Page file?

[DeoMortis]

Sorry to be such a newb, but could someone be so kind as to explain what page file is, weather I should have it on or off, or at 1.5x my ram?

[Mr.Guvernment]

your page file is basically exrta memory on your system in case your system ram runs out

Widows then uses harddrive space for ram and stores data on the HD - this is why your system crawls when it uses the sytem file / virtual memory.

most people if they have 512mb of system ram can turn it off - if u have problems - u can turn it back on.

performace gains are min. if the pagefile is off if u never actually use it, but there usualyl are some sligh gains, but nothing to get excited abaout.


a search on google:


Virtual Memory - This is system memory that is simulated by the hard drive. When all the RAM is being used (for example if there are many programs open at the same time) the computer will swap data to the hard drive and back to give the impression that there is slightly more memory.

[DeoMortis]

Ahhh i know a little about Vmem, but didnt connect it, that makes sense now. ewww memory offa the HDD -.-

[repo man11]

You may want to take a look at Black Vipers website (http://www.blackviper.com/AskBV/XP17.htm) and read his virtual memory tips.

Also, Vopt XP (http://www.vopt.com/) is a handy (and fast) file defragmenter that has a page file optimization utility built in.

[DeoMortis]

Hmmm, if im going to install xp on a raptor, should i put the vdrive on the seperate 7200rpm deskstar or on the raptor?

[Tyberius]

get 2 raptors and run em raid 0...nothing like installing windows in 12 minutes

[K_King]

I have 1 GB, I wonder if I need to run this seperate partition for my swap file.

[DeoMortis]

Tyberius - 73.4 GB just seems low to me :(

[unreal]

yeah black vipers,, i remember that site

[billstuck]

Originally posted by K_King
I have 1 GB, I wonder if I need to run this seperate partition for my swap file.

A seperate partition on the same disk won't improve performance.

And to the original poster, depend on how much RAM you have you don't need the default of 1.5x RAM. I have 512MB or RAM and set mine to 512MB.

To improve performance make the max and min size of the pagefile the same. This will avoid fragmentation.

[Mr.Guvernment]

^^^ true on the drfrag part

and yes - putting your page file ona sperate hard drive helps - on the same drive - seprate partition - same thing really.

also doing thing like putting your temp inet files on a seprate drive helkps as well - less work your main c drive has to do.


here i am going to try a networked temp inet files foldd- that about 8 computers will liekly access - since it will access such small amounts of data - it should not hit performance at all.