Tweaking the Paging File-Rumors, Myths, & Urban Legends!

[BuddTX]

OK, if you frequent this forum, you are a tweaker, trying to get the most out of your system. The Paging File (Virtual Memory) is an area that seems to get some attention whenever optimizing your XP-W2K etc system.

 

Over the years, I have read so many tweaks, hints, guides, etc. about getting the max performance out of your Paging file, the the tweaks themself are starting to contradict themselves!

 

I do not know what to believe.

 

The only one that seems to make sense to me, is this:

 

If you have multiple Hard Drives, move your Paging File to a HD OTHER than the HD that the OS is on. AND, it needs to be a seperate HD Channel. For SATA drives, this is no problem, but for IDE drives, if you are doing a Master and Slave on the same IDE channel, this is the same channel, and will not optimize I/O performance.

 

This way, when the system needs to access the paging file, and the OS, it can do so independently of each other.

 

This seems to make logical sense to me.

 

I am in the process of setting up a Server 2003 box, that will have 4 seperate Hard Drive Channels (no Raid, long story, dont ask!), and I will dedicate each hard drive channel to:

HD1 - OS

HD2 - Program Files (database App)

HD3 - DataBase File

HD3 - Paging File

 

So that when the system needs to access any of the above programs, the OS will have almost exclusive access to the I/O.

 

But I digress, here are the things I have read over the years about the Paging File. I will try to group the inconsistant tweaks together:

 

-Let the OS handle the Paging File (PF) Size

-Set the Minimum & Maximum size of the PF manually

-Set the Minimum & Maximum size of the PF to equal 2.5 times your physical memory

 

- If you have a lot of memory disable the PF.

- NEVER disable the PF no matter how much RAM you have-Windows always needs to use the PF.

- If you have a lot of RAM, manually set your PF to a very small size, so that whenever the OS needs to "do something" with th PF, it can do so as quickly as possible (smaller files are quicker than large files).

 

- Get a seperate program like CachemanXP or MaxMem or MemMaker to tweak your PF.

-Never use a program like CachemanXP or MaxMem or MemMaker - it is a waste of time and resourses The Memory-Optimization Hoax by Mark Russinovich

 

- You want as much free RAM as possible

- Having too much Free RAM is just as bad as NOT having RAM, windows needs to use the RAM

 

SO, what do yall think?

[red930]

Well from what I understand even if you disable the pagefile Windows still sets one up backgrounded somewhere, so personally I do believe in setting your own just so you know where it's at and how big it is.

 

In my case, I normally set up a pagefile on my 'backup' drive of around 4 gigs (both min and max) just because I have more than enough room and I don't worry about it. But then I'm not into the nitty-gritty details either, so I really don't know if it helps anything or not.

[Guest Lavell]

BuddTX,

I'm so glad that you brought this topic up. It needs to be discussed. And I agree with you about how inconsistent the tweaks are. There are only 2 tweaks that I use in regards to the paging file:

 

1) I move the paging file to a different hard drive other than the one the operating system is on. Since I have 3 SATA hard drives with their own channels, this tweak serves as an advantage for me.

 

2) I set the minimum and maximum size of the paging file the same. In this case, since I have 2GB of RAM in my computer system, I set the paging file to 1024MB.

 

In my opinion, it's required to have a paging file. How much space on the hard drive that's reserved for the paging file is where different views come into play. If you have a lot of RAM in your system, there is no reason to have a large paging file. I don't know of any one program that would consume a large amount of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

 

Angry Games,

If you are reading this, I would like to hear your opinion on this. After all, you are the Jedi Master! Enlighten us, Master Yoda!

[ReelFiles]

Here's my 2c:

 

Some apps need a page file on the OS partition, Windows itself does just to write physical memory dumps.

 

A constantly growing and shrinking pagefile will eventually defragment. Setting the pagefile min and max size manually to 1.5x your installed RAM is optimal according to MS.

 

Theoretically the pagefile should work fastest on the beginning of a separate drive/channel.

