Page file performance?

Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
edited October 2007 in Hardware
Ok since I don't have the extra scratch to drop another stick of gold in my machine right now (Plumbing disaster! OH NOZ!) I need better page file performance. For deliberation and study, Let me describe my disk arrays for you.

IDE: Maxtor 200GB holds the OS drive, and the page file.
SATA: Contains a very haphazard array of unorganized disks that I mainly use for storage, but SATA01 has all of my installed games, and my steam directory. SATA02 is the primary backup of 271GB of crap, and SATA03 holds my TiVo recordings, and my book.

Is there any way I can squeeze a bit more page file performance out? It's already set to 4096 for size. I can't use SATA for my OS, or I would.

Comments

  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    edited September 2007
    i'd put the page file on a sata drive, probably 02 or 03, whichever one you use the least (or whichever one is the newest/fastest). I usually use ram *1.5 for pagefile size, also.

    How much ram do you have?
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited September 2007
    I've got a gig, but I use a four gig page file because I'm often doing a ton of crap at once.
  • stoopidstoopid Albany, NY New
    edited October 2007
    You're going to be completely dependent on the performance of the drive hosting the pagefile. If you split the page file between two drives you might see a tiny bit of improvement, so long as the drives are on separate ide channels or controllers (one IDE the other SATA). Defragmenting often should also help some, and turning off unnecessary services and things like system restore help too since it will reduce the amount of ram used and services constantly using the pagefile.
  • Your-Amish-DaddyYour-Amish-Daddy The heart of Texas
    edited October 2007
    I kinda live off of my system restore. I'm always doing something stupid atleast once a week. But if you got any services I can shut down, I'd really appreciate it, unleast until Tuesday. Taking some advice, I went ahead and bought closest match memory, sadly it's a dual channel kit, I just hope I can disable that so I don't have to drop what I have for it.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2007
    Your not going to see enough gain in shutting down a couple services to justify spending the time to type this post.

    Setup a seperate pagefile on ALL your fast drives. Make sure it is in a faster portion of the drive and as much as possible not fragmented.

    Your done!

    Cowboy
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    Make sure [the page file] is in a faster portion of the drive
    How do you do that? All I know how to is what is allowed through Windows performance options: page file size - custom or system managed, and specific partition and disk. How do you know where the fast part of the drive is. Well, I assume it's the outer portion; but how do you designate that physical area for a page file?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited October 2007
    You make it the first partition.
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited October 2007
    As long as its not fragmented you just want it close to the OS and not at the end of the drive. Having it far from the OS/Programs hurts performance. You actually want the pagefile as close to the OS and programs as possible. If thats in the middle of the drive then thats OK.

    When you install an OS on a drive/Partition then go check the pagefile right away! Thrax is right that you do not want it at the end but.. the key is to have it close to the OS and programs. So if the OS/Programs (which should be together) is in the middle then you want the pagefile there also. You do not want the pagefile fragmented a ton or at the end of the drive. It should be CLOSE to the OS and Programs!

    The key for performance is NOT making it a seperate partition if its far from the OS and Programs though! The only advantage to having a seperate partition is in keeping it non fragmenated which is really easy anyway. MM was wrong in the way he said to chop up a drive into a ton of partitions in his guides. You want the OS, Programs and Pagefile as close as possible, not seperated if you want peak performance. The rest is just to ease housekeeping which is easy anyways. You want the heads moving as SHORT a distance as possible for hits on the OS, Programs and Pagefile and you want all 3 to be non-fragmented.

    Cowboy
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