I dont want a pagefile!

[Albigger]

Have you tried it and found no difference?

Sometimes the best way to convince others to try your idea is to show 'proof' that it 'works' (i.e. show us some numbers)

Short term events may show an increase, but you are hurting yourself in the long run since all private data has to stay in RAM.

Could you explain this a little more? Just not really sure what you mean by 'private data' and if you just mean it is more to clog up your RAM space?



Ok, for my take:
Yes it is always there. And yes some programs will complain if you set windows to have no page file (so far I have personally had experience with photoshop and ProEngineer complain or refuse to run).


As for size of page file it REALLY depends what you do. For some people with a lot of RAM 256 or 512 might be fine. When I was using MATLAB for computational reasons it really hogs ram (that and maybe I didn't program it very efficiently) but it would complain once it used up all my RAM and all my page file (and I'm talking 1 gig of ram and 2500 megs of page file or so).



... and for all the above reasons is exactly why I cannot wait until Gigabyte's i-RAM card comes out (maybe three of them, one for OS, one for pagefile/scratch, and one for most frequently used programs - ahhh, talk about fast). Do a search in the storage forum if you don't know what I'm talking about yet.

 

[stratcatprowlin]

Sometimes the best way to convince others to try your idea is to show 'proof' that it 'works' (i.e. show us some numbers)

Hehe I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything.Just tellin you guys what I experienced

 

[DarkAssassin]

You actually want the pagefile. If you are running apps and they take up more ram than you have (not likely since you have a gig), windows, since it can't fit any more into the ram, has to put the extra data on the HDD. Yes, it is inefficient, but that's why it's a backup. I am sure that there's a minimum requirement for a pagefile size.

EDIT: BTW, I just earned my Cisco A+ completion (not certified, but I just finished the course) - if that will help you believe me.

 

[Dell_Axim]

I have found that swap is not even used until the RAM is starting to run out.

 

[BrutalDrew]

Have you tried it and found no difference?

There is no reason for me to try.

Could you explain this a little more? Just not really sure what you mean by 'private data' and if you just mean it is more to clog up your RAM space?

First of all the pagefile is not the only file involved with paging. Any .exe and .dll are also paged. These will be paged back to their original files while other data or "private data" will have to be paged to the pagefile. Without a pagefile this stuff has to stay in RAM.

So when you disable the pagefile you are not eliminating paging. So only code and mapped file pages can be paged. Even if the private data has not been touched for a long time it will stay in RAM. This means there will be MORE paging of code, for a given workload and RAM size. It also means that paging cannot be correctly balanced between code, mapped files, the file cache, and private data. That is why I said it would be bad in the long run even though short-term events may show an improvement. NT was also designed with the expectation that the pagefile would be there so it is best that it is.

You should not disable the pagefile regardless of how much RAM you have. That is the bottom line.

As for the size of the pagefile I generally recommend to set it "System Managed," but some peoiple may not like this way. If you want to manually set a size set the initial size 4x the actual pagefile usage after running your most intensive applications. The pagefile usage can be measured through perfmons using the "%usage" counter. The max should be about 2x the number you just calculated.

Ignore anybody who tells you to disable the pagefile, set it a "fixed" value, put it on another partition, but same physical drive and to put the pagefile on the outer-most cylinders.

Also this is a little off-topic since it is not related to the pagefile, but it is related to "tweaking." Ignore performance tweaks on the net. The majority of them will do nothing for performance. The only ones that really do are ones related to the UI. The "DisablePagingExecutive" tweak is a perfect example.

I have found that swap is not even used until the RAM is starting to run out.

Windows will try to find a use for all your RAM.