Increased RAM, decreased SSD free space

Hello. I recently built a desktop with a Crucial M4 64GB SSD as the boot drive and installed Crucial Ballistix sport 16GB (4 x 4GB) on an Intel DP67DE motherboard.
1 of my memory modules went bad so I removed a pair to return to Crucial for exchange. During that time I ran the remaining 2 memory modules and was therefore at 8GB of RAM. Also during that time I noticed the free space on my SSD was ~25.6GB.
Today I reinstalled the remaining pair of Ballistix bringing the memory back up to 16GB. After that I noticed my SSD free space dropped to ~11.2GB.
Everything is running OK and I use a 1.5TB HDD for storage but I am puzzled as to the loss of 14.4GB of SSD space after increasing the memory.

Have you checked the size of your page file? I have 8 Gbs of RAM on my PC and by default Windows 7 makes the page file the same size as the amount of RAM.

I just checked it and it is indeed automatically allocating 16361mb. What setting did you end up using or does it even matter if it is left in automatic? Thanks

indeed automatically allocating 16361mb

Try setting a custom Virtual Memory, Initial 200 MB, Max 2 or 4 GB. Then monitor it's utilization for some time. With your amount of ram installed, the pagefile may never go above 200 MB, but it's there if ever needed.

It was basically a page file being created, disable the paging file settings as suggested, virtual memory is used from the SSD disk space when the physical RAM is being fully used by applications, and therefore becomes very low; virtual memory also has a much slower performance than physical RAM too.

Start > Computer > System Properties > Advanced System Settings left pane > Advanced tab > Performance box > Settings button > Advanced tab

The above path is for finding the virtual memory settings, if you didn't know how or forgotten.

Hope this helps,

Harry

snsjets said:

I just checked it and it is indeed automatically allocating 16361mb. What setting did you end up using or does it even matter if it is left in automatic? Thanks

I have page file set at 2 Gbs, because with 8 Gbs of RAM a larger page file isn't necessary. Since you have 16 Gbs of RAM I would think you could easily set it to 0, or a much smaller size like I did without any problem.

Great! Thank you all for the responses/help!!

snsjets said:

Great! Thank you all for the responses/help!!

You also probably have 16 GB of space devoted to hibernation.

If you don't use hibernation, you can reclaim the space with this command:

powercfg -h off

A few programs expect to find a page file, so I wouldn't eliminate it entirely. I'd reduce it to a low level---maybe 1024 MB minimum and 2048 MB maximum.

You might also check the amount of space devoted to System Restore. That is adjustable also.

I do not use hibernation. I entered the command to disable it but did not notice a difference in free space. Am I missing something?
I am back to 23.5GB free on the SSD after making the above changes to virtual memory settings.