say its best to disable the PF completely if you have 1gb of ram or more, some say this is crap, some say let windows manage it, some say stick it on your other hard drive.

I am just totally confused now.

Is it safe to disable the PF just for tests?
 
Do what I said and you'll get maybe a couple percentage points improvement at times when pagefile is an issue, or just leave it at default and it probably won't matter much.
 
If you disable your pagefile, the worse thing that will happen is during something memory intensive, like a game, you'll have it crash and get an out of memory error. It's always safe to try it. I'll still say it offers the best performance, but it migh not be an option for you. I have 1 GB of memory, and I was fine playing any game without a pagefile, until HL2 came around.
 
Do what I said and you'll get maybe a couple percentage points improvement at times when pagefile is an issue, or just leave it at default and it probably won't matter much.
Click to expand...
But my 2nd hard drive has 1gb of space left, you said do this if i had alot of space or a blank hard drive which I dont.

So what now?
 
Then just don't mess with it. It's only going to help if it's getting the good spot on a seperate drive + controller. Leave it like it is.
 
Its set to "let windows handle the paging file"

Should I at least have the PF on the first hard drive that is half full and set both maximum and minimum to 1024?
 
Yes it's safe to run w/o one, esp with that much RAM. The questions about no PF have to do with performance, and wether or not it helps. I'm not sure it helps much at all, so I wouldn't recommend it in general. It's debatable how much it acutally helps, if any at all...

If you second drive is almost full don't put it there, keep a static PF on your c:\

 
One more question...

Like i said earlier my C drive which is 160gb is split into 2 partions, partition 1 has windows on it and is 127gb, partiton 2 is 21gb.

Partition 2 has 14gb left. Would it be better to stick the PF on this partition or just the first partition?

And 1024 is the correct value to input for maximum and minimum correct?
 
When windows is doing it's thing with the PF, the size will vary.

There is no "correct" min/max. That's why you need to evaluate your memory requirements on your machine, the first post in the sticky will show you how to do this.

 
It depends on your usage patterns really. Since you have 1GB of RAM I doubt the pagefile is acessed much anyway. So placing it in a special spot won't help any. The pagefile is also not the only file i9nvolved with paging. I suggest leaving it System Managed.

That's a nightmare and a half of a configuration. Most people will tell you that the performance increase of data on the edge of the disc isn't even really measurable anyway, it's that trivial. However, there are quite a few people who feel over-partitioning can lead to a higher risk of data corruption. I'm also getting the feeling you didn't really know what you were doing (or you were rushing) when you installed XP because your system volume is E.
Click to expand...

Over partitioning would decrease performance if all partitions are in use too.

If you disable your pagefile, the worse thing that will happen is during something memory intensive, like a game, you'll have it crash and get an out of memory error. It's always safe to try it. I'll still say it offers the best performance, but it migh not be an option for you. I have 1 GB of memory, and I was fine playing any game without a pagefile, until HL2 came around.
Click to expand...

Disabling the pagefile would hurt performance in the long run. When you disable the pagefile the system has to keep ALL "private" virtual memory in RAM so only code and mapped file pages can be paged, even if some of the "private" stuff hasn't been touched for hours and will never be touched again. This results in MORE paging of code, for a given workload and RAM size. It also means that paging cannot be correctly balanced between code, mapped files, the file cache, and private data.

So while specific short term events may show an improvement such as game loading times it is hurting you in the long run.

Should I at least have the PF on the first hard drive that is half full and set both maximum and minimum to 1024?
Click to expand...

That configuration would probably work fine, but if your system does come under an extremely heavy load where a larger pagefile is needed it will not be able to expand. That is why I say leave it System Managed. Ignore anyone who says set it static to prevent fragmentation by it connstantly resizing. It will only resize if needed.

Partition 2 has 14gb left. Would it be better to stick the PF on this partition or just the first partition?
Click to expand...

No. That ould most likely decrease paging performance if your 1st partition is acessed more which most likely it is.

My suggestion is to forget about it and set it System Managed. If you do not want to leave it System Manged then download this (or use perfmon). Run some of your most intensive applications including games and stuff. Then see how much of the pagefile you are actually using. Multiply this by 4 and set that as the initial. Then multiply the number you just got by 2 and st that as max.

That will leave a high enough initial size that is probably much less then 1GB anyway. It also has a higher max so if your pagefile does need to expand it will.

If you don't want to do all that justy loeave it System Managed. There may be some situations where people may benefit from messing with the pagefile, but I highly doubt you are one of those people.
 
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