How do you set your page file, Icrontic?

lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
edited March 2010 in Science & Tech
There are a bazillion different ways to configure the page file in windows, all of which may have advantages and disadvantages. I'm curious to know, how does everyone set theirs up?

Mine uses two page files - a 2GB RAM drive, and a 30GB partition at the front of a dedicated hard drive.

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    There are no merits to making the swap file larger or smaller than the capacity of your memory, and the only way to improve its performance is to put it as the first partition of the drive or on a RAM disk. Finally, putting it on an SSD is akin to throwing it's memory chips into oncoming traffic.
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited January 2010
    My thoughts on my configuration were that the speed from having a RAM disk page file is good, but it still leaves the issue of the page file being on a non-expandable media in the event of high RAM usage - hence the dedicated HD partition added in.
  • ardichokeardichoke Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    Whats this? The almighty Thrax admitting that SSDs will wear out if you write to them too much? I'm shocked.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited January 2010
    Unless I was only running SSD's. I always just let windows manage it. I've had nothing but acute problems setting it up any other way. Regardless of how much ram you have some apps want their stupid page file.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    ^This. I let Windows manage it.
  • RyderRyder Kalamazoo, Mi Icrontian
    edited January 2010
    I always set static. Letting Windows dynamically size it just takes extra time.
  • lordbeanlordbean Ontario, Canada
    edited January 2010
    I find having the 2GB RAM drive with a small page file of its own significantly speeds up the feel of my system - like superfetch, only without all the extra hard drive reads. I believe Windows is actually intelligent enough to use the fastest available page device if it can, and since that means it's mostly paging in RAM, the hard drive heads are free to sit on one track (for example, the program which is loading).

    Granted, the benefit falls through if it uses more than 2GB of page file - in my setup, that forces it to fall back to a page file on a hard drive.

    As an added note, I have had no stability problems whatsoever running this configuration. I've left my system on for weeks at a time without experiencing any abnormal crashes.
  • DJ_EvergreenDJ_Evergreen MB, Canada Member
    edited January 2010
    I set mine manually to a fixed size. Usually the same or a little bit bigger of the size of RAM in the computer. I hate letting windows resize the stupid thing when I have all that room on a drive anyway.
  • raylerayle install.WIM
    edited March 2010
    I usually follow the rule of thumb that if you have 4GB+ RAM, set it to it's absolute minimum of 200mb for when it needs a place to dump error logs. Otherwise, setting it to system managed leaves you with 6+ GB of pagefile which is barely used except in rare cases.
  • croc_croc_ New
    edited March 2010
    I don't run a page file. I haven't since I started using 8GB of RAM about two years ago. Haven't had a single problem either.
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