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"Pagefile.sys" on Both Hard Drives?
Hello-
I have two hard drives, only one operating system. Hard Drive #1 has the Windows XP operating system on it. Hard Drive #2 has some applications on it. I notice that both drives have a large section (959MB) devoted to something called pagefile.sys Do I need this on Hard Drive #2 or is only something I need only on Hard Drive #1 where the operating system lives? Thank you, -- Pat (To respond by email please remove "nothome" from the email address at the top.) |
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"jaeger" wrote in message . .. Path: news5.aus1.giganews.com!firehose2!nntp4!intern1.nn tp.aus1.giganews.com!border1. nntp.aus1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!nntp-relay.ihug.net!ihug.co.nz!west.co x.net!east.cox.net!cox.net!p01!fed1read04.POSTED!n ot-for-mail From: jaeger Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage Subject: "Pagefile.sys" on Both Hard Drives? Message-ID: References: Organization: M3D MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: MicroPlanet Gravity v2.60 x-no-archive: yes Lines: 8 Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2003 21:22:25 -0700 NNTP-Posting-Host: 68.3.78.241 X-Complaints-To: X-Trace: fed1read04 1064118139 68.3.78.241 (Sun, 21 Sep 2003 00:22:19 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 00:22:19 EDT Xref: intern1.nntp.aus1.giganews.com comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage:273348 In article , says... Do I need this on Hard Drive #2 or is only something I need only on Hard Drive #1 where the operating system lives? In general, it's best to have the pagefile on a different physical drive than the OS. And you only need one. |
#4
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In article . com,
says... [This followup was posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage and a copy was sent to the cited author.] In article , says... Hello- I have two hard drives, only one operating system. Hard Drive #1 has the Windows XP operating system on it. Hard Drive #2 has some applications on it. I notice that both drives have a large section (959MB) devoted to something called pagefile.sys Do I need this on Hard Drive #2 or is only something I need only on Hard Drive #1 where the operating system lives? You may want to check if both, or only one, is active. Those swapfile sizes are rather large (how much RAM memory do you have?) As other said, putting the swapfile on a second physical drive might help, but wouldn't help if you have IDE drives and the two are master/slave, as only one can talk at a time anyways. It might be helpful if they are on different IDE channels. To be honest, leaving a small swapfile on your OS drive would be a smart idea. Windows can freak out and crash if it unexpectedly loses it's swapfile. Keeping a small swapfile (64-128M) on the drive with Windows on it can prevent problems if your second drive gets disconnected for some reason. As far as total swapfile size: That is a black art. Generally, Windows seems to default to about 1.2-1.5 times physical RAM. If you have tons of RAM, but don't run anything big, you can use a smaller one. If you do lots of video editing or other things that use lots of RAM, you could go 2-3 times. Going over 2G total (RAM+swap) is probably a waste for anything outside of a server or high-end workstation. Some think keeping it tiny, or even eliminating it is best because Windows won't waste time swapping things in/out of memory. I have a dual- boot computer at work (2K/98) with 512M. I have Win98 configured with NO swapfile, and it works fine (I have some ancient DOS software that is not Win2K friendly). Thank you. I have 640MB of Ram. Hard Drive #2 is the slave, Hard Drive #1 the master I have tons of room on Hard Drive #1, but am getting tight on space on Hard Drive $2. What I was hoping to do was to eliminate the Pagefile.sys file hard drive #2. Am I correct in concluding from what you and the other poster have said that pagefile.sys should stay on Hard Drive #2? (I do not want to configure with no swapfile, tried that before and had trouble with a screen shot program freezing the computer). Thanks. -- Pat (To respond by email please remove "nothome" from the email address at the top.) |
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"Pat" wrote in message
... | | I have 640MB of Ram. | Hard Drive #2 is the slave, Hard Drive #1 the master | I have tons of room on Hard Drive #1, but am getting tight on space on | Hard Drive $2. | What I was hoping to do was to eliminate the Pagefile.sys file hard | drive #2. | Am I correct in concluding from what you and the other poster have said | that pagefile.sys should stay on Hard Drive #2? | | (I do not want to configure with no swapfile, tried that before and had | trouble with a screen shot program freezing the computer). You can get by with a very small pagefile, I use 32-256MB and it never grows. The most you ever need is RAM+1, assuming you have over 64MB RAM. |
#6
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Pat - typed:
In article . com, says... [This followup was posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage and a copy was sent to the cited author.] In article , says... Hello- I have two hard drives, only one operating system. Hard Drive #1 has the Windows XP operating system on it. Hard Drive #2 has some applications on it. I notice that both drives have a large section (959MB) devoted to something called pagefile.sys Do I need this on Hard Drive #2 or is only something I need only on Hard Drive #1 where the operating system lives? You may want to check if both, or only one, is active. Those swapfile sizes are rather large (how much RAM memory do you have?) As other said, putting the swapfile on a second physical drive might help, but wouldn't help if you have IDE drives and the two are master/slave, as only one can talk at a time anyways. It might be helpful if they are on different IDE channels. To be honest, leaving a small swapfile on your OS drive would be a smart idea. Windows can freak out and crash if it unexpectedly loses it's swapfile. Keeping a small swapfile (64-128M) on the drive with Windows on it can prevent problems if your second drive gets disconnected for some reason. As far as total swapfile size: That is a black art. Generally, Windows seems to default to about 1.2-1.5 times physical RAM. If you have tons of RAM, but don't run anything big, you can use a smaller one. If you do lots of video editing or other things that use lots of RAM, you could go 2-3 times. Going over 2G total (RAM+swap) is probably a waste for anything outside of a server or high-end workstation. Some think keeping it tiny, or even eliminating it is best because Windows won't waste time swapping things in/out of memory. I have a dual- boot computer at work (2K/98) with 512M. I have Win98 configured with NO swapfile, and it works fine (I have some ancient DOS software that is not Win2K friendly). Thank you. I have 640MB of Ram. Hard Drive #2 is the slave, Hard Drive #1 the master I have tons of room on Hard Drive #1, but am getting tight on space on Hard Drive $2. What I was hoping to do was to eliminate the Pagefile.sys file hard drive #2. Am I correct in concluding from what you and the other poster have said that pagefile.sys should stay on Hard Drive #2? (I do not want to configure with no swapfile, tried that before and had trouble with a screen shot program freezing the computer). Thanks. This article is the best I've seen on the subject & is specific to XP: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm Although both my identical h/ds are on the same channel due to the physical layout of my case, I've dedicated the 1st partition on the slave drive to the main pagefile exclusively. However, I've left the unused one on my C drive but sized its minimum to just 10MB & the max to be just over the amount of RAM. Setting it this small means it never gets created unless the 2nd disc becomes unavailable, then it would when rebooted. MS's own advice: http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp doesn't mention head movement being minimised by keeping the pf on the OS partition but suggests using another one will reduce fragmentation when that's all it contains. MS also recommends 1.5x the amount of RAM for the minimum size but is only necessary if you wish to have full memory dumps for debugging kernel stop error messages which I sure you don't. I've set my main pf's minimum to the amount of RAM, having monitored usage. The only gain by having the pf on another disc is when that disc's performance is very similar to the one with the OS & if there's a disparity of speed, the OS should be on the fastest IMO. |
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