what is best setting for optimizing page file?

[AMDguy 0]

i am new to NTFS and page files and was wondering what is best settings to use for this. i have 512 meg micron PC133 and am running a 2 hard drive system. thanx

[Brian Frank 0]

The recommended amount is between 1.5 and 2x your RAM, but it depends on what apps you use. Photoshop can't be too well fed.

I personally just see what Win2k recommends for my settings and do that on the min and max values. If possible, put it by itself on the first partition of a drive.

I'll tell you right now, this isn't a one-size-fits-all deal; you'll probably get a few different answers.

I'm too lazy to do the simple math, so I just use whatever Windows recommends after the install.

[TaoArcher 0]

Ok, first let me just clarify something. The page file is not part of NTFS, its simply part of windows. In fact all versions of windows have "virtual memory" ...but in NT/2k/XP, its in the form of a page file.

 

Now a couple things you need to know about it, and some logical ways to deal with it.

 

- Its best to create the page file on a fresh hard drive with nothing on it, to insure that the entire page file is created in one section of your harddrive (this increases seek times).

 

- It is best in most cases to set your Min and Max sizes for the page file to be the same. This way it creates the page file once, and never grows by itself. This way that contiguous file you created above, will never create a new part on a different section of the harddrive.

 

- Its much better (in most cases) to put the page file on a different drive than your OS is loaded. The reason for this is that when you're using memory, the system is reading and writing to this page file. So....rather than loose the drive performance of a single harddrive reading from both page file, and system/program files at the same time, the page file can be accessed via drive #2, whiles your OS files, and applications can be read/wrote from Drive #1. Does that make sense?

 

- The actual size I use is equal to the amount of RAM i have, which is 512 MB. I find this to work fine for me. If you have less ram, you should probably use 1 1/2x the ram you have (so for 128 MB RAM, make a 384 MB pagefile)

[clutch 1]

To further clarify:

 

Quote:

Ok, first let me just clarify something. The page file is not part of NTFS, its simply part of windows. In fact all versions of windows have "virtual memory" ...but in NT/2k/XP, its in the form of a page file.

 

Now a couple things you need to know about it, and some logical ways to deal with it.

 

- Its best to create the page file on a fresh hard drive with nothing on it, to insure that the entire page file is created in one section of your harddrive (this increases seek times).

 

I think he meant "reduces" seek times, as that is what you would want.

 

Quote:

- It is best in most cases to set your Min and Max sizes for the page file to be the same. This way it creates the page file once, and never grows by itself. This way that contiguous file you created above, will never create a new part on a different section of the harddrive.

 

Yep, this is pretty much the case. Why bother letting the OS "burp" the pagefile when YOU know what you want out of it?

 

Quote:

- Its much better (in most cases) to put the page file on a different drive than your OS is loaded. The reason for this is that when you're using memory, the system is reading and writing to this page file. So....rather than loose the drive performance of a single harddrive reading from both page file, and system/program files at the same time, the page file can be accessed via drive #2, whiles your OS files, and applications can be read/wrote from Drive #1. Does that make sense?

 

Sort of, however if you are using all IDE devices, that both of the drives in question are on the same chain, moving the pagefile from the system partition/disk will be of little consequence as IDE is not capable of simultaneous reads and writes. Now, if you have a SCSI rig, then this would be highly recommended.

 

Quote:

- The actual size I use is equal to the amount of RAM i have, which is 512 MB. I find this to work fine for me. If you have less ram, you should probably use 1 1/2x the ram you have (so for 128 MB RAM, make a 384 MB pagefile)

 

This methodology is fine for initial setup, but I would recommend not making the pagefile any larger than necessary. I use some heavy duty apps that don't even approach my 512MB of RAM, so I use a 150MB size-locked pagefile. Once I get my main workstation running on XP, I will simply disable the pagefile altogether, as I would rather have everything running in RAM than let it go back and forth to my HD. The reason for a pagefile initially, was because most workstations didn't have enough physical RAM to support the OS and applications at the same time. I remember WFW and WinNT 3x boxes running on 8MB of RAM that could barely hang with the OS, let alone anything like a graphics editor. So, the idea was to "add" to the system RAM by using HD space, and it works fine. However, harddrive access times are nowhere near the speed of physical RAM, so this will always be a drawback. The one downside to setting the pagefile to less than the RAM size (or disabling it altogether) is that you will be disabling the ability for the system to write debugging info from a bluescreen to the HD. You can still use the "mini-dump" option though, if that would suffice.

 

HTH

[BBA 0]

I just check the little box that say "do not use virtual memory"

[TaoArcher 0]

Quote:

Sort of, however if you are using all IDE devices, that both of the drives in question are on the same chain, moving the pagefile from the system partition/disk will be of little consequence as IDE is not capable of simultaneous reads and writes. Now, if you have a SCSI rig, then this would be highly recommended.

Oops, i forget that no everyone uses SCSI! hehe.

Actually for my new system i'm building in a few months I'm thinking of going with IDE Raid. Any word on the performance of this?

[clutch 1]

I heard and read that IDE RAID works rather well in both RAID 0 and RAID 1. I don't have a need for that kind of I/O performance as of yet, so I haven't tried it personally.

[Brian Frank 0]

VP6er here too. I don't have a RAID array going yet, but I think I'm getting a couple of drives for my B-day coming up, at which point I'll try it out. (new article, w00t:D)