The Official Pagefile Thread:)

Just wanted to get this here as it is taking over the always-lovely SSD thread.

Feel free to discuss usage, optimization, etc.

 

I wouldn't recommend running without a pagefile. You could always try it, and if you have problems , turn paging back on.

 

Hdd = Yes

Sdd = Maybe

DONE

 

ssd = 100%

now, it's done..

there's no reason to enable system instability except if you want to have something to point at and then cry "microsoft sucks" when your apps crash.

pagefile = never hurts, but is there if needed => just let it be.

anything stated about performance and such is stupid placebo-effect. now lets welcome tiller to let him state obvious crap

 

People say photoshop and others need a pagfile to run?

 

Yeah, they call it "scratch disk" I believe.

 

Let the system manage it - problem solved

 

Photoshop runs its own temp file and only uses RAM that is not used in day to day operations (it seems to take max RAM - idle RAM use as the amount it can use - minus Adobe Bridge if you use it...

 

I have TWO 500GB physical hard drives on my pc. One for the OS and programs; the other for strictly movies and TV shows. Would I notice an improvement if I moved the page file to the Movie drive? If so, what would you recommend the paging file size be, or should it be system managed?

SPECS in sig (DESKTOP)

 

You can move it to the other drive - I think you get a difficulty with memory dumps or so though...

Size - let the OS manage it.

 

Understanding the Windows Pagefile and Why You Shouldn't Disable It

If you've got plenty of RAM in your PC, and your workload really isn't that huge, you may never run into application crashing errors with the pagefile disabled, but you're also taking away from memory that Windows could be using for read and write caching for your actual documents and other files. If your drive is spending a lot of time thrashing, you might want to consider increasing the amount of memory Windows uses for the filesystem cache, rather than disabling the pagefile.

The next piece of bad advice that you'll see or hear from would-be system tweakers is to create a separate partition for your pagefile-which is generally pointless when the partition is on the same hard drive. What you should actually do is move your pagefile to a completely different physical drive to split up the workload.

 

What do you mean by the difficulty with memory dumps? I've noticed some weird disk activity since changing the page file to the other drive.

 

I think I saw it mentioned in the Microsoft Link - that memory dumps can't be written to another drive/partition... but check up on me.

 

you could only possibly see an improvement once you filled up your ram too much, so it really has to do a lot of paging. but that shouldn't happen (if the page file starts to get really useful, you need more ram.. a simple balance measure)

 

That is correct. The pagefile must be on the C: drive for the OS to create memory dumps. I have never let this stop me from moving the page file to another location though, since it is easy to move it back if I get into a situation where I need the memory dump.

Gary

I just saw a GREAT article on the pagefile on LifeHacker:

http://lifehacker.com/5426041/under...m_campaign=Feed:+lifehacker/full+(Lifehacker)

Gary

 

if you have lots of memory 4gb++ i would disable it. otherwise, i wouldnt suggest you leave it system manged, I would make it a static size, that would prevent fragmentation

 

You might want to read the lifehacker article I linked in the previous message. It pretty much debunks both notions.

Gary

 

alright, ill read it

thanks

very interesting article.. thanks

 

Do you notice any improvement when moving the page file to a different hd?

 

I didn't move it to a different DRIVE (which can give a little, albiet VERY little, boost) only to a different partition. I only did so to reduce the size of my C: partition backup image by three gigabytes. No other reason than that. For the same reason, I also disable hiberntion just before I create an image and enable it again right after I am done.

Gary

 

fragmentation only happens if the system NEEDS to have more paging file (the biggest page file i've seen had 3 fragments, and was 4gb big. that's NOTHING in terms of fragmentation).

and the moment it NEEDS more space, not having it would result in a system crash, or app crash.

so by making it fixed size (including 0 bytes, a.k.a. disabling it), you remove it's MAIN feature: guarantee that there is ALWAYS memory available somewhere, so apps never crash due to out of memory errors.

if you can life with that, well, do so. but not for placebo performance optimizations which got proven to not exist (on vista/win7 at least).

 

that extra work would take me longer than actually restoring the bigger backup

 

how do you do that? oh, i got a bluescreen, lets move it back and catch the bluescreen?

