A tip on pagefile fragmentation and restoring a Ghost Image

Hello all!

One of my friends runs XP on a computer based on a P4-1.80 GHz and 256 MB RAM. The integrated video nicks 32 MB and to run the system is 224 MB left. He had problems with a constantly resizing pagefile (set to 336-672 MB).

I suggested to get another stick of 256 MB (still not added) and to increase the pagefile setting to 768-1536 MB (which it would be set to by the installer with 512 MB RAM installed). My instructions included a defragmentation prior to increasing the size of the pagefile.

After increasing the size, when defragmenting, it always recommends to defragment. The only fragmented file was the pagefile which was in two fragments but it resulted in a quite high percentage. I say was, so what's the cure?

I simply created and restored an Image using Ghost and the two pagefile fragments were merged ...... ...... resulting in zero fragmentation!

Maybe this information will come handy for someone someday somewhere,
Christer

 

I'm pretty sure ghost doesn't even copy the page file....

There's a tweak out there somewhere that will zap the page file everytime you reboot....

 

Correct! From the Ghost manual:

The above is the reason for the pagefile getting in a single contiguous chunk when restoring an image.

Christer

 

Great tip, thanks!
It may be faster to use this than to restore an image:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/pagedefrag.shtml

 

TonyT,

I think that I have tried the Sysinternals PageDefrag but I'm not sure. Whichever it was, it defragged the pagefile by moving it to the first location which could accomodate it in one contiguous chunk. On a drive with a high percentage of used space, it would end up towards the back of the drive.

Ghost actually puts the pagefile towards the front of the drive which is faster. Only a few MB of system files at the front, before the pagefile. If that's the optimum position can be debated. Some people argue that somewhere "in the middle" is better due to access times. I assume that "in the middle" refers to system and program files and not user data which is infrequently accessed.

Mron,

that's more or less what is done using Ghost but the files aren't copied to a different drive and back but to and from an Image File. If You create an Image of a fragmented partition and restore the Image to the same partition, it gets "less" fragmented. What "less" means depends on the file system. FAT32 gets almost defragmented but not NTFS to the same extent. I personally always defragment prior to creating an Image. For some reason, it feels safer.

Christer