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Windows swap file management

D

dbal

Senior member
Well, ever since I upgraded to 1 GB of memory, I've had my swapfile disabled. My impression is/was that I've yet to exceed 1 GB of system memory usage, so the swap file should technically not be necessary and truly, it hasn't.

But I have to wonder why, even with size = 0 in advanced system properties, and no pagefile.sys file to be found in c: anymore, my PF usage in task manager, states that it's at 300MB and rising when opening multiple apps as it was happening when I had PF enabled. Commonly accepted wisdom is that windows will always use a small amount, because the windows memory model can't really turn off "paging" so to speak. But I have to wonder if this is actually true.

Plus, does anyone know what/where this file is? Or if windows might even be writing raw to the disk?
It's not a pressing concern, just something I've always been curious about. Thanx in advance
 
Please use the search function.

This topic has been covered a bajillion times and the thread will only end up in some religious squabble.


Thanks!
 
I hit the search button. Typed "disable pagefile", chose posts older than 90 days and got two full pages of hits.



A few of em...
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...threadid=780842&enterthread=y&arctab=y

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...hreadid=1499556&enterthread=y&arctab=y

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...hreadid=1002672&enterthread=y&arctab=y



I can go ahead and tell you the final answer:
Leave your pagefile settings so that windows manages it. That is the short short answer on a long long discussion.

Good luck!
 
Originally posted by: dbal
Well, ever since I upgraded to 1 GB of memory, I've had my swapfile disabled. My impression is/was that I've yet to exceed 1 GB of system memory usage, so the swap file should technically not be necessary and truly, it hasn't.

But I have to wonder why, even with size = 0 in advanced system properties, and no pagefile.sys file to be found in c: anymore, my PF usage in task manager, states that it's at 300MB and rising when opening multiple apps as it was happening when I had PF enabled. Commonly accepted wisdom is that windows will always use a small amount, because it just can't not I also know that the windows memory model can't really turn off "paging" so to speak. But I have to wonder if this is actually true.

Plus, does anyone know what/where this file is? Or if windows might even be writing raw to the disk?
It's not a pressing concern, just something I've always been curious about. Thanx in advance
Click to expand...

The "PF Usage" item in Task Manager HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH DATA BEING SWAPPED OUT TO DISK. Ahem. Not like this gets asked about every other week or anything.

Yes, the name is very misleading. What you care about is the "commit charge" number down below (which should be very, very close to the "PF usage" number most of the time.) and whether it is larger than your amount of physical memory. Search if you want more technical descriptions. There are also some counters in Performance Monitor that you can look at for more detailed breakdowns of swapfile usage.
 
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