virtual memory/pagefile

  • Thread starter Thread starter Moon
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Moon

i have just added more ram to my pc from 512 to 1gb, i looked at
system/advanced/performace/advanced and in the virtual memory settings
noticed that it was manually set, i have reset to let system manage it. All
seems okay however (excuse my lack of knowledge) i note only 'c' drive had
system managing its size my other drives (two hard drives present with
several partitions) 'no paging file' is set.

Should all drives have a paging file set?
Is it best to let system decide size? if not how do you work out optimum
page file sizes?

Thanks
Moon.
 
| i have just added more ram to my pc from 512 to 1gb, i looked at
| system/advanced/performace/advanced and in the virtual memory settings
| noticed that it was manually set, i have reset to let system manage it. All
| seems okay however (excuse my lack of knowledge) i note only 'c' drive had
| system managing its size my other drives (two hard drives present with
| several partitions) 'no paging file' is set.
|
| Should all drives have a paging file set?
| Is it best to let system decide size? if not how do you work out optimum
| page file sizes?

Assuming there is adequate free space on your system drive, it's best to let
Windows manage virtual memory unless you have a second hard drive that's at
least as fast as the disk your system drive is on. Then routing the bulk of
virtual memory to the second hard drive can be beneficial. I have mine arranged
that way. Virtual memory on C (my system drive) is set for 2MB minimum and 50MB
maximum. D (the first partition on my second hard drive) is set to 50MB minimum
and maximum the size of the partition. Windows has never even bothered to set
up a pagefile for C.

If you leave your Windows-managed pagefile on C (or whatever your system drive
is), then you should set all your other drives to None.

Larc



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i have just added more ram to my pc from 512 to 1gb, i looked at
system/advanced/performace/advanced and in the virtual memory settings
noticed that it was manually set, i have reset to let system manage
it. All seems okay however (excuse my lack of knowledge) i note only
'c' drive had system managing its size my other drives (two hard
drives present with several partitions) 'no paging file' is set.

Should all drives have a paging file set?

No.


Is it best to let system decide size? if not how do you work out
optimum page file sizes?
Click to expand...


What apps do you run? Unless you do very heavy memory intensive
tasks, like editing large photographic images, you have much more
RAM that you are likely to use . A minimum sized page file of
100MB or so is probably more than sufficient.
 
Moon said:
i have just added more ram to my pc from 512 to 1gb, i looked at
system/advanced/performace/advanced and in the virtual memory settings
noticed that it was manually set, i have reset to let system manage it. All
seems okay however (excuse my lack of knowledge) i note only 'c' drive had
system managing its size my other drives (two hard drives present with
several partitions) 'no paging file' is set.

Should all drives have a paging file set?
Click to expand...

Normally no. While it used to be the NT convention to have page file
space on every drive on the idea that use could be spread between them
according to which drive was currently least active, that was quite a
lot of overhead and seems to have ben quietly dropped in XP (though you
still *can* have multiple files). And with 1GB the amount of space
allotted to it is almost certainly *vastly* too much. Cut the initial
size down to say 100 MB - or even 50 - while leaving the Max size (there
is no downside to that). Read up in full at
www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm
 
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