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

[OneArmed Badger]

Has anyone tried or heard of using a removable flash drive for page file? The price of flash memory has been on the fall.. so ?

 

Anyone?

 

Yes, Microsoft have heard of this - and included it in Vista!

 

The removable disk property sheet has a ReadyBoost tab. This enables you to reserve space on the disk for "System Speed".

 

So, no more wasted hours tweaking and overclocking your system. Just plug in an iPod.

[OneArmed Badger]

So if you had 4 hard drives, and built a small paging file on each drive, the OS would send 25% of "whatever" to each drive.

 

Did I understand that correctly?

 

I've tried it with two and it did split the i/o evenly between them. There's some Window's 2000 documentation here: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechn...q.mspx?mfr=true,

 

I'm sure XP works the same.

[Branjo]

I have heard of this but dont see how they could be fast enough for using as a page file. What I mean is, would the very slow read and write of a flash drive not slow down the page file access?

 

I dont think splitting the PageFile into 4 would act as a mini RAID 0 array, I think it would use the 1st and then 2nd, etc.

If I'm wrong I would definitely try it myself.

[wevsspot]

The page file actually performs great on a RAID array. I fall in line with AG with just a little bit of a twist.

 

I run a 2048min / 2048max page file on my array that contains the OS, as well as a 2048min / 2048max page file on my backup storage drive. I'm no MS software engineer, but I think that page files spread across multiple disks run in serial and not parallel (i.e. Windows is smart enough to know that if the read/write heads on the OS array are busy and it needs a page file, it always has the page file immediately available on my storage drive).

 

But in the end, day to day performance wise, honestly I can't tell a difference whether the page file is on a single OS disk, a backup disk, or an array.

 

The only thing I'd never do is create a seperate partition on my primary OS disk or array and put the page file there. Thinking about this mechanically, If I throw the page file to a completely different partition and location on the primary OS disk or array, then the read/write heads have to transverse the entire disk surface to get back and forth between the OS files, program files and the page file. In my thinking, keeping those files as contiguous as possible is the better solution. Even if you do have to defrag your page file once in a while.

[Thraxz]

I have heard of this but dont see how they could be fast enough for using as a page file. What I mean is, would the very slow read and write of a flash drive not slow down the page file access?

 

Uh, modern flash drives read and write is MUCH faster than conventional HDDs.

[wevsspot]

http://www.windowsxlive.net/?p=361

 

Me... to the rescue! (I used it it works.)

 

Proof

http://weboperative.com/OCIDB/thraxz/OTHER/pi2.JPG

 

Word up Thraxz and Branjo. What are your thoughts on the Vista Transformation Pack? I downloaded and installed last night along with the $ copy of WindowsBlinds. I like the looks and the GUI, but I notice a couple of interesting things.

 

First, my motherboard, vga, n/b and cpu temps all increased by about 2C average

 

Second, when I ran eight hours of Orthos last night it constantly paged almost 100% of the time (and this is with 2gb of ram and two 2048 page files spread across two drives).

 

This were changes specific after the installation of the VTP and WindowsBlinds.

 

Did either of you notice the same?