A little help with "Paging Files" needed.

[Magnumike7]

In a previous thread I asked for opinions on how many partitions I should use. Now that I have determined that most people recommend 2-3 partitons I now have 4. One for win98; one for winXP; One for programs/apps; and one for backups. Therefore I have a C:, D:, E:, and F:, partition on one physical 80gig WD drive.

My question concerning paging files is how do I set them up? When I go to the "Virtual Memory" interface it gives me the opportunity to set a paging file for "EACH" partition. So...Should I set a paging file for EACH partition or use ONE for all of them? If I use only ONE, then HOW do I tell it to, for instance, use a paging file on say (F🙂 for all the others? I see how to give each individual partition its own paging file on itself, but how do I tell one partiton to use another for paging file?

 

[Bovinicus]

I would put the pagefile on the same partition as the OS that it is the pagefile for. You want the pagefile more toward the beginning of the drive because HDDs have higher transfer rates near the beginning of the drive. Usually the drives transfer 50-100% faster at the beginning than the end, so it could potentially make a big difference.

I usually like to decide what the largest my pagefile will ever be, and set it at that size for both the minimum and maximum. This makes sure the pagefile doesn't get resized, and therefore fragmented.

 

[Magnumike7]

Thanks for the reply...I have a question though...You said to put the paging file at the beginning of the drive...How do I tell it where to put it? Like I said, I have Win98 on (C🙂; WinXP on (D🙂 and programs and apps on (E🙂. I understand what you said about putting the pagin file on the same partion as the OS, but how do I tell it to go to the beginning of the drive?

 

[Bovinicus]

Since the Win98 and WinXP partitions are C: and D:, that means they are at the beginning of the drive. So, put your Win98 pagefile on the Win98 partition and the XP pagefile on the XP partition. You could put both pagefiles on the Win98 partition if you have the room, but I don't know which filing systems you are using or how much slack space you allowed on each partition. If you have enough room on your 98 partition for both pagefiles, then by all means put them there.

 

[Lord Evermore]

You can't specify the exact location of the pagefile on the drive, except by either creating the file on the partition while it's empty (and making it a specific permanent size), or by using a defrag program that can relocate it (the utility suite that Mcafee bought out, I forget the name, bought it from Helix I think, was able to do this in Win98, but I'm not sure about NT-based versions, and they don't produce it anymore anyway).

I didn't even realize you could set a page file for each partition. No one has ever discussed the effect that has, that I've seen.

If you just create one page file, that's the one the system uses, it doesn't JUST page data that's on that one partition. I'm not sure that setting a page file for each partition causes ONLY paging of data from that one partition; it may make Windows simply have an extra page file so that you're not filling a single partition with paged data.

Putting the page files on the first partition is the easiest way to give them the quickest access; even though you can't specify exactly where they go, they're at least as near the outer edges of the disc as they can be. However that may not be the BEST place to put them both. Having the page file in the same partition as the OS that's using it could cause faster accesses; for instance when you're using WinXP, if the page file is on the C drive and the OS is on D, then the heads have to move way back to the beginning of the drive to read or write to the page file, when the data they're accessing is on a more inner track where the D drive is stored. If the page file is on the D drive, it's nearer to where the data is that the OS is probably going to want to write to the page file. Of course this depends on exactly what applications you're using, and whether the OS is paging OS code or application code to the file. You might even get faster pagefile access by having it on the applications partition, if the OS is needing to write application code to the page file most of the time, since the application partition is even farther away from the edge of the disc.

I personally hardly ever see any page file use anyway, according to WinXP's task manager. Currently it's only at 250MB. WindowsXP keeps a minimum page file size by default of 1.5 times your system memory. It won't get any smaller than that if Windows is managing it, and won't grow any larger unless the OS needs to page more data. Aside from that, WinXP never defrags the page file, as it's considered a non-movable system file. As far as I can tell, mine is a non-fragmented file.