What drive would be best for page file?

[Fistandantilis]

Should I configure my page file to run from a drive in my machine that does not have my OS installed?
for instance, I have windows installed on my C drive, should I leave my page file on that drive OR should I put it on one of my other drives?

Thanks

 

[soonerproud]

Are we talking XP or Vista?

I can tell you for certain on Vista that it is best to leave the PF alone and not do anything. Vista is very picky about the PF, so leave it be for the best performance overall.

 

[Fistandantilis]

Originally posted by: soonerproud
Are we talking XP or Vista?

I have windows XP Pro

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Fistandantilis
Should I configure my page file to run from a drive in my machine that does not have my OS installed?
for instance, I have windows installed on my C drive, should I leave my page file on that drive OR should I put it on one of my other drives?

Thanks

Let Windows manage your pagefile. If you must and you're really bored, *ADD* a pagefile on another drive (and keep your pagefile on C:, too.) Otherwise, add another 2GB of RAM to your PC and call it a day.

 

[Nothinman]

Just leave it, you've probably already wasted more time thinking about it than you'll save with any optimizations.

 

[Fistandantilis]

Well I have decided to just leave it alone, thanks for the replies fellas.

 

[WildHorse]

Various tweaking guides say that for slightly faster performance it's better to:

- put the page file on a different hdd (not a different logical drive on the same physical hard drive, but rather on a different physical hard drive)
and
-to set both the min and max size to the same value

However, you'll see posters on this forum saying it doesn't help.

Personally, I have WinXP Pro on C: and the page file on the H: drive, with the PF's min & max size set to be equal.

 

[Nothinman]

However, you'll see posters on this forum saying it doesn't help.

The former can help depending on what else is on the other drive, the fact that OS and pagefile share a drive by default is irrelevant. You really want to separate the pagefile I/O from data I/O or whatever the majority is for your workload. So if the secondary drive with the pagefile also holds the data that you're working on then you're in a worse situation then if the pagefile was on the OS drive.

The latter is 100% pointless. People seem to be under this strange misconception that the pagefile is constantly being resized between it's smallest and largest size during use but that's not true at all. The pagefile may grow if it starts filling up but that's it, it doesn't shrink until you reboot so the overhead of setting the max to something higher than the min is virtually zero.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: scott
Various tweaking guides say that for slightly faster performance it's better to:

- put the page file on a different hdd (not a different logical drive on the same physical hard drive, but rather on a different physical hard drive)
and
-to set both the min and max size to the same value

However, you'll see posters on this forum saying it doesn't help.

Personally, I have WinXP Pro on C: and the page file on the H: drive, with the PF's min & max size set to be equal.

Ah, so if your machine ever crashes, no memorydump for you.

Hint: put a small pagefile - 300GB or so - on C. Turn on kernel memory dumps. All done!

 

[George P Burdell]

Try putting your pagefile on a RAMdisk (assuming you have 2-3GB of RAM to spare). I'd be interested in knowing if this has any effect on system performance.

I moved my Firefox cache to a RAMdisk on one computer and I saw some improvement. 😀

 

[Continuity28]

Originally posted by: George P Burdell
Try putting your pagefile on a RAMdisk (assuming you have 2-3GB of RAM to spare). I'd be interested in knowing if this has any effect on system performance.

I moved my Firefox cache to a RAMdisk on one computer and I saw some improvement. 😀

Who has RAM to spare? 😛

 

[KoolDrew]

In theory, best performance would be with the pagefile on the least-used drive. However, with a sufficient amount of RAM, it's unlikely you'll be hitting the pagefile often enough for it to really have a noticeable impact.

 

[WildHorse]

Originally posted by: dclive

< cutout >

Ah, so if your machine ever crashes, no memorydump for you.

Hint: put a small pagefile - 300GB or so - on C. Turn on kernel memory dumps. All done!

Wow you & I have different ideas of "small!"


Ha Ha Ha obviously a typo, but still funny

 

[degibson]

I wouldn't put too much effort into optimizing thrashing 🙂. It would be quite funny to add a pagefile on a ramdisk, however, in a demented way.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: scott
Various tweaking guides say that for slightly faster performance it's better to:

- put the page file on a different hdd (not a different logical drive on the same physical hard drive, but rather on a different physical hard drive)
and
-to set both the min and max size to the same value

However, you'll see posters on this forum saying it doesn't help.

Personally, I have WinXP Pro on C: and the page file on the H: drive, with the PF's min & max size set to be equal.

Well, its theoretically best to keep the page file on another drive, but when youre actually forced to swap, the difference is between really slow, and really, really slow. Either way, its a situation you want to avoid. Putting it on a separate drive isnt going to make much difference when you have enough ram, because its not really using it all too much to begin with.

So basically, have enough ram for whatever it is youre doing, and you dont have to worry about where you put the page file. But putting it on another drive is a good tweak, but dont expect miracles.