What Page File setup do you recommend?

wiz3487 · Nov 6, 2004, 11:19 PM

I have 2 seperate hard drives and was wondering what the best setup for partitioning and paging file do you guys recommend?

Thanks

MythicaL · Nov 7, 2004, 04:05 AM

How much RAM you got, what type, etc. ? Just list your whole PC's specs

mkk · Nov 7, 2004, 09:02 AM

In general it's good to have the paging file on the beginning of the second drive, assuming that the first drive holds the system files. With 1.5GB of RAM I noticed that 512MB of paging file was not quite enough in that the system (WinXP) sometimes complained about it being too small. (not that it was using that much, but it seems to enjoying being able to allocate a lot more than it needs in advance) So I put the paging file to 1GB and it has been quiet since. While you are at it I would recommend also moving the temporary folders over to the beginning of the second drive. Like "temporary internet files" and the folder(s) for the environent variables TEMP and TMP. (system properties settings) On a system where the paging file is not too heavily used, shifting the temporary files to the second drive will likely be have the larger beneficial effect of the two.

wiz3487 · Nov 7, 2004, 01:49 PM

P4 2.4 (533 bus)
1Gb Ram PC2700
160 Gb Hd
30 Gb Hd
ATI 9700 Pro

riles9262 · Nov 7, 2004, 03:08 PM

Well for me, I have it on a separate partition and it's set at 768mb. For you, I'd say 1g would be just fine.

wiz3487 · Nov 7, 2004, 04:02 PM

Seperate partition or have it on a seperate drive or both?

The_Neon_Cowboy · Nov 7, 2004, 09:00 PM

*the page file should allways be on the fastest drive

* you should disable your page file, reboot, defragment your hard drive...

* then you should set a fixed (same number for min and max) page file size
be sure to fallow windox's xp's size recomendation it listed in the same window
set it and then reboot

riles9262 · Nov 8, 2004, 04:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by wiz3487

Seperate partition or have it on a seperate drive or both?

separate partition on my windows drive, right after the windows partition.
I have 2 drives, the first with 4 partitions (windows, swapfile, files, games), the 2nd drive being a data drive.

SaberZ · Dec 18, 2004, 04:09 PM

I currently have 1 gig of memory and have been using a static 256 , 512 and 1 gb swap file.

I have two hard-drives

40gig Primary OS and Programs

120gig Games, Music, Anime

Currently the swap file is on the OS drive since I'm unsure if the 120 gig drive would be a feasible performance increase. The 120gig drive has 8meg cache which yields minor gains, but if I were to put the swap on that drive, would it have an effect on the games that run off of it? Good or bad, whats your take?

Judas · Dec 18, 2004, 06:53 PM

Here's what is the best, in order of being the FASTEST and Most excellent to the slowest but still better then defaults IMO:

Firstly, the initial size of the swap should be for your system, no smaller then 512mb, i'd recommend a solid 768 or 1024 though, maximum if you've got a dedicated partition, that is 5GB (5120mb), make max 4096

A:

2 hardrives:

1 hardrive with windows, programs, games
hardrive 2 with the FIRST partition (no larger then 5gb or you'll be waisting space) for swap file, This will produce the best results)

(Same as above, but if you've got a raid array, such as having 1 hardrive, and then 2 hardrive in raid 0, first partition on the raid array will give you a massive boost)

B:

1 Hardrive:

First partition being Swap and second being windows (or vice versa if you must have windows on the C drive by default)

there are other combinations, but they aren't needed to be added as they don't really contend with the above