Paging on two HDDs each holding Windows OS with Paging on its own drive [Complexed]

I have a rather complex question [to me].

Here is my situation:

I have two HDDs on my notebook. Each one holds one Windows OS. The original first drive (we call it 1st HDD) holds a windows vista 32 bit OEM that came with my notebook. The new second HDD (we call it 2nd HDD) holds windows 7 RC.

I currently set my windows vista to do paging onto my 2nd HDD also. I noticed this created the pagfile.sys file onto the 2nd HDD. But since my windows 7 (which is on the 2nd HDD) has its own page file, how screwed up will it be to be sharing the SAME name on two different drives, each hosting their own OS which requires their own page file on their own space?

Will this cause a problem?

BTW, for my windows vista setup:
4GB Page file on 1st HDD
+ 1GB page file on 2nd HDD [extra]

For windows 7 setup:
4GB Page file on 2nd HDD [ONLY]

I notice that once I log into windows vista, the pagfile.sys on the 2nd HDD is 1GB. When I log onto windows 7, the pagefile is 4GB. How bad is this?

 

It shouldn't cause any problems. The pagefile is defined by your virtual memory settings and the drive that is pointing to. It doesn't matter that the files have the same name. To get slightly improved performance, I'd put your Windows 7 install to use a paging file on your Vista drive (and ONLY use that file), and leave your Vista set to use a paging file on the Win7 drive (and ONLY use that file).

That does depend entirely on how much RAM you have... if you have 4GB of RAM or so, you won't notice much performance difference.

 

Whats the advantage of crossing drives? Essentially youre saying dedicate one drive to one OS for paging albeit a different drive to the one hosting the OS. But how is this an advantage? Is it not similar to just using your own drive for yor own local OS for paging? (like it should be by default)

 

If you put your paging file on a drive other than your OS you typically will see an improved performance because it can do simultaneous disk read / writes to your OS drive and to your page file drive. Otherwise it has to wait for one or the other. That's the thought in theory anyhow. But like he says, with 4GB you won't notice it much because your pagefile won't be used much.

 

Now that you've updated your post: The pagefile won't hurt anything. Windows hibernates to hiberfil.sys, so you don't have to worry about hibernating, and I'm pretty sure it verifies the contents of the pagefile before reading, so even if Windows 7 and Vista use the same file, there shouldn't be a problem since they can't use it at the same time.

But that's just in theory. I would recommend crossing the drives like I suggested, just to keep things a little better performing and possibly less error-prone.