Windows 7: No page file should be faster?

hey, I've removed my paging file, just wondering if it should run faster or not?

I've set it to none, I have 18GB RAM so I don't think I need it for anything..

Should I keep it or not, I've not noticed anything much different.

Kind Regards

With that much RAM disabling it should not really affect you, unless you use a lot of RAM Hungry programs.

Disable it, entirely.

- No fragmentation
- No drive thrashing
- No pointless swapping

The pagefile is a throwback to the stoneage, it's not needed. I ran XP Pro with 2GB for almost 5 years without one and never had problems. With 7, I run x64 on 8GB and no pagefile. Zero problems and it's much faster.

and perhaps you never will. Personally, I keep a pagefile for compatibility reasons. It's on a RAID0 array and I never did notice any speed increase or lesser hard drive usage with it disabled. In fact, my hard drive activity in Windows XP is still dormant for the most part (but I cannot say the same about Vista or Windows 7...they both thrash the heck out my drives because of all this useless defragging and indexing...)

That said, disabling the pagefile probably won't hurt anything either...unless some programs decide to require it. It doesn't really make much difference either way.

I don't think you will gain anything by disabling it. If you have enough memory then the page file is simply never used, so no performance hit. That is, unless you are incredibly cramped on disk space.

to disable "paging executive" would probably help more than disabling the pagefile.

disable both and you'll probably get the best performance. But like I said, it's pretty much unnoticeable.

.
It would be interesting to see some careful tests done on systems with and without page files, varying amounts of ram and memory loads, etc. I think synthetic benchmarks are necessary to measure the differences. In theory I don't see why having a page file would slow the system as long as there is sufficient ram available. The OS only starts seriously leaning on the page file when the memory load is high. With 18 gb you probably never load the system enough for it to make a difference one way or the other.

As others have mentioned, you'd want to keep it around for compatibility reasons. There are apps like some versions of Adobe's Photoshop that will complain if it's not around. Also, other applications of dubious quality will have serious issues without it.

I doubt there is much performance difference with the service and paging file disabled. If you're not using it, it's not being access, and the service is only taking up memory, not processing cycles.

If you have enough memory that you're not using the PageFile, then feel free to disable it. But it would be wise to not delude yourself into thinking that it makes a difference in performance. After all, you're disabling something your system wasn't using in the first place.

If that sounds confusing: All you're accomplishing is telling your computer to not write information to disc, which it was never writing to disk anyhow. Not writing before.. Not writing now... No Difference.


Personally, I don't disable mine. But instead specify a limit (512MB, in my case) on the chance that some program may want to use it. Makes feck~all difference in day to day performance. But it may save a little disc space. Keep in mind that many/most 32 bit programs can still only use 2GB of address/memory space at a time, may attempt to use the Page should that limit be approached, and may become unhappy if it can't do that.

It's recommended to leave it enabled for certain applications. If you don't use applications that complain when it's disabled, no problem is disabling it.