pagefile & hyberfil

pasquanel said:

Just checked my system using windrstat and noticed my pagefile is 8 gig and the hyberfil is 6 gig. This system has 8 gigs of ram plus another 1 gig on the video card.
This seems like a huge amount in particularly the pagefile given the amount of ram installed. My question is can I safely reduce this to say 500 megs? The drive is a 1 terabyte and would fooling with either one of these be worth while?

You certainly can and should. Some people with boat loads of RAM dont even run a pagefile. I believe the system will be more stable with a small (500 mb) pagefile than without.

The minimum page file is 16MB. But since you have the space, there would not really be a need to change it. Interestingly enough there are some programs (e.g. MSE) that generate page faults even when there are loads of available RAM (you can check that in Resource Monitor > Memory tab > Hard faults above). But 500MB should suffice.
The hibernation file you can get rid of if you do not use hibernation. Run powercfg -h off in elevated cmd.

pasquanel said:

Just checked my system using windrstat and noticed my pagefile is 8 gig and the hyberfil is 6 gig. This system has 8 gigs of ram plus another 1 gig on the video card.
This seems like a huge amount in particularly the pagefile given the amount of ram installed. My question is can I safely reduce this to say 500 megs? The drive is a 1 terabyte and would fooling with either one of these be worth while?

The hibernation file is simple enough... as has already been explained.

The pagefile is a bit more complex... You have to consider your computer usage... If you are running monster apps you need to assess their requirements and adjust the page file sizes accordingly... Pagefile == MAX Requirement - RAM.

On most systems over 4gb of ram (6gb for x64) you can quite often simply turn off the page file altogether and get a performance boost in the bargain. I've got 2gb ram on x86 and run without a pagefile, no problem.

If you do use a page file, set the minimum and maximum sizes the same. This profoundly reduces the risk of pagefile fragmentation and reduces the system's need to continuously maintain the file... which does give a moderate performance boost.

Well thank you all for the input and info! Interesting range of thought on this subject.
Just to satisfy my own curiosity I have turned off the page-file and so far so good but I may turn it back on
just to be on the safe side. I checked the WEI and there was no change there and I can't say I notice any appreciable increase in performance. So it may well be something I should leave alone!

Yeah, 1.5 x RAM is a fine rule of thumb for systems with 1Gb of RAM, or less. Now days, the best way to determine PF requirements is watch Task Manager and see what your system uses.

BUT - it rarely, if ever, does any harm having too big of a page file - ESPECIALLY if you let Windows manage it. And any performance boost gained by disabling the PF has NEVER been reproduced in a lab - meaning it is just perceived - the placebo effect (if you can find a "legitimate lab" test that says otherwise, please post).

If you think about it, the logic folks use to disable it (to force Windows and the CPU to use faster RAM instead of the slow hard disk) is flawed. Windows ALWAYS uses RAM for the highest priority data, then it shoves less important data to PF where it can easily find it, IF needed. Data stored in the PF is retrieved much faster than data left unread on the disk. This is because data stored in the PF is stored more efficiently than on a hard disk as a normal file, AND the OS knows exactly where it is - and does not have to rely on the disk controller as much to hunt down and connect all the fragments.

Also, since a Windows managed PF always yields space when the disk is crowded, reducing the PF to save disk space is not a valid arguement either - UNLESS the disk is very low on space, in which case, there will be other problems too, until a new disk is installed, or programs are uninstalled.

If you disable or minimize the pagefile, the OS will assign physical memory to programs that require virtual memory, and most do - then it will lock the RAM out from any actual use! That's not good! So keep pagefile turned on, and let Windows handle it. The exception is if you are very low on disk space, then my recommendation is to free up space.

Microsoft has been enabling PFs in Windows for over a decade - they have it figured out - leave it alone!