How large of a Page File do you need?

[alan1476]

I have researched this extensively. I have 6 gbs of triple channel RAM, I have a 120gb Ocz Vertex 2 SSD, how large does the page file have to be? If I leave it System Managed it uses about 6gbs of space. Does this really matter with 6 gbs of RAM, I know years ago, before small SSDs there was a pretty good idea of how large the swap file should be. I always left it at " System Managed" but now with the newer machine having larger amounts of RAM I am not sure if this still applies. Can the whole page file be moved to a second platter drive on your system? Maybe I can get some good advice. Thanks.

[DrageMester]

Good question…REALLY good question.

I believe this is the single topic I have never found a satisfying answer to, even after reading books and countless Internet opinions about it.

I think the general rules of thumb such as “2½ times main memory” are useless recycled advice from a long time ago.

You CAN run without a pagefile, but some applications really don’t like it, so even if you have plenty of RAM I would advice you to have a pagefile anyway.

You could try with a relatively small pagefile such as e.g. 1 GB and se how that works; Windows should tell you if it runs out of virtual memory and has to temporarily expand the pagefile.

Writing/reading random pages from and to a SSD is much faster than with a HDD, so I would suggest using the SSD for paging.

[alan1476]

[QUOTE=DrageMester;2584615]Good question…REALLY good question.

I believe this is the single topic I have never found a satisfying answer to, even after reading books and countless Internet opinions about it.

I think the general rules of thumb such as “2½ times main memory” are useless recycled advice from a long time ago.

You CAN run without a pagefile, but some applications really don’t like it, so even if you have plenty of RAM I would advice you to have a pagefile anyway.

You could try with a relatively small pagefile such as e.g. 1 GB and se how that works; Windows should tell you if it runs out of virtual memory and has to temporarily expand the pagefile.

Writing/reading random pages from and to a SSD is much faster than with a HDD, so I would suggest using the SSD for paging.[/QUOTE]
Thanks Drage, what I decided on was to leave the SSD with a min of 1024mbs and a max of 2048mbs and my 1TB Samsung F3 at system managed. This gives me more room on my 120gb Vertex and with 6gbs of Triple channel Ram I will just have to see if it makes any difference. I would love to hear other peoples configurations on their SSDs in reqard to their Page file. Thanks.

[vroom]

I dont have a pagefile on my system*, and so far so good (only 4gb* ram here).

*The last four years.

I believe that is useless, unless you have a software that saves something in the pagefile.

[cholla]

I don’t have a SSD so I don’t know if what I use for my paging file settings are relevant.
I have Windows Vista HP for my OS on my main computer.
I use Custom size 16 MB initial size & 12400 maximum size.
It is located on my C;/drive where my OS is.
I have 4 GB RAM.
It always stays the same size .I’ve checked it many times & it is always 16MB .
It is possible that I did some tweaking to make it use the paging file conservatively .
I don’t remember right now .
I need to look for it & see if there is still a link ,There is a good article on how Windows uses the paging file. I would recommend having one.
This is the article for XP
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php

[alan1476]

[QUOTE=cholla;2584621]I don’t have a SSD so I don’t know if what I use for my paging file settings are relevant.
I have Windows Vista HP for my OS on my main computer.
I use Custom size 16 MB initial size & 12400 maximum size.
It is located on my C;/drive where my OS is.
I have 4 GB RAM.
It always stays the same size .I’ve checked it many times & it is always 16MB .
It is possible that I did some tweaking to make it use the paging file conservatively .
I don’t remember right now .
I need to look for it & see if there is still a link ,There is a good article on how Windows uses the paging file. I would recommend having one.
This is the article for XP
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.php[/QUOTE] Thanks Cholla, but my main objective here is to save as much space as I can on my SSD, which is 120gbs and after formatting 114. Take away another 6gbs for the page file. I laso have another platter drive a 1Tb Samsung F3. I want to have as much free space on the SSD as possible without screwing up the system settings. Hence my dillema, do I make the Page file smaller or put the page file on the platter drive? Or does it even make a difference with 6gbs of RAM, most articles you read are ages old when hdds were small and the 1 and 1/2 time ratio was the norm but now things have changed, all the newer systems have more than 4gbs of RAM, does that make the Page File less important? Do you need less? I would just like to hear other settings who have small SSDs and what they do. Or advice from someone or anyone who has an opinion, thanks Cholla.

