For the most part, I would agree with LordOfLA, the best idea is to have your page file on a completely different disk and on a seperate IDE (or SATA cable).
The CPU can easily manage 2 hard disks at once and it will greatly increase your performance.
that part is correct, the next isn't;
The part I would disagree with is that you don't "need a pagefile". If Windows has a page file, it will use it, period there's no way around it no matter how much memory you have
but from a theoretical perspective if you have say 32GB of memory and the O/S needs to use more, something is "wrong" with the OS. IMHO
I'll start with the last part first and then revisit at the end
but from a theoretical perspective if you have say 32GB of memory and the O/S needs to use more, something is "wrong" with the OS. IMHO
if you have 32 gigs of memory and 33 gigs of data, one gig is gonna be paged in and out when accessed even in best case scenario, not too many people have less data on their hardrive then memory on board
now for the first part of yor post;
you're right the system will use a pagefile if you put it there no matter how much memory on board, you are wrong that it will not page anyway if you don't put it there, it will page more without the file
the system pages whether you have a pagefile or not, the only differance without the pagefile is which items get paged, there is not less paging without a pagefile in fact there are times you will page more without that file, you will never page less.
if there is more memory then needed the system sends unused pages to "the standby list", the data is not released from memory, this is data still in memory but marked to release if memory goes under pressure, this is also how programs expand their working sets when you have more memory then you are using, unused pages are sent to the standby list, then when new data needs to be loaded, if there is an abundnce of memory unused memory is used instead of that which is on the standby list...this is a pretty cool mechanism for expanding working sets I might add
if something has no existing image then it can't get sent to "the standby list", it cannot be considered in the memory management model
when there is no image since there is nothing to back that data on release, it can't be re-loaded
when there is a pagefile, new items which otherwise had no image now get an image written to that pagefile, that's the main purpose of this file, to back data that has no other backing.
as you can see, without the pagefile, new data that does not have an image (but might be the best candidate) will be removed from memory management consideration
when that happens, items that are not the best candidate get paged when under pressure instead, in other words, you have more actual paging without a pagefile then with one
the best choice is having it on a second hardrive so there are no bottlnecks
this is a virtual memory operating system, everything is paged in and out of memory, it is not a real time operating system
the only time you will have so much memory you won't be paging is when you have more memory then hardrive data
for instance, I have a 250 gig hardrive on this laptop, how can I possibly load the entire hardrive with only three gigs of memory?
I can't, when I close a file that should be paged out of memory, however if there is available memory not under pressure, that data will goe to the standby list so when I re-open it there is no slowdown, it's as if it were never paged out.
follow?
the only time you would have enough memory not to need paging is if you had more memory then hardrive data
that's not gonna happen any time soon
I have a some movies on my hardrive that are a few gigs all by thesmelves, not too many systems can play entire movies completely from memory, that file is going to be constantly paging data in and out