Pagefile too large?

I've searched the forums but haven't found an answer to my question: can the pagefile be TOO large?

We have a machine at work that only has 512MB of RAM, and someone from Marketing was trying to compress video on it. Apparently the file is too large, because the compression dies part way through. I checked the pagefile, and found it was set to 1GB. I thought "What the heck" and bumped it up to 5GB. A little extreme, I'll admit, but I saw no problem with it. It's only supposed to be a temperary fix anyway.

I was then told by the helpdesk that setting the pagefile to anything over 2X RAM would cause "problems." When pressed, they would not elaborate, but told me to reset it to 1GB. Other than fragmentation and possible bootup slowdowns, could a pagefile this size actually cause problems?

I really dont think a pagefile could cause a problem w/ size, if you are keeping in mind the size of your hdd. I mean, having a 5gb page file w/ only a 8gb hdd would be BAD. But, my page file is set to 3 gb right now, and I have no trouble w/ it.

You have to remember that the swap file is an actual file on your harddrive. If your filesystem is FAT32, then the largest it can be is 4GB, but if your using NTFS then there is no limit.

As for it being too large, size does matter. A 10mb swap file is easy to search if you need to find data in. A 5GB swap file on the other hand, is more intensive to search for data in.

So no actual harm is likely to come to the system as a result of a massive pagefile? I knew I was right!

Thanks for your help!

PS: It's a 40GB drive, so I have plenty of room.

PPS: The file system is NTFS.

hehe, alright. Thanks for the clarification su root. I should of emphasised on the search time, cause that is a factor, but by now, most computers wont have too much trouble going through a 5gb pagefile, unless your doing some incredibly intensive work.

I agree that you shouldn't have any problem with large pagefiles. However, you can try setting it to 2 Gb - maybe it's enough for those compression tasks, and it's a reasonable value.

Now that I've been watching the PC for a few hours, I'm beginning to think my little fix didn't help. Heck, it may not even need more memory (though it wouldn't hurt).

If anything, a faster CPU would be the biggest help. I believe the current system is a P4 1.8; supposedly it takes 8-12 hours to compress a 40MB file into a 10MB file. Does that sound right?

RZA, I agree, 2GB is more than enough; I'll reset it when I have a chance.

To find out what the size of your page file should be (the way I do it) is to use the system normally, with periods of excess usage, etc for a period of time (a day, a few days, a week, etc). Then go into task manager (ALT-CTRL-DEL), into the Performance tab, and look at the "Commit Charge (K)" Peak value. Mine right now is 429,412. That means that at worst, my system has used 429Mb of memory (combination of swap and RAM at it's most utilized point). Take that number, and add 128mb, subtract your RAM, and you should have a good page file size. For me, that would be about 128mb. However, windows likes to store stuff in swap more than it does in RAM, so in my case, an extra 128mb calms it down.

There is rarely a need for 1+GB swap file. The only reason to up the swap file size is when you begin to get messages like "System has run out of virtual memory, your swap file has been temporarily expanded"

And no, those numbers don't sound right.. On my box (AMD Thunderbird 1.33Gig, compressing a 200mb mpeg into a tiny 50mb file takes about 30 minutes or so... and I have 512 SDRAM. Something sounds very very wrong.. I would download SiSoft Sandra and do some benches... my guess is that you have a huge bottleneck somewhere, or misconfigured bus speeds