How to get the pagefile at the front of the drive?

d3v · Nov 11, 2005

I've heard performance is best when pagefile is placed as close to the front of the drive as possible.

How do I know where the pagefile is on my drive in relation to the front and how do I move it there?

Diskkeeper shows its at the back, I think...
(pagefile shown with black line)

teddy-2 john · Nov 11, 2005

hi you need to f-disk and make a 5gig partion when you install xp make the 5gig first then the rest of the drive use for xp then chouse that part of the drive for it also i use drive #2 for the page file to keep xp on drive
:c

d3v · Nov 12, 2005

hi m8,

is this properly set up? For instance, does it matter if the vitual mem drive is FAT32 because I've tried changing it to NTFS twice and got "NTDR is missing" boot failures and had to reinstall XP to fix.

So is Fat32 ok? If not, is there anyway I can convert it to NTFS without buggering it all up like I've done twice tonight?

Thanks loads for your help!

teddy-2 john · Nov 12, 2005

hi here is what i got
System Name: AQUATIC-O74CG42
[Drives]

Item Value
Drive A:
Description 3 1/2 Inch Floppy Drive

Drive C:
Description Local Fixed Disk
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 69.23 GB (74,340,044,800 bytes)
Free Space 48.92 GB (52,523,769,856 bytes)
Volume Name xp-pro
Volume Serial Number B0622F38

Drive D:
Description Local Fixed Disk
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 4.88 GB (5,239,468,032 bytes)
Free Space 873.84 MB (916,291,584 bytes)
Volume Name swap file
Volume Serial Number 84C6F368

Drive E:
Description Local Fixed Disk
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 64.35 GB (69,100,544,000 bytes)
Free Space 43.99 GB (47,230,033,920 bytes)
Volume Name program`s
Volume Serial Number 58D26805

Drive F:
Description CD-ROM Disc

Drive G:
Description CD-ROM Disc

Drive H:
Description Local Fixed Disk
Compressed No
File System NTFS
Size 114.48 GB (122,926,776,320 bytes)
Free Space 82.17 GB (88,224,256,000 bytes)
Volume Name vcd`s
Volume Serial Number C072635D
i have 2 80 gig raptors 1 120 all ntfs i set all the partons when i installed xp hope this helps

BrutalDrew · Nov 12, 2005

Moving the pagefile to the front of the drive will not help performance at all. Outer cylinders only make a difference if you are transferring very long buffers. Pagefile IO is never in buffers of more than 64 Kbytes at a time and the seek time completely dominates the IO time.

hi you need to f-disk and make a 5gig partion when you install xp make the 5gig first then the rest of the drive use for xp then chouse that part of the drive for it also i use drive #2 for the page file to keep xp on drive

There is no advantage to doing this at all. All this would do is worsen seek times. If you have one drive you want your applications, pagefile, and OS all in the same partition.

Also, d3v, don't confuse the term virtual memory with the pagefile. They are two different things. Also, there will be no performance difference between FAT32 and NTFS for a partition that contains only the pagefile. The pagefile is only opened once, at boot time. After that the file system structure has nothing to do with pagefile access. So, no it doesn't matter.

MRD · Nov 12, 2005

Generally, FAT32 is faster than NTFS anyways for partitions up to about 80GB. For larger partitions, NTFS is faster.

BrutalDrew · Nov 12, 2005

MRD said:
Generally, FAT32 is faster than NTFS anyways for partitions up to about 80GB. For larger partitions, NTFS is faster.

For the pagefile the file system structure will make no difference in performance. The pagefile is only opened once, at boot time. After that the file system structure has absolutely nothing to do with pagefile access. Also, with a modern OS you shouldn't be using FAT32.

d3v, I suggest just deleting the partition you just made for the pagefile. You do not benefit at all. In fact, all you are doing is worsening seek times.

