[Question] - downside to large pagefile?

[ripken204]

are there any downsides of a large pagefile (over 2gigs) as long as it is on another drive? considering that i have a dual core cpu?

[suryad]

What does a pagefile have to do with he fact that you have a dual core cpu? And why would you need such a large pagefile in the first place? The only thing I can think of is the amount of thrashing that can potentially take plce.

[ripken204]

well im just asking if there would be a downside? if i have enough hdd space for it, then does it matter if i use alot?

[jondercik]

yes it does.

[Gouki]

yes it does.

Well, that was NOT AN ANSWER! Do you care on adding a little something?

Some reasons on why it shouldnt be so big? The downside? Recommendations?

Post like that dont really help out anyone!

[jondercik]

If you use your pagefile alot you need more ram. Basically anything over 2 GB goes unused because 32 bit windows cannot assign more than 2 GB to a process.

[cluberti]

Since a paging file is used to store data from RAM, either when no more RAM is available for allocation or when something in RAM hasn't been accessed in a while, it would have little to do with your processor and more to do with the amount of physical RAM in your system. If you want to be able to gather memory dumps if the system crashes, you'll need a paging file that is at least the size of your physical RAM + 50MB, but as to whether or not you should create a large paging file is up to you. It probably won't increase or decrease your system performance any, so I don't think there's a good reason to have a large paging file if you have lots of RAM. Physical RAM + 50MB should suffice for almost all usage scenarios.

[TravisO]

are there any downsides of a large pagefile (over 2gigs) as long as it is on another drive? considering that i have a dual core cpu?

In order to give you the right answer, you have to ask the right question. My point is, you should NOT be manually setting the pagefile. Let Windows determine the size of the pagefile for itself. There is no advantage to setting a larger pagefile, it doesn't store data for future use, it's not like a browser cache where bigger is better.

Also your CPU setup has NOTHING to do with pagefile, you could have 4 dual core cpus it your pagefile settings wouldn't change. No more than your choice in car tires affect how quickly your windows can open

Finally, setting a large pagefile can be a bad thing. Such large files can rarely be writen contiguously on the drive, so the pagefile will be split all over the drive. The more you use that file, the worse it gets, this is called file fragmentation and will cause your drive to read and write slower.

Edited January 10, 2006 by travisowens

[Andromeda43]

Windows will puke if you just do away with your pagefile. Many programs are designed to use it.

Finally, setting a large pagefile can be a bad thing. Such large files can rarely be writen contiguously on the drive, so the pagefile will be split all over the drive. The more you use that file, the worse it gets, this is called file fragmentation and will cause your drive to read and write slower.

True,,,,so true. A fragmented Pagefile can do you more harm than good.

So how would the average user defragment that puppy? Well, here's one way:

Shut down the pagefile completely.

Defragment your hard drive.

Reboot

Now, turn the Pagefile back on and let windows manage it's size.

The new Pagefile will be written at the end of the data.

With a good background in DOS, I kept my FAT-32 file structure when I upgraded from '98 to XP-Pro.

I can do things with my computer that most users cannot do.

I can boot up my PC with a floppy disk or boot CD and remove any file I want from my HD.

So, when I boot up to do a "Ghost 2003" backup once a week (or oftener) I run a little batch file that totally cleans out my HD of all the crap that XP stores up. It also deletes my Pagefile and System Restore folder.

That usually gives me back about 2 gig's of HD space, that won't go into my Ghost backup Image File.

Then while I'm still on my boot disk, I run Ghost again and do a Restore of the file I just created. All my data is written back to the HD in the same orderly manner in which it was added to the Image File.

Here's a pix of my HD right after that Restore, as displayed by Windows Defrag.

The big blue area is the result of the Ghost Restore,,,,the green area is the Pagefile, etc. written by windows when the computer was restarted and booted into XP.

I hope this can help someone trying to decide how to set up their PC.

God Bless,

Andromeda43

Edited January 10, 2006 by Andromeda43

[ColdFusion200]

like said before, a bigger page file will increase fragmentation

also, hard drive is slower than ram, so you will loose some speed

no point having a page file much bigger than 1gb

[Andromeda43]

If you have plenty of ram, here's a registry tweak that can greatly improve system performance.

*****************************

Memory Performance Tweak

These Settings will fine tune your systems memory management -at least 256MB of ram recommended, 512 preferred for first tweak.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Control \

Session Manager \ Memory Management

1.DisablePagingExecutive -double click it and in the decimal put a 1 - this allows XP to keep data in memory now instead of paging sections of ram to harddrive.

2.LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance a lot. This tweak can actually slow down a system with less than 256 megs of ram.

*****************************

I use these tweaks myself and share them with all my customers.

These are of course, for Windows XP.

Good Luck and Happy Computing,

Andromeda43

[atomizer]

...LargeSystemCache- double click it and change the decimal to 1 -this allows XP Kernal to Run in memory improves system performance a lot. This tweak can actually slow down a system with less than 256 megs of ram.

you may want to read about that tweak here.

