To Pagefile or Not to Pagefile - that is the question!

I know you all love my cheesy thread title. Okay - So I've been searching the net, instead of working ... while at work, because work is boring and there seems to be a great debate over the pagefile in Vista/XP.

Some say that it just SEEMS like your computer isn't using all 4 Gigs of your RAM, but in fact, the RAM is doing other things like caching your drives for faster performance - therefore, the pagefile is necessary.

Others say that with 2 or more Gigs of RAM, you really don't need it.

So here come my questions:

1. Do you really need it if you have more than 2 Gigs?
2. If you decide to use it, how do you keep that s u c k er under wraps?

In the past, in order to make sure the pagefile was running efficiently, I would simply disable the pagefile before defragmenting the HDD OR delete the pagefile in the ROOT before defragmenting. Then I thought ... wouldn't deleting the pagefile and starting over inherently get rid of all the fragments?

This is a two part question, so answer wisely. Your opinions and sarcastic comments are much welcomed, as always. What's life without sarcastic debate among computer forum goers?

 

i have 4gb. i never tried to turn off the page file because when i dont have have any programs open, it uses 2gb so i worry about crashing.

i tried it before when i had 2gb and it never went full. i didnt notice a difference in performance did you?

 

yay! another pagefile thread! pagefiles are for wussies. nuff said. disable it. if you run into problems, you can always re-enable it. i have also heard that disabling the pagefile provides a substantial performance increase in XP, but not so much in vista. i can personally vouch that XP is much smoother and faster without that pesky bugger.

but be careful, the microsoft police might come get you.

 

Ahhh ... but do the other threads have a poll?!?!? Well, do they?!?!?!

I have not noticed a difference either way. And I've pretty much established that my HDD is gonna do what it wants regardless.

 

I was just reading an article about that. Very interesting subject. I have 4GB ram. should I disable it?, The truth is in Vista, does it make a difference or not?

 

My page file is set to 4GB essentially giving me 8GB in total. I don't need that much. besides 4GB can handle most apps alone. Do you think I should disable it. or at least give it less space?

 

I have no idea ... that's why I'm hoping some brilliant computer mastermind will see my thread and answer all of our questions.

I've heard everything from get rid of it, to lower it to just let windows manage it. I've done everything in all of these tweak and clean threads and I have noticed no significant performance increase.

I think people can tweak all they want - it all comes down to hardware and software and how much you're willing to spend.

I think all the tweaking and cleaning just supports our own OCD - it's not actually doing all that much. It is true that there are some things that may improve performance (reducing the programs that start and run in the background), but I don't know that changing the pagefile one way or the other is it. Come on you IT people ... lead us to the answer!

I would eliminate the pagefile, but I don't think it does much (I've tried both) - but then I read that it actually hurts your computer to eliminate the pagefile?

 

1Gb RAM - Let the system manage it!
2Gb RAM - Reduce and customize it!
4Gb RAM - Disable it! By default, even though your not using anywhere near te 4Gb, a pagefile is still maintained and slows down performance. Many notice the difference on restart after shuttng down pagefile completely.

 

May I have your credentials, please? Lol.

I have 3 Gb ... now what?

 

PS - The poll is not helping - It keeps going 50/50 everytime someone adds something new.

 

Hmmm i've never tried disabling it although I have reduced it in the past.

When I get my new laptop with 4GB's of RAM i'll probably just lower it, I'd rather play it safe

 

My credentials...hmmm too many years experience I guess.

With respect to those that state that you should never go without a pagefile, I would have believe if windows intended this that they never would have included the option to shut pagefile off in the menu.

To respond to the gentleman with 3Gb... Its always up to the person who is doing it because we all have different ram requirements for our system. The recommended pagefile is 1.5 the size of your ram.

In my Tweaking thread below, I advise that if one is unsure, reduce it over time until you find a spot you are comfortable with. Until it has been eliminated however, you probably won't see any performance enhancement.

 

That's RIGHT!!! It was YOUR tweaking guide that started my pagefile confusion!!! Lol.

Good guide. Very thorough - I think I even repped you.

But that thing about disabling the TMM at startup and changing the reg file from 20000 to 5000 for shutdown didn't make much of a difference for me

You make a very good point about being able to disable it. If it hurt your computer, why would they allow you to get rid of it. Makes sense.

 

Awesome!!, I'm gonna go and disable it. I've got 4GB and very rarely go over the 2. something GB marker. So I think I'll be safe.....

Thank you very much flamenko for that wonderful advice!

