Pagefile Configuration Preferences?

[Genison]

I'm almost ready to build my system and once done, I'm trying to setup the most efficient and effective setup I've ever built. Basically, I have a 150 GB WD Raptor drive, and a new Seagate 7200.10 drive. I've been researching this quite a bit and would still like some new perspectives. Here's my planned setup for a dual boot XP/Vista system:

Raptor C: (20 GB partition) XP and Applications
Raptor D: (25 GB partition) Vista and Applications
Raptor E: (Remaning ~100 GB) Games

Seagate F: (200 GB) Storage
Seagate G: (100 GB) Video Editing
Seagate H: (20 GB) Music

A Static 2560 MB Partition will be alocated both on C: for XP and D: for Vista. Now, I've read the better setup might be placing a 10 GB partition or so at the beginning of F: for the pagefile and temporary files so that I essentially have two sets of read/write heads working independently. Yet, I wonder if the presumably slower Seagate drive would offset that configuration.

 

[Tarrant64]

I really don't think the pagefile should be a huge concern if your worried about performance issues. Just leave the settings to system default. This is an argument that is made constantly.

I hope you plan on using your seagate for backups, because should your raptor ever fail, you will lose both your xp and vista installs. Remember that partitions on a single hard drive will nto protect from hardware failure.

If you do a lot of video editing, then it may be a good idea to have the paging file for Photoshop(for example) on another drive as that does help improve performance.

 

[Genison]

Yes, I'm well aware of the risks. I'm a support engineer by trade, so I deal with issues like that all the time.

Performance wise, I just want to see what I can do to minimize stutter and lag in games. I think it has a lot to do with the minute timings on accessing data.

 

[Nothinman]

Performance wise, I just want to see what I can do to minimize stutter and lag in games. I think it has a lot to do with the minute timings on accessing data.

Then get more memory, any amount of paging no matter where it is on disk will cause latency.

 

[lopri]

I'm afraid that 25GB won't be enough for Vista and apps. Depending your version of Vista, the OS itself can take up 15GB. That leaves you only 10GB for apps, and you would at least want to have 20% of free space for breathing room for the OS.

 

[Cutthroat]

25GB is too little for Vista, my Vista drive is currently using 21.5GB, hasn't really been cleaned, but you don't need to with Vista.

I don't think you'll get any performance increase by putting your page file on the Seagate drive, what you gain by having on a separate physical drive you would likely lose with the slower drive. All I would do is create a static size for the pagefile so it can't fragment.

 

[Nothinman]

All I would do is create a static size for the pagefile so it can't fragment.

That's pointless as well.

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

All I would do is create a static size for the pagefile so it can't fragment.

That's pointless as well.

Why do you think so? It saves the head from jumping around a bit.

 

[Nothinman]

Why do you think so? It saves the head from jumping around a bit.

Not at all. If you're using the pagefile enough that it's expanding and fragmenting you're also paging from hundreds of other places on the disk, pretty much any file that was open, in memory and unmodified is a candidate so pagefile fragmentation gets lost in the noise. And I/O within the pagefile is mostly random so even if it's one big contiguous file you'll still likely be jumping around randomly inside of it when paging anything in from it.

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Why do you think so? It saves the head from jumping around a bit.

Not at all. If you're using the pagefile enough that it's expanding and fragmenting you're also paging from hundreds of other places on the disk, pretty much any file that was open, in memory and unmodified is a candidate so pagefile fragmentation gets lost in the noise. And I/O within the pagefile is mostly random so even if it's one big contiguous file you'll still likely be jumping around randomly inside of it when paging anything in from it.

Never really thought of it that way, I guess so.

 

[Nothinman]

Essentially what it comes down to is that if you are indeed using the pagefile then you need more memory, no amount of tweaking will make a significant difference.

 

[nerp]

With Vista, forget about fragmentation, etc. All that stuff mattered when hard drives were much slower and we had a LOT less memory to work with. Nowadays, all these little "tweaks" to eke out extra performance is a giant placebo. Just like that Toyota that can go 100,000 with minor maintenence and oil changes, computers seem to finally getting to the point where we don't have to do all sorts of low-level mucking around to make things work better or to prevent the machine from grinding itself to death with regular usage. Windows isn't hemmoraging oil like it once did.

I know it's hard... But let go.....the urge....to tweak. . .