Paging File setting

[DTSMAN]

1.)How do you determing how to set the paging file size?
2.)Does this help make up for low memory?
3.)Does this cause the HDD to fragment alot if set too high?

It seems that having this set too high may be the cause of the hard drive becoming so fragmented. But not sure.

My specs:
XPpro SP3
1G RAM
Intel core duo 2.2ghz
100 gig partition for the OS
50 gig for storage only
curent page size is:
1524 initial (it says 1519 recommended)
3048 max

Bo

Remember,
If the women don't find you handsome,
they should at least find you handy.
(Red Green)

http://www.redgreen.com

 

[flyboytim]

my computer right-click and select properties.

Select the advanced tab on the system properties dialog then Performance Settings... button.

Again select the Advanced tab on the Performance Settings dialog, then the Virtual memory Change... button.

Now for decisions -

Select the drive where you want the paging file to be.

Custom size - how large and how small should the file be. OR

System managed size. OR

No paging file.

Windows XP has minimum RAM of 64MB, and minimum recommended RAM of 128MB. Virtual memory is set by the system at 1.5 times the installed RAM, so for 128MB, a 192MB page file would be set - a total of 320MB physical plus virtual memory.

With 1 GB of installed RAM, you could get away with no page file at all, but it would not be a great user experience.

Applications typically use a lot of memory to load but run much leaner once everything is in place. Virtual memory, being slow disk accessed space, is a good place for this baggage to go, freeing up the faster RAM for stuff that gets called up as you go along.

Saying that, 1.5GB of virtual memory must be excessive, unless you manage huge databases or write large DVDs, or there are several simultaneous users with fast user switching. Try 500MB-1GB, and put it on a different partition from your system which is forever being written to by Windows/MS update, Browser temporary files, history, cookies etc., registry writes, user data, new virus definitions, logfiles, restore points and so on.

If you can find the means to create a small partition of perhaps 2 GB and put just your 500MB - 1GB swapfile on that, it has room to be enlarged if needed, and you should never have fragmentation problems.

If you have time, after cleaning out unnecessary files you could set your page file to none and set up a defragmenter that does boot-time defragmentation, such as Puran Defrag to defragment at the next boot.

After that reboot set your new page file to custom size up to 1 GB on the storage drive only, or on the small swap partition if you have managed to make one (formatted to NTFS), and make sure that pagefile.sys does not exist on the c:\drive, and reboot again.

 

[linney]

RAM, Virtual Memory, PageFile and all that stuff.

http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

 

[DTSMAN]

Thanks guys. Good article linney. I am on the right track now.

Bo

Remember,
If the women don't find you handsome,
they should at least find you handy.
(Red Green)

http://www.redgreen.com