Page file question.

swarfega said:

Nice advice Weh (if badly worded).

Thanks -- I've never been known to use two or three words when eleven or seventeen would do! lol Want to volunteer to be my editor?

RST101 said:

Does a page file work as well (if at all) on a flash drive? Never heard any one speak of it and I have never tried so I'm just wondering.

Haven't tried it. No reason why it couldn't work except that, at least in the past, Windows got a bit upset if its page file disappears on it in mid-cache (or whatever).

It might be better to use the flash drive for readyboost if the flash drive is fast enough.

As I understand it, 'readyboost' is a technology whereby Windows aggregates files and/or bits of code that it might need quickly -- based on patterns of past use -- onto a device that can deliver those bits more rapidly than can a typical hard drive; whereas, a 'page file' is where Windows stores the bits and pieces of code cluttering up its memory while it is still using them -- but not at that very moment -- when it has a more immediate need for other code for which it has no room in active memory, thus the need for making space by paging to file.

Both are caching systems; however, their purposes and priorities are different. Having one of each on very fast USB flash drives would probably be ideal -- two different USB drives plugged into different controller channels (IOW, not into the same pair of sockets).

Yeah your essentially correct, some people have reported faster program loading with a readyboost device active.

Pagefile and readyboost do different things. Windows uses the paging file as temporary storage for the memory dump whereas with ReadyBoost its caching system applies to all disk content, not just the page file or system DLLs.

On my primary system (see system specs), readyboost seems to have no effect at all. Also, I've tried various page file sizes and locations with little or no change in performance. I've settled on a pair of page files: 4GB on my system drive and 8GB on the extra drive in my 4-drive expansion cage. However, once I get the final version of Win.7.x64, that position will be taken by my 2nd 150GB VelociRaptor -- the OS will then be installed on a 2-drive RAID-0 array. At that point, I'll probably just leave the entire 12GB page file on the system drive array. I seriously doubt that any other configuration short of an SSD could be any faster.

Well its not surprising with your top range system specs. You could probably disable pagefile altogether. Although be aware that some apps still require it and it might make the system unstable.

Somewhat off-topic, but . . .

Nikon's very poorly written NX2 software crashes very nicely, taking the computer with it, requiring a power off/on cycle when there is no page file at all. When the page file exists, NX2 still crashes nicely, but the computer survives. What amazed me was that NX2 actually installed and ran on Win.7.x64 in the first place. Its problems appear to be universal -- not OS specific. Nikon makes great lenses and cameras, but their software sucks. I've got PhotoShop, but my favorite is Bibble.

Is there any proven benefit to having your pagefile on a separate HDD? I've read that the performance differences are minimal. Any benchmarks?