 

Are we back at "this" (pagefile ding) again? :lol: Me again and again ... leave the poor thing alone to OS to play with itself

cheers ...

 

That's the identical article I posted days prior.

 

How long does it take to open a command prompt and type "powercfg -h off"? A lot less time than it takes to write 3 GB to an image file, I can assure you.

Gary

 

Actually, yes. On the rare occasion (once in ten years) where I needed the dump file, and therefore the pagefile on the C: partition, I was dealing with a repeatable problem. So that is precisely what I did. The real need for a dumpfile is so slim.

Gary

 

Since your post didn't say anything about the link being from Lifehacker. I had no idea it had already been posted.

Gary

 

I'm curious how much of a performance difference does "fragmentation" create.

Plus I keep hearing about people saying to keep the pagefile near the front of the disk. This use to be a good tip like back in the DOS days, but I wonder if it is still the case nowadays.

All these tips were developed back in a time of 8GB harddrives.

 

if you allready know that. first you have to find the info about that knowledge.

and, hm.. other than i don't ever care how long my backup goes as it never gets between me and my work i do, those 3gb would be, uhm.. really not important.

but it gives a faster option to shutdowns and bootups => i actually gain every time i use it instead of ordinary booting. and i'm on ssds, so space would be premium to me, and i still have no use of disabling it.

 

1) pagefile is not a performance-important thing anymore, as the os uses it sparingly, and nearly always in non-performance-affecting ways. this was different in xp.

2) the fragmentation of a page file is, at most, 3-10 fragments, and that's with a gb-big file.

accessing that pagefile would mean, in the worst case, to jump to all those 10 fragments (very unlikely), that would result in 10x15ms time spent on accessing them, at most. so you would maybe lose 150ms the first time you have to access all of the pagefile.

terrible


but 1) is the most important thing: the pagefile never gets actually in the way, so even if 2) happens, it won't be noticeable.


all the knowledge people got about pagefiles for years and years HAVE TO BE DROPPED starting vista. all of that knowledge is, by now, legacy.

 

and the real hurt of a dumpfile being available for those slim cases is 0. so why getting rid of it?

oh, and, yeah, you had luck having a repeatable problem.

 

Did you know that with Win7 you can control the size of the Hiberfil.sys? There is an option (I forget where at the moment) that lets you establish the size as a % of the RAM that you have. I believe what it does if you choose less than 100% is to only store the core part of what is running. Any ReadyBoost or cached stuff would be dropped from the hibernation file and reloaded after wakeup. It might be a way for you to reduce the footprint since space is more of a concern for you than me. It also MIGHT (not sure since I have not played with it) allow for a quicker start time from hibernation. (Albeit with some background filling of cache and ReadyBoost after started up.) The article I ready (which I will try to find) noted that the trick was to make sure you don't set the percentage TOO low.

As I mentioned before, I only temporarily disable hibernation while I create an image. And only to allow for reduce the size of the image file. I keep the image on a small partition on my harddrive as a "emergency" backup when I travel. I also have it on an external drive that stays in my office.

Gary

 

i like how my home server actually scans for differences, and afaik not even images the hibernation file anyways (as it's useless in backup).

so how about getting a better imaging/backup solution?

other than that, yes, i know that one can recuce the hiberfil. but i would never do that. imagine the day i have all my ram filled, and i want to hibernate?

but i know it does only write the important data, as it hibernates faster than it could, if it would write all ram.

 

To be perfectly honest, I don't see a need for a dumpfile for any issue that is not repeatable or at the very least repeating. What I mean is would I really look at a dumpfile the FIRST time I got a BSOD? Not likely. Actually, in my case I can assure you the answer is an unequivocal "no". I would never bother. Now if I got one a second time, you can be sure the first thing I would do is move the pagefile BACK onto the C: partition, so that I could be ready to examine the dump file.