 

Have I tried each and every imaginable combination of these tips/tweaks?

 

Yup!

Do I still bother playing with the pagefile settings after all these years?

 

Nope, I have never noticed enough of a difference in performance to even remember which one worked best.

[thejamesvolta]

I didn't see if you are going to be running 64 or 32 bit. I say go 64 bit Server 2003, and at least 4 gbs of RAM. Then paging really won't be much of an issue.

[old_geekster]

Well, they may not know how to design an OS, but they are still the experts on how it is designed.

 

Here is a link to M$'s website showing how best to setup the "Pagefile":

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482

 

At least this is from the horse's mouth.

[thejamesvolta]

Forgot to mention.....

 

If you do decide to setup your page file on another disk, use the first partition of the disc (outermost part of physical disc), because it is 'faster', and you will want every advantage you have if your system is Paging. Just my Two Cents

[BuddTX]

Forgot to mention.....

 

If you do decide to setup your page file on another disk, use the first partition of the disc (outermost part of physical disc), because it is 'faster', and you will want every advantage you have if your system is Paging. Just my Two Cents

 

thejamesvolta, I have Server 2003 regular (32 bit) edition, too late to get the 64 bit edition, as it came with my Dell FS, but it is sweet, it has 2, 3.8 Xeon processors, with 4 gig of RAM, and 2 SATA 500 GB Hard drives, and I am putting in two more IDE Seagate 7200.10 320 Gig HD. (IDE because the Server only has two SATA channels, and I wanted to keep things as simple and as reliable as possible, so I just went with the IDE's since I already had the IDE connectors on the MB, but everything I'v read says that an IDE and a SATA drive of equal construction should perform equally, and these are the latest Seagate Barracuda drives, with Perpendicular Recording and a 16 MB cache, so I think these are about as good as I can get.)

 

(Hey, check these hard drive combo Heat Sinks/ 3.5 to 5.25 mounting kits:

iStarUSA iStorm 8 Series Hard Drive Cooler I just got them in today, and they look like they will keep the HD's pretty cool, all aluminum, I am pretty excited about these, it is a 24/7 FS and has to last me 4-6 years . . . )

 

Thanks, I forgot a couple of things too . . .

 

I believe I read that the paging file does not like to be placed on RAID or Network drives.

 

Also, (and I think I am saying the same thing as thejamesvolta is saying above), that in order to keep the paging file un-fragmented (and therefore faster) you should create a seperate partition on the dedicated drive that you place the paging file, so that the PF does not get fragmented.

 

I guess that the "outside" of the disk would be the "First" part of the HD, so (again I am guessing) that if you had a 400 gig HD, you would first create a 10 Gig (or whatever size you choose) partition for the PF, and then the other 390 GIG could be dedicated to data.

 

That way, if you created a 4 gig PF, it would sit in the dedicated partition on the dedicated drive, but you could still use the rest of the HD for storage, and not worry about taking a performance hit because of file fragmentation.

[thejamesvolta]

Sounds like the system's going to be pretty sweet. What are you using the server for anyways...maybe I missed that? Anyways...4 gigs of RAM, 6 gig PF partition according to MS. With 32-bit you can't go more than 4 gigs of RAM anyways, so you're at your max.

 

That HD cooler looks cool. You just attach it with that silicone or am I missing something?

[Guest thespin]

With 2GB Ram (XP) or 4GB (Vista), I would imagine that pagefile setup makes little impact ...

[CPDMF]

I did about the same as reelfiles. Tried every conceivable combination and in the end decided that none of it made it any difference that I could actually feel so I just quit worrying about it and set it 2048 min/max left it on the OS drive and went back to some gaming..

[dr_bowtie]

if you do a search here at the forum I know there is a couple of rather large threads on this debate already...And A_G gave his opinion in most of them...so It might be easier to search than to get a canned responce...

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

http://www.diy-street.com/forum/showthread...light=page+file

 

and those are just the longer ones...