And thank you jong81 for starting the thread. lol

 

Can you both (Jong81 and Yitzter) tell me if you run into any problems with it off, I'm going to consider doing it when I get mine

 

I find that if you're running a memory intensive program such as a video or photo program you need the pagefile. I had my pagefile set to 4gb with 4gb RAM and Adobe CS3 wouldn't continue because I didn't have enough memory. I let Vista handle the pagefile and the problem went away. I guess if you have Speedboost you don't need the pagefile. Yes you can always re-active, reset the pagefile if necessary.

 

Yeah - I was considering just using a SD card in the media slot to run Readyboost to see how that fairs. I think I might try that out, since it doesn't have an effect on the HDD.

My purpose for turning off Pagefile would probably be just to reduce the wear and tear on my HDD.

 

Wow, you ran out of ram with 4GB? sheesh, that's a lot of ram. I'm gonna try it later tonight, I'll post back. I don't have any program that's really intensive. Maybe I'll try running a game or something.

 

So - no pagefile seems to be working fine and I'm noticing a slightly quicker machine.

I also tried out that readyboost thing - it actually slowed my system down and the SD Card was making this high-pitched noise everytime it was being accessed. Then I read that Readyboost really only helps machines with less than 2 Gbs. I was going to use it as an alternative to the pagefile. Oh well.

 

Do not disable it.

Wear and tear on a hard disk is not an issue. The wearing of a disk results from it spinning, and that is rated in 10,000s of hours, far more than you will ever reach, unless you have the system running 24x7 for many many years. Also, any wear and tear because of the pagefile is dwarfed by the usage by the rest of the system.

"seems to be working fine", and "slightly quicker" is most likely something your are seeing because of the placebo effect, not any real performance gain. You'd have to do a double-blind test to get a conclusive subjective opinion. The fact that you know the system has no pagefile and you expect it to be faster is affecting your perception.

As for why disabling the pagefile is bad:

The virtual memory system was designed with a pagefile as part of it (a page file is only PART of the virtual memory system). Removing this part of the system can cripple the memory manager.

Many people think that a pagefile is used like this: The system has 2 buckets, 1 made of real RAM, and the other made of the pagefile. The pagefile bucket is not used at all until the RAM bucket fills up. Because you have so much RAM, you think you won't ever fill up that bucket, and you can save disk space by removing the other bucket.

That's not how it works.

Many programs start up and notify the system that they want a certain amount of memory, but all of it is not given to the program right away. However, because it was requested, the system needs to be able to commit to giving that memory if it is needed. Since programs can ask for the full 2GB, the system must be able to commit to it, and can reserve the full 2GB for any given program. Even if the program only uses 20MB of it, that 2GB can still be "on deck". With no pagefile, the system may not be able to commit to the RAM requirements for every program, and you may see instability and crashing.

Also, every program that gets loaded into memory has an active part and a non-active part. Let's say you start Word, and it loads into RAM. You may not need the "reviewing" features at the moment, so the system will page that part out to the hard disk to avoid using your expensive RAM for something that you don't need. The drawback of course is that if you do need that feature, it will need to be loaded back in from disk. A lot of the programs you have running in the system tray do this sort of thing, as do many services that run in the background.

If you look in the task manager at each process, you can see the amount of RAM that is being used, but it is divided into the Virtual Size and the Working Set. The Virtual Size is the amount of RAM the whole process has committed to, and the Working Set is what's currently using real RAM. If you disable the pagefile, the system cannot do this, and all of the useless code will be taking up your expensive RAM instead of doing something useful with it. You may be able to get away with it, but you probably have better things to do with your RAM.

Overall, the pagefile is there to make sure that your VERY EXPENSIVE RAM is being put to the best possible use. If it's just holding dead code that's not going to do anything, it's being wasted.

 

Orev,

I thank you for the explanation but, in all, you are stating what has already been stated. If you shut down pagefile, everything is being forced to your ram, or very expensive ram, as you stated.

If you have 4Gb ram in your system, trust me, this is an ideal situation. My pagefile has been shut down for some time now and my system is faster than it has ever been, the reasoning being that the initial programs are forced into my ram which is faster than using pagefile, ergo less HD activity and a faster system.

This argument has been ongoing for along time and I still believe what I have suggested, if you have sufficient ram, this is what the option of shutting off pagefile is for.

I dont game. I do surf and use all aspects of MS Office and, although I don't make or edit, watch videos of all sizes. My system is fine, perfect...better than before.