MRD · Nov 12, 2005

I disagree. Not about the page file, I don't really understand it in sufficient detail to say if it would matter. In general though, you should be using FAT32 for small drives in windows. I use FAT32 on all my windows partitions. It's more flexible, works better with other os's, and is faster. If I had very large windows partitions, I would probably use NTFS.

BrutalDrew · Nov 12, 2005

FAT32's feature parity to NTFS is so terrible performance is irrelevant. In some circumstances FAT32 may be faster, but the performance difference would be negligible. Definitely not enough to give up features like security and data integrity. It's not like NTFS is slow anyway, for most operations. Unless you need to share files with another operating system, it is best to choose NTFS.

If your interested I would highly suggest reading Windows Internals by David Solomon & Mark Russinovich. Read the chapter on file systems. Everything you ever wanted to know about NTFS & FAT32/16/12 is in there. It is one of the most concise references on the depths of how NTFS works.

MRD · Nov 12, 2005

For most people, there is no noticeable difference in features. i.e. nothing that people actually care about. Especially for very small drives, the performance advantage is enormous and outweighs the feature advantage of ntfs.

And of course the file sharing thing is huge for a lot of us.

I suppose it comes down to whether or not those features are important to you. They simply don't matter to me, and the extra speed and the ability to share with other os's is important to me.

BrutalDrew · Nov 12, 2005

I don't know about you, but myself and plenty others definitely do care about security and data integrity.

Two major advantages to NTFS are the fact that it offeres very good security, whereas FAT32 offers no security at all. Also, since NTFS is a journaled file system if you lose power in the middle of writing data, it can roll back changes when the machine comes back up. If this happened to a FAT32 partition and part of the FAT was corrupted the partition would be unreadable and you lose everything.

Also, the performance difference would not be huge on a very small drive. Both are very similar in speed. Also, NTFS stores small files in the MFT which increases performance when reading lots of small files. The only good reason you provided to use FAT32 is the ability to share files with another OS. However, plenty of other OS's are perfectly capable read and/or writing to NTFS partitions.

I just found this link. I didn't really read all of it, but it looks good.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/index3.html

Rattle · Nov 12, 2005

I have a question for you windows gurus.
I just upgraded to 2gigs, from trying to understand whats best from various sources I have disabled the page file. Is this my best bet for performance now with 2 gigs?
Do i need a page file?

I have 2 HDD's OS is a raptor and 250gig for games and pron

d3v · Nov 12, 2005

BrutalDrew said:
Moving the pagefile to the front of the drive will not help performance at all. Outer cylinders only make a difference if you are transferring very long buffers. Pagefile IO is never in buffers of more than 64 Kbytes at a time and the seek time completely dominates the IO time.

There is no advantage to doing this at all. All this would do is worsen seek times. If you have one drive you want your applications, pagefile, and OS all in the same partition.

Also, d3v, don't confuse the term virtual memory with the pagefile. They are two different things. Also, there will be no performance difference between FAT32 and NTFS for a partition that contains only the pagefile. The pagefile is only opened once, at boot time. After that the file system structure has nothing to do with pagefile access. So, no it doesn't matter.

Hi, thanks for the info.

WHat are "outer-cylinders"?

And I know what buffers are, but how can you tranfer them??? I thought buffers were 2MB or 8MB for most harddrives??? How do you tranfer them???

Also, what is pagefile IO? Input output? And what do you mean by it not being more than 64kb???

And why is pagefile only accesed once at boot time? I thought information was being swapped in and out constantly

And finally, what is the difference between virtual memory and pagefile??? :shrug:

Thanks

BrutalDrew · Nov 12, 2005

Disabling the pagefile is a terrible idea. Since I already explained this in another topic a couple of hours ago I'll just paste that here.

The title of this topic should seriously be changed since it uses the term virtual memory incorrectly. Change it to "What size is your pagefile." The term "virtual memory" includes several different mechanisms. One of those involves using files on the disk to store parts of virtual address space that won't all fit in RAM at the same time. The paging file is just one of those files.

