Moving Pagefile.sys on WinXP

[LoverBoyJ]

I'm going to re-instal WinXP Pro and place it on the serial ATA Raid. I already have allocated one 1GB partition on the first portion of the raid to be used as pagefile, this would theoretically increase the speed at which the OS will be accessing the pagefile since the first portion of the drive is supposed to have the fastest access time. This would also minimize deframentation on my system disk since defrag cannot move the pagefile.sys if its in between files.

After installing WinXP Pro, how do I move the pagefile to the first partition? I have checked
->System control panel ->"Advanced"->"Performance"->"Settings"->"Advanced" Tab, but it doesn't show where the files are located. Do I have to do registry editing? if so, where is it located?

TIA 😀

 

[Lord Evermore]

By doing that, you're REDUCING the speed that the OS files are accessed in the first place, and the page file is only used when real memory runs out. Windows built-in defrag won't move the pagefile at all, so it doesn't matter if it's fragmented and won't change the speed of a defrag. However having a continuous allocated space for it does mean the dynamic size won't end up fragmented.

On the advanced tab, you see your two drive letters. Select the current OS drive and click "no paging file". Then select the drive you want it on, and set either a static size or System managed. Hit okay and back out of everything, you'll probably need to reboot. You can't move the page file manually.

I suggest that you not bother with this really. Your pagefile usage is probably going to be very low unless you have very little memory, and in modern drives the access to later parts of the disk isn't very slow at all. Your pagefile is only going to be accessed when Windows needs to dump large amounts of data anyway, to clear out memory space for something that needs a lot, like Battlefield 1942 or C&C: generals. Normal usage doesn't fill up memory unless you're at 256MB or less, so very little data is ever sent to the pagefile and if it does go there, it's something that isn't going to need access often.

If you have so little memory that even a single application fills it up and needs to page active data to disk and constantly be retrieving it, then you should consider more memory.

 

[LoverBoyJ]

I have read it somewhere, one of the things needed to fully optimize the system is to put the pagefile in the front area of the disk. I don't have any defrag software that can move the pagefile so thats the best way I could think of.

I'll just try it, if it doesn't work as expected, I'll just have to reinstall it again in one whole partition.

thanks for the tip.

cheers :beer:

 

[SnapIT]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
By doing that, you're REDUCING the speed that the OS files are accessed in the first place, and the page file is only used when real memory runs out. Windows built-in defrag won't move the pagefile at all, so it doesn't matter if it's fragmented and won't change the speed of a defrag. However having a continuous allocated space for it does mean the dynamic size won't end up fragmented.

On the advanced tab, you see your two drive letters. Select the current OS drive and click "no paging file". Then select the drive you want it on, and set either a static size or System managed. Hit okay and back out of everything, you'll probably need to reboot. You can't move the page file manually.

I suggest that you not bother with this really. Your pagefile usage is probably going to be very low unless you have very little memory, and in modern drives the access to later parts of the disk isn't very slow at all. Your pagefile is only going to be accessed when Windows needs to dump large amounts of data anyway, to clear out memory space for something that needs a lot, like Battlefield 1942 or C&C: generals. Normal usage doesn't fill up memory unless you're at 256MB or less, so very little data is ever sent to the pagefile and if it does go there, it's something that isn't going to need access often.

If you have so little memory that even a single application fills it up and needs to page active data to disk and constantly be retrieving it, then you should consider more memory.

No, windows uses the page file long before your conventional memory is full, want proof? just take a look at total memory usage and physical memory usage, the difference is in the page file...

To change where it is stored (on which partition) click ->System control panel ->"Advanced"->"Performance"->"Settings"->"Advanced" -> "Change" click the partition you want it on, type in the values and click set... click on the partition it is already on, anc mark "no paging file" and then set... click ok, ok and reboot when asked...

Oh, and it removes fragmentation, not defragmentation... 😉

 

[Lord Evermore]

Having a page file that's large, and USING the page file are two different things.

I currently have a 768MB page file (System Managed, defaults to 1.5x system memory apparently). My system is only USING 142MB of the page file. My "commit charge" is only 142MB out of 1249MB total (768MB page file, 512MB real). The system is obviously using very little memory, and has all of it paged already, but isn't necessarily going to have to use the page file for the data, it's just "pre-paged" for now.

Memory usage never goes over that until I load something like Battlefield 1942, where Windows needs to clear out as much memory as possible to load the game. So it dumps all the stuff in memory that won't be needed while playing the game, loads up BF1942. If I task switch, it has to unload some of the game data, in order to load the application data from the page file.

If I had only 256MB of memory, then all of BF1942 might not fit into real memory (considering that the OS has to keep some data for itself in memory at all times, the full 256MB of course isn't available for applications). So it would fill up real memory and then Windows would start paging some of the game data, resulting in swapping during the game. But until the memory limit is reached, the swap file only stores unneeded data.

The only thing putting the page file in the front of the drive does these days, with Win2k/XP's memory management, is make the initial paging of data and later retrieval faster, but all at one go. It's not going to help much if at all with actual gameplay unless you've got too little memory in the first place. Unfortunately, game memory usage is increasing severely, and 256MB is really only a bare minimum for good performance anymore. A fast page file might help you get the game loaded faster, but that's about it.