Swap File - Where and How Big?

[Nothinman]

not recommended to disable vm? lol

First of all the paging file and VM are two completely seperate things, if you're going to act like you know what you're talking about atleast get the terminology right.

Second, no it's not recommended to run with no paging file, if you want to run your system like that go head, it's not my data.

 

[Saltin]

Lol. Don't get Nothinman started about the page file and VM....

Why do you guys have to turn a simple question into a huge argument?

If you are running under 256 megs of RAM your page file should be 1.5x your RAM.
If you are running 512 make it a 1:1 relationship.
If you are running more than 512, you can certainly make it less than 1:1.

I wouldnt run a 2k or XP box without a page file. I'm a 2k admin and I've seen the hacks you guys are talking about working. It isnt super stable. The Kernel is written with the expectation of a page file presence. Don't disappoint it.

As for your the location of the page file, just get it off the disk the OS is on. You want to chose the disk that is least utilized so that it has as exclusive access to the read/writes as it can get.

 

[Nothinman]

Lol. Don't get Nothinman started about the page file and VM...

Maybe I just need more to do at work =)

I spent time learning about memory management and it gets on my nerves when people who don't understand how it works throw around suggestions that are the opposite of what you should do, and then go so far as to argue that they can't be wrong.

 

[Bucksnort]

Guess you know more than this author also smartie.

Langa Letter: Ten Ways To Make Windows XP Run Better Dec. 10, 2001





Fred Langa offers tips on how to optimize Windows XP for your own work style so you don't have to live with its default settings.
By Fred Langa



7) Improve XP's Virtual Memory Settings
On its own, Windows places your "swapfile" or "paging file" (a portion of your hard drive that's used as a kind of pseudo-RAM) on your C: drive, and sets it up so it can grow and shrink as needed. However, you may be able to do better. For example, if you have more than one physical disk in your system, you may get better performance from either placing the swapfile on the lesser-used disk

Full article

And this is from Microsoft, I guess they don't know what they are talking about and need to get their terminology right also? Perhaps they just need to find more things to occupy themselves at work?

Managing computer memory
When your computer is running low on RAM and more is needed immediately, Windows uses hard drive space to simulate system RAM. This is known as virtual memory, and is often called the paging file. This is similar to the UNIX swapfile. The default size of the virtual memory pagefile (named pagefile.sys) created during installation is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer.

You can optimize virtual memory use by dividing the space between multiple drives and removing it from slower or heavily accessed drives. To best optimize your virtual memory space, divide it among as many physical hard drives as possible. When selecting drives, keep the following guidelines in mind:

Try to avoid having a pagefile on the same drive as the system files.
Avoid putting a pagefile on a fault-tolerant drive, such as a mirrored volume or a RAID-5 volume. Pagefiles don't need fault-tolerance, and some fault-tolerant systems suffer from slow data writes because they write data to multiple locations.
Don't place multiple pagefiles on different partitions on the same physical disk drive.

 

[Saltin]

Thank you Bucksnort, for stating exactly what I did above you in twice as many words (that arent even your own).
Try reading the posts instead of quoting someone who obviously knows more about computers than you do.

 

[Nothinman]

Guess you know more than this author also smartie.

I don't know about that because I don't know that guy, but I will say that just because he writes articles for an web site doesn't mean he's a genious.

And I don't see him saying anything that I disagree with, all I said was don't run without a pagefile which he never advises.

And this is from Microsoft, I guess they don't know what they are talking about and need to get their terminology right also?

Correct. I'm sure the OS developers didn't write the article, and I'm sure you'll agree translation of technical documents by non-technical people always loses something.

The pagefile is used by Virtual Memory, but Virtual Memory is a lot more than just the pagefile.

 

[thornc]

reicherb

Just do what Saltin stated and you should be ok!

Put it on the least used drive ( other than the OS drive ), and make it a 1:1 relation with your system memory!
If you need more just increase its size or get more RAM!!

Don't understand the big fuss about this......

 

[bsobel]

While trying to avoid jumping into the argument, let me point out that there are memory mapped file api's in the OS which various applications use which get their backing store from the paging file. Completely disabling paging will cause these api's to (gracefully) fail. How gracefully the calling application fails is up to the app writer

Second, for dumps and mini-dumps 2K/XP requires part of the paging file (thats where it writes to during the blue screen as it knows the file allocation is a safe area to write to).

Bill