Paging Files

xavsheriffxavsheriff London, England
edited March 2006 in Hardware
Hi everyone.

Was just wondering about paging files. First of all not entirely sure what they are? i read in another thread that there is advantage to having paging files on a separate drive. As i have two separate drives could someone suggest whether i should have them on both, on my OS drive or the separate drive? And what is a good size to go for? I have plenty of room and do quite a bit of design etc and multi app stuff.
thanks

Comments

  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited March 2006
    The Page File (also known as Virtual Memory) is an area on the hard drive which acts as a supplemental backup to your RAM. When your memory is getting hammered, Windows will stash stuff in the Page File to keep from having the system grind to a halt or give "Out Of Memory" errors. If you go to System>>Advanced>>Performance>>Settings>>Advanced and click on the "Change" button under "Virtual Memory" you'll see your current settings.

    There are a number of different theories regarding optimizing your Page File. Letting Windows manage it usually works fine. If you have two separate HD's (not merely two different partitions on the same physical drive) you may find that moving the Page File to the second drive will speed things up a tad. Allocating space on both drives may also help. The only way to really find out is to experiment a little.

    As a general rule of thumb, settings the Page File at 1.5X the amount of RAM you have in the computer usually works fine. Again, experimentation is the only sure way to find the sweet spot for your computer.
  • RWBRWB Icrontian
    edited March 2006
    You DO NOT want to use pagefile for design stuff... I mean sure it IS required in 99.9% of the cases, but the benefit comes when your using as little as possible.

    In your case you need more than 512MB of memory... I have my page file set to 2GB though, but that's "just because" kinda stuff. I have 2GB of memory, so I hardly touch it.

    Prof is right though. You could argue some of this stuff all day, the end result being a whopping 2% performance increase or decrease. On my system I have two drives, one has windows and all my programs, the other has my digital media files and page file. I don't bother with a swap on my OS drive though. I just really don't worry about it.
  • xavsheriffxavsheriff London, England
    edited March 2006
    thanks.

    I know i need more ram, i'm just outa cash at the mo, working for free really hits the bank balance. I'm sure a graphics upgrade wouldnt go a miss either. Anyhow, i will do as advised and start saving for the ram,

    Cheers all
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