Page File question

[omg its nlm]

I have 769mb of ram, what should the page file size be?

 

[Xie]

If you go by the "standard" most sites/ppl will say 1.5x your RAM. I think w/ XP though it is thought that letting XP handle this is the best method. One thing you could do though if you run more then one HD is set it on the faster of the 2 or if the same speed on the non-OS HD.

 

[LeeJend]

I think w/ XP though it is thought that letting XP handle this is the best method. One thing you could do though if you run more then one HD is set it on the faster of the 2 or if the same speed on the non-OS HD.

Bad ideas:
1). If xp handles it,it will smear it all over your HD as it adjusts the size dynamically causing major fragementation and slow downs.

2). If you put it on a physically different HD than your operating system you will have to wait a couple seconds for the 2nd HD to spin up out of power down mode every time you need to access the pagefile.

Alternate:
1). Set the pagefile size to fixed. In your case from 768 to 1.5x768 will work. The old 1.5x advice dates back to when RAM was only 128meg and I'm not sure it makes sense anymore. The pagefiles are getting so large now it will take longer to access them.
2). Put your system on a small partition (8-10meg) which makes the access faster. Put the pagefile on the small system partition or on another dedicated partion on the drive. (I do the latter).

 

[j79zlr]

Bad ideas:
1). If xp handles it,it will smear it all over your HD as it adjusts the size dynamically causing major fragementation and slow downs.

2). If you put it on a physically different HD than your operating system you will have to wait a couple seconds for the 2nd HD to spin up out of power down mode every time you need to access the pagefile.

1) This does not happen, if XP handles the page file, it automatically sets its size to 1.5x's RAM and will expand if necessary.

2) The most optimal page file placement is on a seperate hard drive on a seperate controller. The disk will never have to spin up as it will be constantly accessed.

3) There is no huge performance increase with setting the pagefile correctly, for some reason someone somehow started the idea that there can be massive performance increase involved with the PF, when this is just not the case.

4) Rule of thumb, if you are going to set a PF size, never set it to less than the amount of RAM installed.

5) Just let windoze manage it, no reason not too, and no performance increase by doing otherwize.

 

[Perris Calderon]

ya leejand

j79's post is correct

the fragmented pagefile thing most sites used to claim happens cannot possibly happen...once your pagefile is contiguous is HAS to remain contiguous on a healthy drive

this includes a pagefile that windows manages

 

[Xie]

what about me? 😛

 

[dreamliner77]

perris-
wouldn't this be a wonderful time to post your awesome paper on the subject?

 

[ming]

Mine has always been constant at 768MB. However, because I have 3 XP's installed on my machine, all the page files are on drive C: 😛 When I defrag, I see a really huge yellow mark showing the space that the page files has occupied.

I've thought about setting the page file to zero, but not sure what effect it will have on the performance of XP.

 

[Lee]

Me I have 3 partitions, 768 on c, 768 on d and on e 1234.

System is fine working that way.

 

[Lee]

I forgot to add I have a ram drive also, which I base my internet explorer downlaod files on.