Solved pagefile.sys

[stereo]

Hello. I have 2 x WD6400 AAKS. I have the pagefile.sys on my second hdd.
With 3 GB DDR3 triple channel is it safe to disable the pagefile.sys ?
What's the best settings ? Please give me some advices. Thanks.

 

[logicearth]

Better to just let Windows manage it.

 

[stereo]

Better to just let Windows manage it.

Should i remove it from the second hdd to C ( first hdd ) ??

 

[Ciara]

Hi stereo

I use two HDDs, C. holds my OS and D. holds all my programs, and as logicearth said let Windows manage it

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hi,

I would advise the following...

1, Disable the page file setup on all drives, reboot machine
2, Set C: as the only drive with a page file setup

   Note

If you want to use a manual pagefile setup then I'd suggest setting it to 1.5x your physical memory

This will remove all pagefile.sys files and reset a dedicated pagefile to C: only.


OS

 

[scrotiny]

Hello. I have 2 x WD6400 AAKS. I have the pagefile.sys on my second hdd.
With 3 GB DDR3 triple channel is it safe to disable the pagefile.sys ?
What's the best settings ? Please give me some advices. Thanks.

I have always used two drives for my systems with a fixed pagefile on the first partition of the second drive. Currently on the Win 7 system I have 4 GB of memory and a fixed pagefile of 4 GB also. It is rarely used it seems and when I ran without a pagefile there was little difference. Having a pagefile or not and letting Windows manage it is not just about performance but also a security issue. If your computer is stolen then there is the possibility of sensitive data being retrieved from the pagefile. The likelihood of this happening can be minimised by clearing the pagefile on shutdown and by having one of fixed size. I must add that I do not do intensive memory hungry tasks or gaming which might necessitate letting Windows manage the pagefile but if I did then I would still follow my philosophy but with a suitably sized pagefile that showed my system could cope.

I think that the benefits of two drives for a system cannot be stressed highly enough together with suitable partitions. It takes nearly half the time to image to a separate drive and then copy this to the imaged drive than image to a partition on the same drive. Of course it is always better too from the aspect of drive failure having two drives. Having two drives then provides the perfect place to have the pagefile located. This setup works for me and many others I think which doesn't just assume performance is the sole issue.

 

[Shadowjk]

I would Put it on C:\ Drive only and let windows Manage it because if you remove the other Drive it could cause problems...

 

[stereo]

I would Put it on C:\ Drive only and let windows Manage it because if you remove the other Drive it could cause problems...

So i did. Thanks a lot.

 

[Shadowjk]

No Problem , I will now mark this thread as Solved...

 

[Ztruker]

I always beleived it was better to have the pagefile on a separate hard drive if possible as it can reduce hard drive head contention. By this I mean if you are running a program that is reading from or writing to the hard drive and a page fault occurs, the head has to be moved from where it is to the pagefile area, do it's thing, then move back to where it was. If the pagefile is on a 2nd hard drive then no additional head movement occurs on the 1st drive. I've not read anything anywhere that indicates this is different for Windows 7.

Also, if you have the pagefile on a 2nd drive and remove that drive, Windows (any version) will then create one on the boot drive. I believe it's worked that way since Win 95. You will probably get an error message but Windows will still boot and run okay.

 

[stormy13]

I always beleived it was better to have the pagefile on a separate hard drive if possible as it can reduce hard drive head contention. By this I mean if you are running a program that is reading from or writing to the hard drive and a page fault occurs, the head has to be moved from where it is to the pagefile area, do it's thing, then move back to where it was. If the pagefile is on a 2nd hard drive then no additional head movement occurs on the 1st drive. I've not read anything anywhere that indicates this is different for Windows 7.

I have been doing the same since I went to more than a single drive a long time ago.

This sums it up pretty well as to how to set the pagefile,

TweakHound - Tweaking Windows 7, Page 7

 

[cluberti]

You only need to actually fault data from disk to memory is if it's a hard fault. If you have sufficient RAM, you should rarely see hard faults compared to soft faults.

 

[Layback Bear]

Thank you stormy13. That website tells it like it is. It's hard to outsmart Windows 7. In my opinion Windows 7 handles page filing and ram just great. Just a note. It's hard to break the habit of tinkering with these things like we use to with older systems.

 

[scrotiny]

Also, if you have the pagefile on a 2nd drive and remove that drive, Windows (any version) will then create one on the boot drive. I believe it's worked that way since Win 95. You will probably get an error message but Windows will still boot and run okay.

That is what I've found will happen if there are problems whilst having the pagefile on a different disk than the OS.

 

[stereo]

I have now the pagefile on the C partition. I don't see any difference. Nothing

 

[cluberti]

Considering the paging file is mostly read from, and not written to, you usually would not.