Page file\Hiberfile anomaly

[teckneeculler]

In my main W7 Ultimate desktop pc I've recently increased my ram to 32GB, mainly to cater to my irrational habit of keeping many tabs open.
But I've just now checked the contents of my 500GB SSD C drive (pending a possible attempt to drop a W10 version into a new partition) and I find that after allowing Windows to manage my pagefile, the space tied up has become huge, see pic.
Could I not trim this down to a reasonable level?

 

[Alejandro85]

These are two separate things, the page file and the hibernation file, that are affected separately.

Let's start with the easy one, the hibernation file.
When hibernating, the entire RAM contents must be copied to disk (in order to restore them afterwards), so it needs to be up to your RAM size at worst. Since you've increased RAM, the hibernation file will increase accordingly. There is no way around this, as it's the requirement for hibernation. You either accept the disk footprint cost or disable hibernation althogeter.

Now for the page file.
Windows controls the page file on each drive by giving a minimum and a maximum amount of space allocated, and the actual value moves within those limits based on memory requirements. When you use "allow Windows to manage pagefile" what it really means is that Windows choses those limits.
The problem is that the algorithm for selecting those limits is horribly broken, chosing them to be some proportion of your physical RAM (at least according to some sources, citing the classic "pagefile should be 1.5 times your RAM"). So increasing RAM will result in an increase of the pagefile too.
Given that you've increased RAM, if you keep the same workload, you should be able to trim it without any problem.
But if you increase your RAM demands too (like you said as to "keep many tabs open"), then the increase may be justified as the bigger RAM is under more pressure too and consequently needs a bigger pagefile to support.

Nothing of what you've observed looks like an anomaly to me.

 

[teckneeculler]

Alejandro, thanks for the succinct explanation. I didn't know what the hiberfil file was for, but now, seeing as how I never hibernate my desktop computers, I can at least close down that system. Re the main pagefile, it seems I could limit that and see if that affects the speed of my system when I've opened say, 60-70 tabs. This would be maximum - usually I'll have only 20 or so pages tabbed.

EDIT:
Ok, I disabled hiberfil.sys thus:
Press Ctrl + Shift + Enter to open Command Prompt with admin privileges.
Select Yes if the User Account Control prompt appears.
Type powercfg.exe /hibernate off into the Command Prompt window and press Enter.
Close the Command Prompt window.

Then altered the pagefile thus:
Press Win + R to open Run.
Type and press Enter: sysdm.cpl
Advanced tab>Performance section: Click on Settings.
Navigate to the Advanced tab and click 'Change'.
Uncheck 'Automatically manage paging file size for all drives'.
Select the System drive and check 'Custom Size'.
I set the minimum to 800 and max to 2500 (without the letters MB)
Click on Set.
Restart Windows 7.

Rebooted, all seems OK for now. Cheers