Printable View
i was wondering if it is better to have windows manage the paging file or if i should set it. i was also wondering if i should have the paging file on a seperate drive than the operating system. if anyone has advice i would like to here it. i am letting windows manage the paging file now but i have it turned off for the os drive.
with xp, i have gotten better results setting the page file minimum size to 300MB and the max at 1200MB, I put the page file on one of my sata drives.
If you dont have a sata drive, pick the fastest dirve that you do have for it.
just my 2cents
1st defrag the drives.
2nd set the min and max = to your ram (or as required like Bill)
3rd use separate drive if possible.
4th reboot.
i tried this before and managed to really slow down the system from doing it ineffieiently - if you look online i would only trust certain sites as some seem to just invent reasons.
if you set the minimum and maximum to the same you are supose to achieve better perfomance but i find it better to let XP do it itself.
this was only a problem in Win98 and NT
Since 2000 and XP M$ actuall did fix it.
This has been tested and proven.
Let Windows manage it itself.
It is faster and more efficient using the built in algorithms.
My advice is to set the max and min the same so it isn't constantly changing and generally set it for 1.5 to 2.0 gig. I have 1 gig of RAM and set it to 1.5 Gig but if you have less I would go with 2.0 Gig.
Keith
so half of you said keep it large and the other half said keep it as small as possible. i have 512 ram and set the page file to 600-2000mb on the fastest seperate drive.
if i have two different drives and two partitions on each drive. the fastest has the os and the second partion has the page file. do you think it would be any faster to put the page file on the slighly slower drive, so it is writing to different drives or will the partition do the same think?
No to get any benefit it needs to be on a separate physical drive and better yet the second drive should be on a different IDE channel.
Keith
So there you have it. :roll:
I've even tried setting it to the absolute minimum possible, thereby forcing all programs to use ram.
Works ok until you want lots of programs running at once.
LOL
Get heaps more RAM.
Throw out your HDD & Invest your lifesavings in the power company
;)