[alan1476]

[QUOTE=vroom;2584617]I dont have a pagefile on my system*, and so far so good (only 4gb* ram here).

*The last four years.

I believe that is useless, unless you have a software that saves something in the pagefile.[/QUOTE]
My whole point vroom. Thankyou very much, so maybe a small pagefile of 2gbs is not so bad on my SSD. We will see.

[_KIPPER]

Move the page file to your spinning HDD and limit it to half the size of your memory which would be 3GB.

Or delete the page file completely and you will never miss it.

I can give you the steps to do either if you need them AGAIN

LOL

[vroom]

I agree with Kip, move the pagefile on your mechanical drive, no need to have it on your SSD, 3Gb should be OK for the pagefile.
Also 6Gb is hard to fill, maybe photoshop can do that

[alan1476]

[QUOTE=vroom;2584651]I agree with Kip, move the pagefile on your mechanical drive, no need to have it on your SSD, 3Gb should be OK for the pagefile.
Also 6Gb is hard to fill, maybe photoshop can do that ;)[/QUOTE]
I always agree with Kip, he is my mentor, he knows more about computers than I will ever know.

[cholla]

alan I can see where you want to limit the size of the paging file on a SSD .
Both because of your SSD’s size & if I understand the “blocks” on a SSD have a finite number of writes. So to have a paging file constantly writing to a SSD is not something I would want. Myself I would move it to the spinning drive.
I would need to look at my notes if I even have all of then but I remember tweaking for less paging file use & more RAM use. Like I posted my paging file stays a constant 16MB even though I have the maximum set to 12400MB which is around 12GB. So it could expand a lot more than most recommend if necessary.
One thing I have the Volume Shadow Copies set to Manual.
I have also made this setting:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=300MB
My System Volume Information folder is empty.
I have System Restore turned off.

[DrageMester]

[QUOTE=cholla;2584664]… the “blocks” on a SSD have a finite number of writes. So to have a paging file constantly writing to a SSD is not something I would want. Myself I would move it to the spinning drive.[/QUOTE] I don’t agree with this logic.

The main purpose of having an SSD is to increase performance.

If the system needs to use the pagefile a lot, then it will perform much better running off an SSD than off an HDD. Then you will IMO just have to accept that the SSD will not last for a million years, but merely for “enough” years.

If the system doesn’t need to use the pagefile a lot, then it doesn’t matter performance-wise where you put it, and it will not put any wear on your SSD. You might however once in a while have to wait for the HDD to spin up in order to page something in from the pagefile, whereas an SSD will never spin down and will not cause a delay for spinning up.

[DrageMester]

[QUOTE=cholla;2584664] One thing I have the Volume Shadow Copies set to Manual.
I have also made this setting:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /On=C: /For=C: /Maxsize=300MB[/QUOTE] How much space will Volume Shadow Copies use if not set manually?

I have System Restore turned off.
Same here. I have never found System Restore to be a dependable alternative to using e.g. incremental system images in Acronis, so when using a system backup tool with automatic backups such as e.g. Acronis, I think that System Restore is a waste of time and space.

[cholla]

@ DrageMester , When I first got Vista the System Volume Information folder continued to increase in size . When I finally decided to find the causes it was 11 GB . I did several things but I believe the Shadow Copies & shadow storage were a large part of that.
You might like to read this :
http://www.win7view.com/tips/37-tips/63-shadow-volume-copy.html

You might be right that just accepting the wear on the SSD with the idea to replace it when necessary & using it for a paging file would be faster.
I use Acronis too.

