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is my page file set up correctly?

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Emericana

Member
Joined
Jan 8, 2002
Location
Boulder CO
hey i have 1 gig of ram on my new laptop and i set the virtual memory to be a static one of 400megs on a different partition than windows is on... does this sound like a ok set up? should i disable the page file all together? should i add more space to it?
 
Generally speaking, it's best to let windows manage the size of the page file. However, it sounds like what you have will be fine. At this day and age, with 1 GB of RAM, you theroetically won't use the page file. That doesn't mean that I would get rid of it though.
 
You will get slighly better performance if you keep the pagefile on the same partition as the OS. Putting the page file on a seperate drive can improve performance but the heads have to move between 2 partitions when you do this on the same drive. Also you need a page file on the same partition as XP if you want to use the memory dump. If you want to dump the full memory, you need the pagefile at least as large as you memory. The kernel dump(100-200mb) and minidump(about 100mb) require a much smaller size. The size of you're pagefile needs will depend on the no. of apps you run at the same time and the size of the files you handle. A fixed pagefile takes longer to become defragmented.
 
The following quote is taken from the MSKB article I've linked to below...
The optimal solution is to create one paging file that is, by default, stored on the boot partition, and then create one paging file on another, less frequently accessed partition. Additionally, it is optimal to create the second paging file so that it exists on its own partition, with no data or operating-system-specific files. By design, Windows uses the paging file on the less frequently accessed partition over the paging file on the more heavily accessed boot partition. An internal algorithm is used to determine which paging file to use for virtual memory management
How to Configure Paging Files for Optimization and Recovery in Windows XP

In addition, Virtual Memory is always in operation and can't be “turned off” (or...“set the system to use no page file space at all”.)

Doing this would waste a lot of the RAM. The reason is that when programs ask for an allocation of Virtual memory space, they may ask for a great deal more than they ever actually bring into use...the total may easily run into hundreds of MB's. These addresses have to be assigned somewhere by the system. If there's a page file available, the system can assign them to it...if there isn't, they have to be assigned to RAM, locking it out from any actual use.

Therefore, you shouldn't turn off paging even with a vast amount of RAM. You can set the initial size down to about 50-100MB, and it will never get bigger, and will see no traffic (except the system initially 'parking' a few files in it). Not having the possibility of paging would result in locking out a lot of RAM. The reason is that many programs ask for allocations of virtual address space far bigger than they actually use. These have to be associated with some physical device. If there's a page file, they can go with that...resulting in a page file on which there isn't any traffic. If you don't have a page file, then they have to be assigned to RAM, and that part of RAM becomes effectively useless...it can't be used for anything else.
 
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