In all the warnings, I haven't yet heard a reason to not shut it off that merits any exclamations or red lights. If you reduce or shut it down and something doesn't work as well, back it to where it was and you will be fine.

 

Oh Orev ... a pleasure as always.

It's clear that you know your stuff. However, the initial speed increase I noticed was real. This is because my wonderful, supposedly faster, dual core processor is being stunted by a HDD that's 5400RMP. I would notice an initial increase in speed AFTER restarting, because the pagefile isn't constantly accessing the much-slower-than-my-RAM hard drive. However, I don't expect it to last mostly for the reasons you listed. Ultimately, I tend to lean towards keeping the pagefile.

I have plenty of space, so getting rid of the pagefile never had anything to do with that. I don't think I even mentioned that as being an issue here.

Yeah - I would like the HDD to be accessed as little as possible, because even with disk caching on, 5400 rpm is still much slower compared to the 7200 rpm I have in my desktop. I definitely notice the difference there.

And there is no disputing that a poorly maintained pagefile slows down a system and causes more and more accessing of your HDD. In order to avoid this altogether, I was exploring eliminating it entirely for my own purposes.

Also, let's say you have 8 Gbs of RAM - is it necessarily being "wasted" by not having your computer constantly go back to the slower HDD (in my case)?

If I was using intense programs on my laptop, like photo editing or CAD, you better believe I'm using the pagefile to protect the work I'm doing. But if I'm just surfing the net and leaving meaningless posts on forums like this , I question its necessity.

But you definitely give a great explanation of how pagefile works (for those who didn't know in the poll - hope you were paying attention) and make valid points. I'm just not convinced that its ABSOLUTELY 100% necessary for everyone in every situation.

I need more people!!!

 

I will accept the argument that in some cases it may work out OK, but I wouldn't turn it into a recommendation that anyone who has "enough" RAM can safely turn off the pagefile. That's the danger with these types of questions. It might be OK in some places, then other's read it and don't know the implications (kind of like in "tweak guides" ), and just blindly do things and wonder why the system doesn't work right.

 

That's why it's "tweaking" - if it doesn't work the way you want, you put it back or tweak it another way.

Tweak guides definitely don't explain it all sometimes. Some of the stuff they're telling you to tweak you may want as a convenience, but you don't realize you're disabling it. Sometimes it's not explained enough what each thing you're turning on or off does.

Pagefile - the worst that can happen is you get an error (or lose important work, if you're doing something in a major program) in which case you put your pagefile back. Tweaking is fine as long as you know your boundaries. If you're not at least a little computer savvy, you should stay away from some of the tweaks. If I don't know what something does, I usually google it until I have an answer. If I don't get one, I don't touch it or I ask around until I know exactly what I'm getting into.

 

well. I disabled my pagefile, I'm usually just web surfing and playing an occasional game. I got 4GB, I think it's more then enough for simple and basic computer usage.

Thank you orev, that was a wonderful explanation. It reminds me of the argument we had about partitioning hard drives. LOL

Anyway, I cant really say that I "see" a performance boost, but I can only imagine that there is some sort of boost, considering the fact that RAM is a hellof alot quick then a HD. Besides, I like to have things as quick as possible and I don't think I'm running out of ram anytime soon. My ram generally hovers around the 1.2GB range so I think I'm good.

 

I had 2GB of RAM and pagefile I tried to play Crysis it was little bit slow.
I turned pagefile off naw it worked just fine until it crashes because memory runs out. Well after that I buyed one more GB of memory now anything runs smoothly. gaming performance is better without pagefile.
my conclusion is that you do not need pagefile if you have 3gigs or more RAM.
My OS is Vista x64

 

Well just to try out how much my system used out of my 4gb I opened Word 2007, Publisher 07, PowerPoint 07, iTunes, 10 FireFox windows, 5 IE, Turbotax and Solitaire...

I was amazed that I was only using 2.5gb of RAM. I too am on Vista x64

I will turn it off and see if I notice any differences

 

That's my point. You cannot reach this conclusion. You can say that this seems to work for you because you saw no problems, but you cannot make such a general statement that applies to everyone.

 

Yes, I would agree with you on this orev which is why i have spelled this out so carefully in my tweaking thread.

We cannot stop those who jump without exploring all the angles. They are in a world of their own. Hands up for all those who illegally or legally grabbed onto Vista SP1 and then had to re-install everything.

 

Like I said, I think it's based on personal preference and what works for you. There can be no definitive answer. What my question is, has anyone ever ruined their system from not having the pagefile? That was my main concern in the first place.