@ripken204

first, i'm no expert.

obviously there's a lot of widely varying opinions on this hotly debated subject. even the 'experts' often disagree. the way that i handle the page file is based on articles from people whom i believe to be creditable.

in my case, i have 4 disk drives; 2 in a RAID 0 config that holds the OS and all programs and 2 more in a RAID 0 config that holds data, media, backups, storage.

firstly, windows will (according to MS) use the page file on the disk that is least used. also, before messing with page files, it's probably best to disable all page files > reboot > delete any 'page file.sys' files > defrag - then do what you need to. keeping that in mind...

in 'system properties > advanced > startup and recovery > settings' i set "write debugging information" to "none". this will allow you to set a small page file on the system drive while bypassing the error message about it being to small should windows crash.

i always keep a small, permanent page file on the system drive (and according to what i've read, you should always have a page file on the system drive. period.). in my case, it's 20 MB (it's permanent because both the min and max settings are set to 20 MB).

on my second drive, i create a partition exclusively for a page file. it happens to be 1 GB. in that partition, i create a semi-permanent page file having a minimum size of 50 MB and a max of 1019 MB (the total size of the partition). this avoids unnecessary fragmentation of the page file and allows windows to increase its size, IF it needs to.

here's some very good reading on the subject:

http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php - particularly good

http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

note that putting a page file on a 2nd drive (not partition) may only be a good idea if that drive is as fast, or almost as fast, as your system drive. of course if you only have 1 drive, or only 1 fast drive that is your system drive, then the options are fewer. read the articles i linked to to learn more.

EDIT:

perhaps a couple things could've been clarified better...

i don't create a separate partition for the page file on the system drive - there's no need to if you create it the right way (see links and info above). both its min and max are set to 20 MB, so it won't fragment. if it can't fragment, then there's no need to put it in its own partition.

the main page file, on my 2nd drive, goes in a partition because it's semi-permanent. it can grow and shrink, so it can fragment. i want to keep that under control, thus the separate swap partition.

@ripken204

so, to answer your question, i'm not completely sure. i would suggest that if you think you need a large page file, you stick it in it's own partition and make it semi-permanent (a conservative min size and a max = to the partition size). if it's a permanent page file (min = max), then you don't need a separate partition. my best answer is, don't create a large page file to begin with. use a semi-permanent page file in its own partition. this will keep it from getting scattered all over the place while, at the same time, keep its size in check since you'll allow windows to increase it's size as needed.

also, according to what i believe to be creditable references, IGNORE any advise on setting the page file size according to RAM capacity. that's ludicrous. one popular formula is to set its size to RAM x 1.5, so if you have 64 MB of RAM, your page file will be 96 MB. the less RAM you have, the BIGGER the page file needs to be. by the same token, using that formula for 2 GB of RAM results in a page file size of 3 GB !?! the more RAM you have, the smaller the page file can be - to a point! it shouldn't ever be disabled, regardless of how much RAM you have.

Edited January 10, 2006 by atomizer

[Zxian]

yes it does.

No, not really.

If you use your pagefile alot you need more ram. Basically anything over 2 GB goes unused because 32 bit windows cannot assign more than 2 GB to a process.

If you read his sig, he's got a 64-bit processor. This means that his computer could handle and access a lot more than 4GB of RAM.

like said before, a bigger page file will increase fragmentation

also, hard drive is slower than ram, so you will loose some speed

no point having a page file much bigger than 1gb

A larger hard drive does not necessarily increase fragmentation. If you have a set pagefile size, then the pagefile can't fragment.

@ripken204 - You've got 2GB of RAM. Chances are you'll never run into troubles (even if you play BF2). Set the pagefile to system managed and leave it be.

[nmX.Memnoch]

I used to move the pagefile around and do all these tweaks a long time ago. But given the fact that XP's memory management is much better than past versions of Windows the only page file tweak I do is to set the page file max size to the same as the minimum size. If you do this your page file will not fragment no matter what anyone tells you. The only way it will fragment is if you don't have enough physical RAM and you allow Windows to dynamically grow the page file.

Given that hard drive speeds have gotten much faster I don't even see the point of moving it to another partition anymore. I've found it better to keep it in the default location and then do my disk intenstive stuff on another disk. Think about it this way. Say you only have two hard drives. You move the page file to the D: drive. Now you're doing something that can be disk and memory intensive (i.e. video editing). Which disk do you use for the temp files? C: drive where all of the applications are running, along with Windows? Or D: drive where you have the page file? Personally I leave the page file on C: and do all of my disk intensive stuff on the secondary drive. This dedicates the secondary drive to just those operations.

Just some thoughts for ya to think about.

As for having a large pagefile...no, it shouldn't hurt your performance any.

Also, 32-bit Windows can assign more than 2GB to a process if you use the /3GB switch in the boot.ini. This is only useful if you have 3GB or more of RAM though. Windows XP Professional does support the /3GB switch.

[atomizer]

...But given the fact that XP's memory management is much better than past versions of Windows the only page file tweak I do is to set the page file max size to the same as the minimum size. If you do this your page file will not fragment no matter what anyone tells you. The only way it will fragment is if you don't have enough physical RAM and you allow Windows to dynamically grow the page file...

the page file won't fragment as long as it's a permanent page file, meaning that min/max are equal size. if they are not, it can fragment.

however, for the most part, i would tend to agree that excessive tweaking of the page file(s) isn't necessary for the most part. the time and wear and tear saved by reduced disk thrashing is probably negligent. still, it's so easy to do and, after all, i'm a die-hard tweakster