Virtual page file?

A buddy of mine said I could probally turn a gig of my ram into a virtual pagefile to speed things up?

I admit I could be confused, can anyone tell me whats up?

He probably ment you could turn a gig of your hard drive into virtual memory (pagefile) to speed things up, but you should really just buy more ram. Virtual memory is super slow and it bogs down your hard drive.

Best thing to do with virtual memory (swap file) is to set the swap file to a static size. Don't let windows manage the swap file as it causes lots of fragmentation as it resizes the file dynamically by default. I also suggest you create a seperate partition on another disk other then the one with your operating system files. I'd use a partition size of about 4GiG and the the largest cluster size available. Once you have created the swap file as a static size on the new partition be sure to remove the swap file on the default system drive. This should drastically improve system response with system files. Also be sure to disable executive page filing. http://searchwincomputing.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid68_gci1236091,00.html

do you just devote that one partition to the swap file? i have 3 drives; os, games, storage/crap. i have the swap file on my os drive. should i create a new partition on my os harddrive just for swap?

Couple of points. Page file is when the RAM memory data is moved to a hard drive.

Now for the where what and how of the page file.

It should be on the fastest drive you have. You will do yourself an injustice moving the page on to a partition on the same drive. You would be best served leaving it on the OS partition. Now if you have another physical drvie. Then your talking. Still same thing applies. You want it on a fast drive. It is going to be serving the role as memory. So you don't want it slowed down. You can create a partition on another physical drive just for the page file.

Optimally, the page file is best served. On its own drive, on its own controller. The general rule of thumb for page file is 1 and a half times your physical ram. If you have 1 gig. 1.5 is an ok number for the page.

If you have enough RAM, why not just disable the paging file? I haven't had a problem doing that w/ 2GB and XP Pro.

youngbuck said:

If you have enough RAM, why not just disable the paging file? I haven't had a problem doing that w/ 2GB and XP Pro.

Click to expand...

that's what I thought was very true...to those people with 2/4GB ram...

WhatTheSchmidt said:

that's what I thought was very true...to those people with 2/4GB ram...

Click to expand...

You could remove the swap file all together, however this is not going to show any real-world performance gain over the above mentioned procedure. In fact many programs like adobe applications (IE Photoshop, Premiere, etc.) will not even run correctly without a dedicated page file. It will give you an error reading " Not enough virtual memory" when in fact you may have 4GBs of ram on your system. Just set the swapfile as a static size on a fast drive, isolated from your OS system files and on it's own partition with the biggest cluster.

I tried what I believe you are talking about years ago. I created a "ram drive" in my ram and then tried to create the swap file there. Windows (98 I believe) was hip to that though and wouldn't let me put the swap file on the ram drive.

If I had a lot of ram, I still wouldn't disable the swap file because if you have have enough ram, it will not use the swap file any way, but, if you don't have enough ram (even though you think you do), the swap file is there for you. But, do like suggested above, make it a fixed size - a large fixed size.