where to put swap file ?

[laurens]

I have a PC with 4GB ram can I disable the swap file or not? I there a limit for the swap file? if I do 1.5X the mem then it will be 6GB + 4GB of ram= 10GB of Memory

[Crash&Burn]

If I had that much ram, I'd just disable the swap and see what happens. Windows will certainly boot w/o one. But likely you will run into problems w/ some applications and games that think they need one, no matter how much ram you have.

The worst that will happen is a system crash, which you can just reboot and add the swap back.

[Zxian]

Why do people recommend moving the pagefile from the system drive? It sounds like one of those "organize to improve efficiency" tweaks, that doesn't really have much thought behind it as to how things actually work.

The second two points are completely valid though.

On my laptop, I've got 1GB of RAM, and a 1GB pagefile (max=min=1GB) on the system partition. On my desktop/server, I've also got 1GB of RAM, but I have 1 system managed pagefile on the system partition and 1 system managed pagefile on the secondary drive. The two drives are on separate IDE channels, mind you, otherwise I wouldn't see any performance benefit from two pagefiles whatsoever. Let me tell you... I ask a lot from my server that has two hard drives connected via PATA, but it keeps up just fine. B)

[suryad]

I would not disable all the pagefile. Some apps still require a minimum of the pagefile to be present so instead of totally turning it off it is a good idea to leave it at some really small number like 10-15 mb.

[cluberti]

First, disclaimer, I work for MS.

Second, swap file - if you are only worried about performance, PUT THE SWAP FILE ON IT'S OWN PHYSICAL HARD DISK. Period. If you have two disks but use both, put it on the second disk. If you've only got one disk, you'd be best to keep it on the same partition as Windows.

However, with that being said, if your system ever bluescreens and does a memory dump, unless the page file is on the same partition as Windows, you won't get any dump information about the crash - it's a Windows limitation. So if you need that info (say, to provide the memory dump to MS support... ), you won't have it (and may not be able to get it if you can't get the system to boot).

Yes, for disk drive fragmentation reasons, it's best to make the pagefile one set size, min and max.

And for those of you who disable the page file, that's a bad idea - part of the Windows kernel gets paged, whether you like it or not. And depending on the amount of physical memory in your box, it can be anywhere from 128 - 470MB of the kernel pagedpool memory that will be written to disk. Therefore, at least have a 500MB page file so that you can determine where the page file goes on the disk, and not allow the OS to put the page file somewhere on the disk that'll cause fragmentation. Yes, even if you tell Windows that you want no page file, it's still there - it has to be, or Windows would crash! Setting the no page file option just disallows any other app or service to use it (only the Windows kernel will be able to read and write to the page file).

Edited October 26, 2005 by cluberti

[Zxian]

First, disclaimer, I work for MS.

Ok... but you could be working on Office, or SyncToy, or something completely different than the portion of the kernel in NT5/NT6 that deals with the pagefile. Just saying that you work for Microsoft doesn't mean that you know everything about everything Microsoft...

Second, swap file - if you are only worried about performance, PUT THE SWAP FILE ON IT'S OWN PHYSICAL HARD DISK. Period. If you have two disks but use both, put it on the second disk. If you've only got one disk, you'd be best to keep it on the same partition as Windows.

However, with that being said, if your system ever bluescreens and does a memory dump, unless the page file is on the same partition as Windows, you won't get any dump information about the crash - it's a Windows limitation. So if you need that info (say, to provide the memory dump to MS support... ), you won't have it (and may not be able to get it if you can't get the system to boot).

Wouldn't that last point be reason enough to use two pagefiles, one on the system partition, one on the second disk? Windows will easily be able to determine which pagefile to use for maximum performance.

[cluberti]

I work in performance, core OS. Been doing it for years, back since Windows 2.0. I think I might know a thing or two about Windows .

[Crash&Burn]

Better be nice Zxian, or cluberti will rat us out for all the hacks were doing to Windows B) ... "Make the square peg fit in the round hole dammnit!"

[cluberti]

Hahahaha

Now why would I do that? Some of these things are pretty cool B) .

[bledd]

is there any benefit of having more than one pagefile?

i've got 3 hd's, and 2gb of ram, currently, i set 2gb/3max on C, and 1gb/2max on each of the other drives

-the main drive is sata, and the others have their own ide channels

would i be better off having one pagefile?

-they're all WD SE drives (ata) and a 74gb raptor

[kalo]

With that much ram, make a ramdisk.

Make the smallest avalible page space on the windows drive.

Whatever size you want on the ramdisk, should only need x1.5 of your ram.. if that... I dont do this, because i've only got 512 meg of ram, but it would work.

[Crash&Burn]

From what I can tell, if yer really paranoid, and interested in "MS Support", you'd want at least 500MB Swap on SystemDrive, and the remainder off on a secondary drive's partition.

But I wonder if anyone here goes to MS Support? I think they come here first

And if I can't fix/diagnose the problem after plugging in my backup 8GIG (clean install + apps), I'll just wipe the C partition, and reinstall. Everything of any value are on Mount Points. Users, Programs, all other Storage.

It's just too bad we can't do HardLinks, then Win2K could "think" the swap is on the C partition but actually C:\pagefile.sys --> S:\SwapFile.bin

[kalo]

arsoft-online.com

Anyone know a better one? its a good ramdisk program, not supported anymore though.

Edited October 27, 2005 by kalo

[cluberti]

I think it was written best in one of our own MS Press books on WinXP:

"You can enhance system performance in several ways. First, if your computer has multiple hard disks, create a paging file for each disk. Distributing information across multiple paging files improves performance because the hard disk controller can read from and write to multiple hard disks simultaneously. When attempting to write to the paging file, VMM tries to write the page data to the paging file on the disk that is the least busy."

So if you want, you can have multiple pagefiles and perhaps speed up performance. However, with that much physical RAM you probably aren't swapping too much to disk unless you are doing a lot of A/V or perhaps heavy gaming.

Hey Crash&Burn, perhaps you do need to call MS Support every once in a while... . Read the following article on HARDLINKS ON NTFS VOLUMES :

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...kc_fil_baey.asp

fsutil is your friend

Edited October 27, 2005 by cluberti

[Crash&Burn]

@ Kalo

What? If its win2K just MAKE one.

http://www.broadbandnuts.com/index.php?page=ramdisk

http://download.microsoft.com/download/win...-US/Ramdisk.exe

@ cluberti

Mmm...

1. Thats the XP resource Kit. I run win2K.

2. Win2K didn't even support "Junctions" out of the box w/o its own ResourceKit. So Sysinternals made one.

But please prove me wrong, that Win2K supports hardlinks, that would make my day

And quite frankly if you own something calls "Windows 2000 Professional" You would expect the tools required to run it, would come with it. Not have to go back to the dealer and buy a shiftStick so you can get your car out of 1st gear.

Edited October 27, 2005 by Crash&Burn