Pagefile

[spyknee]

Hello,
I have 6gb's of ram, do I need a pagefile? Played a little and turned it off but I noticed that there was some kind of usage in the performance monitor, still. Currently use 3 SSD's in RAID 0, with a 4th for pagefile and temp files.
Do I add 4th SSD to the RAID 0 array?
Do I go RAID 5, using the 4th that way?
Do I use the 3 SSD's in RAID 0, with the 4th for pagefile, as it is now?

RC1 is dying so I have purchased W7 Ultimate 64 bit and I am getting ready for a clean install, thats why the questions.
ty

 

[Wishmaster]

Yes, leave the pagefile.
Many programs expect and want a pagefile present.

Some will say say leave it as it and dont touch it.

I see nothing wrong with reducing the size and making it static with large amounts of RAM, but do not disable it.
With 8GB I use 768MB pagefile.

If you have the room, Pagefile would be best left on the SSD.

really a personal choice I think on how to set it up and how many other drives you have.

Im sure youll get many different viewpoints, some likely better than mine but:

If it were me I would just run RAID0
Disable Win7s Defrag Shedule .. and disable the Superfetch service. (7 may do this on its own but sometimes it doesnt)
Possibily change the Pagefile to either 768 or 1GB Min and Max.
Thats It.
Newer Gen SSDs do not need alot of tweaking. Moving TEMP Folder is OK if your really in need of space. But Id leave it where it is if you can.
then use a spinning drive for all backups, (FULL disk images) and backing up often

What kind of SSDs did you get?

 

[Nemix]

It's recommended by Microsoft to set the pagefile to 1.5x the amount of physical ram installed, Windows does this by default. However, moving the pagefile to a separate physical hard drive and setting the initial and maximum pagefile size to be equal can result in better overall system performance.

 

[spyknee]

TY,
I have been using 30gb OCZ Vertex, FW 1.1.
Intend on FW 1.5 update, before clean install of W7.

 

[Wishmaster]

Yes, 1.5x is recommended, but doesnt really need to be that large when your talking 4GB of RAM+
W/4Gb Id use around a 2GB PF though.

Moving the pagefile off the SSD to a spinning drive is going to hurt performance, as any spinning drive is much much slower.
Although with 4GB + RAM, youll seldom ever use the PF anyway, when you do, it will have to wait for the spinning drive to spin up and seek.


Those Vertex with FW 1.5 will do an excellent job. If your going to RAID them, Id do as I suggested earlier. They will serve you well.

If running just a solo 30Gb vertex .. then yea .. Id move the Temp Folder, disable Hiberfile etc because space will be cramped.

So long as you have at least 2 of them in RAID, It should no longer be a issue.

Flash them all to 1.5 seperatly, in IDE mode, before you set up the RAID.
I would also sanitary erase each drive after the FW update as well before setting up and installing windows

 

[Nemix]

Wishmaster, he clearly stated that he has 3 SSD's on Raid and a 4th for Pagefile and that's the way he should do it. Having all 4 SSD's on Raid would not have the same effect on the Pagefile as having the Pagefile moved to on a separate SSD dedicated for the Pagefile.

 

[Wishmaster]

on a spinning drive, I agree, moving the PF to a seperate drive can help some.

However, SSds have near 0 access times, no spin up time, and much faster read rates.
In a Raid array they are even faster.
You're still moving the Pagefile to a slower drive. 1 SSD VS 3 in RAID0


As long as theres room, theres no reason to move it away from the
Solid State RAID array. it will only hurt performance when the PF is needed, not help.

 

[Nemix]

Whatever, I do not totally agree with you but I also do not want to go on arguing. Let him decide what he thinks is best. I'm done you hear?
For the sake of reasoning:
Raid 4 SSD's = 0.x access time, Pagefile with System Files
Single SSD = 0.x access time, Pagefile seperate from System files

 

[DaGooN]

might help ya out?

Guide Vista 32/64 SSD Windows Registry tweaks

 

[karlsnooks]

As you have been advised, leave paging memory decisions to MS. They have much more experience in this area. Reset your system to the defaults and never, never, never mess around with it again.

 

[Tepid]

On the whole pagefile on a separate drive thing .....

Mechanicl Hard Drives,, yes, It is beneficial to put it on a seperate drive.

SSD's No, there is no difference, you will not notice any speed difference.

As Stated, SSD's have near zero access read/write times.

So, I would personally,, if I had the money,, check out Raid 6 and run that.
It give you 2 Drive failures before you lose everything, and on SSD, you shouldn't even notice any performance hits. At least, I don't think you will. I would try it.

P.s . Leave the Pagefile alone,, if you have 4G + of Ram Min/Max should be set at 4096MB

 

[spyknee]

As you have been advised, leave paging memory decisions to MS. They have much more experience in this area. Reset your system to the defaults and never, never, never mess around with it again.

Not a very good way to learn anything, and a very good way to make you dependant, or at the mercy, of people you will half to pay for.

 

[spyknee]

As I stated in the begining, I am already using a RAID 0 array with a 4th SSD for pagefile/temp files. I will most likely recreate the same config. Altho I understand that putting certain things on the non-RAID disk could cause a performance hit, it would be small. The main reason to do it in my mind is to keep the "writes" down on the boot array. SSD's do have a limited life based on how many times you write to them.
TY

 

[spyknee]

An update,
I got it all togather as I stated above. So far its the best setup I've done to date. Fast, stable, reliable, only crashes have come when I tried selecting alternate frame rendering, for the video cards. I have it OC'ed all the way around. Some settings in bios would not take, but if it booted to OS, it worked.

I have pagefile on a separate, 4th SSD. No apparent bad effects on sys performance. My reasoning for doing this, besides keeping down the writes to the boot array, is that the prcocessor can handle multiple input faster than waiting for the SSD ques. Same reason the technique started originally, multithreads are faster than ques.
I have used a SQL server technique for locking out the pagefile, it helped.