Can Windows boot up and recover if Pagefile.sys is missing ?

Corazon said:

Might I add that Macrium Reflect, and for that matter any modern backup/imaging software out there, does not back up the pagefile or the hibernation file (if one is present). It's smart enough to ignore these files during backup.

I disagree.

Macrium Reflect ETC does NOT ignore these files.
It is VSS which refrains from including them in its snapshot.

If VSS is broken, and when there is no VSS under a Boot CD environment,
then Macrium uses its own drivers to capture all used sectors without distinction of what files they are in.

I believe alternative imaging software similarly uses VSS to expedite image creation,
and given no VSS the result is again either no distinction or a total fail because there is no "fall-back" position with alternative drivers.

Regards
Alan

DeaconFrost said:

XP hasn't been the primary OS in 5-6 years, and is well over a decade old. Computer hardware is what has changed drastically. The pagefile is still store on a disk, but HDDs are worlds faster than they were when this tweak was applicable.

How much faster in average access time, rotational delay, and track seek time, in the last few years ?

In addition to all of this, Windows 7 does a much better job of using the memory in a system, continuing on with the trend that Vista started.

I will accept your judgement on that,
but is it relevant when Firefox has the same massive memory leaks on Windows 7 as it does on Windows XP

And what happens if I have a few applications using much of my free RAM and then some web-site causes Firefox to grab all spare memory and then some on top.

Regards
Alan

What happens if the Secondary HDD is damaged or missing when Windows attempts to Boot Up ?

Mostly nothing, but I had a system crash from some software (UltimateDefrag?) that assumed C:\ would have a pagefile. You can put the pagefile on more than one partition, so perhaps make a small one (20M or whatever) on C:, and the rest somewhere else.

Macrium Reflect ETC does NOT ignore these files.
It is VSS which refrains from including them in its snapshot.

ViceVersa Pro (which I think is far better than Macrium) backs-up pagefile.sys using VSS unless you tell it not to.

alan10 said:

Corazon said:

Might I add that Macrium Reflect, and for that matter any modern backup/imaging software out there, does not back up the pagefile or the hibernation file (if one is present). It's smart enough to ignore these files during backup.

I disagree.

Macrium Reflect ETC does NOT ignore these files.
It is VSS which refrains from including them in its snapshot.

Sorry, but I disagree too. :)

I used Macrium Reflect for backing up my Windows XP system (before I wiped it and went to 7). That XP system had a completely broken VSS, so Macrium used its own driver to make a shadow copy of the running system. Logically, it would have to ignore pagefile.sys on its own if it has no VSS to rely on for doing that, right?

As for backing up from within the rescue environment, you don't have to do a full clone image...my WinPE rescue disc still offers the "intelligent copy" option just like Reflect under Windows does. Bigger image files are a natural consequence of using the clone mode instead, and that isn't directly related to the mere existence of pagefile.sys...

[QUOTE=Corazon;1613106]

alan10 said:

I used Macrium Reflect for backing up my Windows XP system (before I wiped it and went to 7). That XP system had a completely broken VSS, so Macrium used its own driver to make a shadow copy of the running system.

Yes - that is what I already said.

Logically, it would have to ignore pagefile.sys on its own if it has no VSS to rely on for doing that, right?

Actually an illogical assumption for which you give no basis.

I am quite confident that if you move your pagefile and Hiberfil to a different place so they are not part of the image, you will find you get smaller AND FASTER images.
Macrium drivers do NOT exclude P* and H*

Macrium users have asked for the ability to exclude things such as System Volume Information from an image and that was not possible for v4.2, and I have not seen any claim that there is any change with v5.
I understand that the non-VSS drivers are driven by Macrium to image everything, and that Macrium takes no notice of which sectors belong to what files, only whether those sectors are within a non-deleted file.

As for backing up from within the rescue environment, you don't have to do a full clone image...my WinPE rescue disc still offers the "intelligent copy" option just like Reflect under Windows does. Bigger image files are a natural consequence of using the clone mode instead, and that isn't directly related to the mere existence of pagefile.sys...

You are so horribly wrong due to another false assumption.
I ALWAYS use the "intelligent copy" option under Windows and also under WinPE rescue disc. I did not clone it.

A FULL "intelligent copy" of 16.1 GB used space including 4 GB Pagefile and 3 GB Hiberfil created :-
Under Live Windows a 5.4 GB image;
Under Boot WinPE about 5.6 GB image.
My first thought was a different degree of compression, but I ran WinPE again and the same setting was used.
Then I thought VSS and so I used a binary comparison tool to compare various images of Pagefile with each other, and various images of Hiberfil.
All the images captured under Live Windows had identical contents P* vs P* and H* vs H*, but when I compared the images captured under WinPE there were differences.

That confirmed to me that the Macrium Drivers under WinPE had NOT excluded H* and P* from the image. I also deduced that there was not a lot of information within H* and P* hence very high compression - 7 GB of data adds 0.2 GB to the image. I also realised that the much longer image creation time was not that WinPE is much slower, but that Macrium had to read and compress 16 GB of used space instead of the 9 GB of useful used space.

Regards
Alan

It is always safer to leave the pagefile.sys in the C: where the OS is placed, rather than tweaking it to move to another HDD or partition.

This will make sure that a pagefile is always available to the OS when it needs...

I usually make the initial pagefile size to be 1.5 times of memory size and the maximum pagefile size to be 2 times of memory size.

I think the bottom line is there is really a near-zero advantage of moving the pagefile off the main drive unless it's to a faster drive or your main drive is an SSD and you're trying to maximize its life (and even that is still debates as to whether or not the pagefile actually makes any sort of negative impact on an SSD's life). As you can see, by doing so, you get yourself into all other sorts of issues that really aren't necessary and just extra headache.

alan10: your report of live backups vs. WinPE backups actually supports the fact that at least under Windows, Macrium does not back up pagefile.sys with intelligent copy. It only keeps a placeholder in the image. That's why you would find no difference in pagefile.sys between images.

Macrium themselves state that Reflect skips the pagefile.sys when using intelligent copy. I really don't think they're just lying about that, do you? o.O

Corazon said:

alan10: your report of live backups vs. WinPE backups actually supports the fact that at least under Windows, Macrium does not back up pagefile.sys with intelligent copy. It only keeps a placeholder in the image. That's why you would find no difference in pagefile.sys between images.

Absolutely agree.
Our only difference is that you ascribe this to their being smart,
whilst I ascribe it to their not being able to due to VSS not including it in the snapshot.

Macrium themselves state that Reflect skips the pagefile.sys when using intelligent copy. I really don't think they're just lying about that, do you? o.O

Neither they nor you are lying.
I NEVER said that they do NOT skip pagefile under Windows.
I only said they do NOT skip pagefile under under WinPE.

There is no contention here,
just different ways of looking at and expressing the same thing.

Regards
Alan

alan10: then it seems we agree after all. I might have misunderstood what you were saying in the beginning - if so, I apologize. We're good. :)