[cholla]

Another folder on Vista that is larger than it should be is the winsxs folder.
I believe it reports a false size . My understanding most of its’ files are actually links or junctions where the real file with data is somewhere else in Windows .
Right now this folder shows as 10.3GB on my OS. Vista shows this as used drive space.
Anyone know how to make this folder report its’ actual size?
Or explain it better to me if I have misunderstood how it works.
I don’t know if this folder would apply to alan’s OS . If it is still on Windows 7 does it have this problem ?
If conserving space is the issue on a smaller SSD it would be worse than the paging file at least with Vista.

[Matth]

If you don’t have any pagefile on the boot drive, it may not be able to dump in the event of an error - this may have changed since XP though

If there is a decent amount of RAM, then the pagefile is for unexpected events / compatibility with things that expect a pagefile.

[alan1476]

[QUOTE=Matth;2585575]If you don’t have any pagefile on the boot drive, it may not be able to dump in the event of an error - this may have changed since XP though

If there is a decent amount of RAM, then the pagefile is for unexpected events / compatibility with things that expect a pagefile.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the input Matth, but things have changed since XP Pro, most computers now escpecially mine have at least 4gbs of memory, I have 6 now and will have 12 soon, I want to write as little as possible to my Vertex 2, no defraq, no DOD deletions, no low level formats, all these things will kill any SSD. If I move the page file to a platter drive, it will bring down the performance to the level of the Platter drive, after much input from everyone, I assigned a small Page File to the SSD, (1gbmin-2gbs max) its not something I am sure is correct but as I said I will soon have 12gbs of good memory and I do not use Photoshop so maybe it will never be an issue.

[cholla]

@ alan1476 , I don’t have Windows 7 so I don’t know if some of the things I have used with Vista will work for you. My suggestion would be to temporarily move the page file to the platter drive . Set the minimum size to the smallest possible .With Vista that is 16MB.
Set the maximum fairly large . If it is still a large size after the move disable it & reboot.
Then enable it making sure your min & max settings are still the same. Make note of the size then monitor it to see if it gets large again.
If it is still getting large you might search the internet for some tweaks specific to Windows 7 for increasing RAM use & lowering page file use.
I posted this above & I’m not sure which tweak I did that acomplished it . I should have went slower but it would be hard to go back & pin point it. But my paging file stays at 16MB any time I check it. So I assume my Vista is using RAM for what it would otherwise use the paging file for. If you could do this I don’t think it would make any difference if your paging file was located on the SSD or platter drive.
The reason I have a large max size is if I did something that did need a large page file it would be there. So far I haven’t seen this happen.

[alan1476]

[QUOTE=cholla;2585654]@ alan1476 , I don’t have Windows 7 so I don’t know if some of the things I have used with Vista will work for you. My suggestion would be to temporarily move the page file to the platter drive . Set the minimum size to the smallest possible .With Vista that is 16MB.
Set the maximum fairly large . If it is still a large size after the move disable it & reboot.
Then enable it making sure your min & max settings are still the same. Make note of the size then monitor it to see if it gets large again.
If it is still getting large you might search the internet for some tweaks specific to Windows 7 for increasing RAM use & lowering page file use.
I posted this above & I’m not sure which tweak I did that acomplished it . I should have went slower but it would be hard to go back & pin point it. But my paging file stays at 16MB any time I check it. So I assume my Vista is using RAM for what it would otherwise use the paging file for. If you could do this I don’t think it would make any difference if your paging file was located on the SSD or platter drive.
The reason I have a large max size is if I did something that did need a large page file it would be there. So far I haven’t seen this happen.[/QUOTE]

Thanks cholla, I will try that.

[Matth]

If the pagefile is on the platter, and there is oodles of RAM, then the only action it should get is a bit of pre-emptive writing in the background, so if later Windows can dump (or you don’t care about dumps) to an off-boot pagefile, I’d shove it on the other disk, there if it’s ever needed, but probably never needed.

So far, it looks like XP and Vista require system disk pagefile to support crashdump, can’t find any clear indication if this is still true of Windows 7, which does have more dump options.