How much virtual memory do you use? I use 0 and my pc is much faster and responsive than when I use any other amount. How about you guys?

Click to expand...

Non-use of a paging file is independent of paging and of "virtual memory". Yes, you can configure XP to not use a paging file, but it's still using virtual addressing and virtual memory. You are also still paging to disk, just not to the pagefile. The pagefile is by far not the only file involved in paging; every exe and dll is also. You are always running in virtual memory, and paging is always enabled.

Also, disabling the pagefile is just a terrible idea. Just like I said before; when you disable the pagefile you are not disabling paging. All you are doing is forcing all "private" virtual memory to stay in RAM, so only code and mapped files can be paged. This is an ineffecient use of memory as even if the "private" stuff has not been touched for hours and will never be touched again it has to stay in RAM. Because of this there will be MORE paging of code, for a given workload and RAM size. This will be a bad thing in the long run, even though measurements of specific short-term events might show an improvement.

Disabling the pagefile is by far one of the worst "tweaks" you can do.

My suggestion to find the optimal PF size is to measure your PF usage after running your most intensive applications. To determine PF usage either run perfmon or this

Once you have found your PF usage set the initial size at least 4x that amount and the max 2x the amount you just calculated.

So, if the PF usage was 350 you would set the initial to 1400 and the max to 2800. It is important to have a high initial size.

Also, since you have two drives put the pagefile on the most-used partition on your least-used drive (the 250GB).

MRD · Nov 12, 2005

I don't know about you, but myself and plenty others definitely do care about security and data integrity.

I've never had a FAT32 system get seriously corrupted. I've had an ntfs system get horribly corrupted on more than one occasion. If it was a highly insecure filesystem that corrupted on a daily basis I'd agree with you, but any increase in data integrity is incremental and not noticeable to me in practical experience.

Two major advantages to NTFS are the fact that it offeres very good security, whereas FAT32 offers no security at all.

Curious what exactly you mean by security.

Also, the performance difference would not be huge on a very small drive. Both are very similar in speed.

In my experience, on an 8gb drive (yes, it's small), FAT32 can be 30-40% faster in some applications, as long as you don't let it get too fragmented.

Also, NTFS stores small files in the MFT which increases performance when reading lots of small files.

This is true. In general, there is no single "best" filesystem. Each has advantages and disadvantages. For many small files, ntfs is probably preferable to fat32. Also, if you have gargantuan files, ntfs is preferable, as fat32 cannot store files over 4 gb. Reiser is actually the fastest filesystem for huge numbers of tiny files, and xfs/jfs are the best for very large files. The most secure and least prone to data corruption is ufs2. There's no single best filesystem.

The only good reason you provided to use FAT32 is the ability to share files with another OS. However, plenty of other OS's are perfectly capable read and/or writing to NTFS partitions.

What other OS's would those be? I don't know of any. Lots can read it, but only windows can write it afaik. BSD and Linux definitely cannot write it. DOS cannot read or write it. Win 95/98/ME cannot read or write it. Not sure about Mac OSX, but I doubt it can. NTFS is a compatibility nightmare.

BrutalDrew · Nov 12, 2005

Curious what exactly you mean by security.

You can specify who can read, write, list, and change files, read/write permissions, read/write attributes (read-only, etc.), and a few others.

What other OS's would those be?

It looks like I am mistaken.

MRD · Nov 12, 2005

You can specify who can read, write, list, and change files, read/write permissions, read/write attributes (read-only, etc.), and a few others.

Ah ok. Yeah, FAT32 has no ability at all to record permissions, which is a shortcoming. Not generally one that matters to me for what I do, but I can certainly see how some people, especially corporations or places with lots of users having access, might care about this.

As I said before, all filesystems have advantages and disadvantages. None is best at everything.

BrutalDrew · Nov 12, 2005

As I said before, all filesystems have advantages and disadvantages. None is best at everything.

Since we both agree, lets leave it at that.

How to get the pagefile at the front of the drive?

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