Pagefile on drive other than C:

Hi all. I've read/heard that placing the WinXP (or Win2K) pagefile on a non-system drive (drives X: or V: in my case) is better/more efficient than having it on the system drive (C: ). Assuming that is true (please tell me if it isn't), is it better to put the pagefile on a drive slaved to the system drive or to a drive on the secondary IDE, or does it matter? I have 3 hard drives on my pc, one (X: ) slaved to the system drive (C: ) and the other (V: ) as master on the secondary IDE (all via a PCI IDE controller). Also, would it add anything to have 2 pagefiles, one on the C: drive and the 2nd on one of the other drives? If you can also give me a quick-n-dirty explanation re: why it's better for the pagefile to be on a non-system drive, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hey tnf150boy

I have page file on my second physical HD on the first partition (F). The first partition on a HD is the fastest. So if you see any increase of speed that would be the best place to put it. I also have it set for minimum of 100 Meg and no maximum.

To tell the truth, I can't see a bit of difference in speed but then I don't do games or CAD or Video. The only reason I keep it there is so the pagefile doesn't get fragmented and scattered throughout my OS and visa versa.

Do a search on this BBS for "Pagefile" and get probably more than you wanted to know about the subject. Many opinions also.

 

Agree with these guys, especially about having the pagefile in its own partition near the beginning of the drive. That reduces fragmentation and maximizes speed.

I have 3 pagefiles, one within the first gig of the system HD, one within the system partition since debugging cannot occur without a pagefile in the system partition, and a 3rd at the beginning of the faster second HD. The algorithm that XP uses ensures that the fastest pagefile is used to maximum first.

These articles are not specifically XP related and the size recommendations vary, but they are instructive:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;99768
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;197379

Many people with a large amount of RAM suggest eliminating the pagefile altogether.

 

Yes, I turned the pagefile off and everything except my scanner worked just fine. The scanner needs a pagefile for some reason.

 

Awesome, thanks for the info!

 

Excellent articles on Pagefile Optimization here
http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm

and here
http://aumha.org/a/xpvm.htm

 

The pagefile will stay where you put it if it is large enough. The system will indeed create one on the system partition if it needs to, but it is certainly not automatic.

The memory dump has been turned off on my machine because it is not very helpful from my point of view. It can be turned back on for trouble-shooting any time you want, so I personally agree with you that it is not of much use for the most part. And if your system is not experiencing a lot of errors, there won't be any.
The files are the size of RAM. They can certainly use a lot of space if frequent, but can be easily deleted.

 

Yes, they are the dmp's.

Right-click My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery settings. The only things you really should have (unless you were on a network in which case the Admin Alert may be useful) in the System Failure section is "Write an event to the log ". The dump can be set to "None" and the "automatically Restart" turned off so in the event of an error, you will get a bluescreen with error information instead of an automatic restart.

I think these are more informative, and it removes the possibility of constant restarts in a loop if , for example, the error occurred on shutdown.

Just my opinion but as you can see, I'm still running .

 

If you have a single HD, the best place for the pagefile is on the system partition. Putting it on another partition will degrade access times as the HD head has to move further to access it. If you're running out of space on the system partiition moving the pagefile to another partition is a quick and easy way of freeing up some space however.

With more than one HD, the best place is on a different HD. It doesn't matter whether it's on a primary or secondary partition in this case. There's no reason why you shouldn't have more than one pagefile, as Abraxas says, Windows will favour the faster HD anyway.

I don't know where Bmoore1129 got his information that a primary partition is any "faster" than any other - they're on the same HD.

 

Rambler

Don't believe I said anything about a primary partition. I said the first partition on a physical drive.

Here is one of the many places you can find opinions on hard drive architecture and operation.

 

I have one page file in a 1 gig partition at the beginning of my system drive. Rotational speed and access is faster on the outer edge (which is why Windows puts things on the disk from the outside inward).

I also disagree about the disadvantages of having a pagefile in a separate partition on the same drive as the system drive. It is true that there is increased head movement in accessing the pagefile if it is in a different partition, but whether there is actually significantly more than there would be with the pagefile being fragmented in the system partition is debatable. But though a close call, the advantage of not having to defragment the pagefile, the pagefile's not fragmenting the system partition when changing size, and the absence of a pagefile on the system partition for ghosting operations, all make it preferable to me.

Having the pagefile in a small, separate partition at the beginning of the drive also makes it contiguous to the system files (which is not the case if the pagefile is on a partition after the system partition). This really keeps head movement to a minimum.

In addition, my separated pagefiles are on FAT16 partitions, which have faster access times than either FAT32 or NTFS volumes.

Christer---
Hopefully, we aren't getting you too confused. Page and swap file threads always generate a number of theories, and I have certainly subscribed to all of them at one time or the other.

But, I think most people would agree that the differences in the different configurations is slight. It may well be that the only noticeable, practical difference you would see is in fragmentation rates. Any reasonable choice on your part will work out fine.

A couple other things you may want to tweak after you install: temp internet files and restore space.
In the System section on My Computer Properties, System Restore tab, you can highlight a drive and change the settings for how much space to reserve for SR. I have mine set to 2% of the drive which gives me 10-12 50-meg restore points. I can't imagine needing more than that and the default setting will fill your drive with restore points.

The default on the size of the Temporary Internet Files is equally outrageous. People recommend anything from 2-80 megs, but not the humongous amount Windows assigns.

No matter how big a drive you have, there's no sense in filling it with unneeded junk. It slows things down.

 

I've wondered about that, too. Generally the defaults are an average of the optimal settings for a large number of different machines. The TIF and Sys Restore settings seem so ridiculous that I am left puzzled, like you. No idea, but I am sure that these things are too big. How long would it take to load a web page if IE had to search a gig for the preloaded page? A long time, anyway.

I suppose it could be a simple mistake, but it is hard to imagine that something that big could be missed.

 

The only setting besides Automatic that I have used for any time is the one which allows refreshing of pages once per IE session. That certaily makes pages load faster after the first visit.

The only problem with that setting is pages containing real-time data. But for those few, the Refresh button takes care of that.