But again the ONLY reason I move it is the same as mentioned with the hiberfil.sys. Combined these two files are almost 6gb and not having them in my image greatly reduces the footprint of my Ghost image file. I seem to remember someone mentioning that Acronis or one of the other imaging apps had the ability to NOT include a specific list of files in an image. If that is true, I might need to investigate that. As I could then leave the pagefile on the C: drive and not have to disable hibernation before I create an image. (Not that either is a BIG deal, since I image maybe once every couple of months and the disable hibernation is done from a little batch file.)

Gary

 

i have a daily backup, no hibernation file in it, and all my systems actually get merged together, so the identical file on two or more systems get only stored ONCE

so, my backup solution is more efficient, and more reliable. i suggest you a try.

afterwards, no need to ever mess with the pagefile or hibernation file. (and no need for partitions in general, but you know that already )

live is easy, if one wants to drop old habits

 

Trust me my friend, if I didn't have the possibility of needing to do a restore while I was visiting some secured facility where I had no outside internet access, I would GLADLY go with a solution similar to yours. But that reality exists for me, hence my NEED to use an image type backup, just in case. Plus there is the matter of speed. With my image I can literally be fully restored in less than 25 minutes. Even if I had internet access while traveling and had to restore from a remote server, we'd be talking hours to do so. Yes, yes I know the question "how often do you need to do this?" The answer is it doesn't matter! With the daily rates I charge when I travel, my clients would be very unhappy if I said oops sorry I'll be down for four hours while I recover my laptop. I owe it to my customers to have the most time/cost effective solution for them. (And yes, I have had to use this solution in the past. Only once, mind you, but the point is I have to be READY to use it if needed.)

Efficiency, I'll give you in a heartbeat. Yours without doubt is more efficient for a tethered environment. Reliability? Nope... sorry. Neither is any more or less reliable. Both our solutions are 100% bullet proof. As professionals we both know he have to have such. We've been in this business too long to think otherwise! ...big ol' grin...

Gary

P.S. I am curious about the "all my systems actually get merged together, so the identical file on two or more systems get only stored ONCE" comment. Explain that, if you don't mind. How does that work?

 

i would have my home server portable with me (some netbook maybe), then.

fixes all the issues. and restores in much less than 20 minutes btw.




about the merging:

home server backs up into a big data pool (where the network shared serverside files are, too, a.k.a. \\server\music and such).

if you have on your laptop, your desktop, your media center, etc everywhere f.e. "c:\users\davepermen\music\eels - fresh feeling.mp3", and even on your \\server\music, then it would only store that files 2x on your server. why 2x? as it has to store it on 2 hdds to be sure it won't get lost if a hdd fails.

but it would never store it extra for a backup.

so if you do have 10 pc's, do a clean install on everyone (say, win7), and back up all of them on the home server, the backups will eat up about 7gb, as the files on all the systems are more or less identical.

 

I noticed that Win7 hibernates faster than Vista did, so I think they did some optimization in that regard. I just wanted to be sure you knew that the size reduction was an option. I didn't know and I read MSDN every month... big ol' grin... I wish I knew where I just saw the info on this.

Hey, I am ALWAYS looking for a better imaging/backup solution. If you hear of any that fit my unique set of requirements let me know. I'm all ears!

Gary

 

a netbook with two hdds in would be the best thing actually it would be awesome portable home server with data redundancy for on-server-stored data

 

Or rather SSDs as you drop the notebook and both could break... cough...

 

hm.. right

 

Oh now you are funny! Oh yes that is a REAL solution, one more bag (or a bulkier bag) to carry from one jetway to another while running from a late arrival to my next plane. Yep, that's EXACTLY what I want. Plus the extra expense of another machine? Nice try, but that ain't gonna happen. Not when I can use my solution without added bulk or cost.

So how does it determine what is "identical"? More than just date and time stamps I hope. And then I assume it keeps some sort of database inventory of what files (or versions of files) belong with which client machine? Pretty cool.

I assume the 2x thing is actually RAID, right?

Gary

 

Man, you two are great at spending MY money! I love the "idea". I hate the added bulk when I travel (see my previous reply) and I hate the expense most of all!

Gary

 

no, it's no raid. home server manages the disks itself, to make sure you can easily plug in tons of random disks of different sizes, and it spreads the data over it so it's always secured.

and yes, it does not care about timestamps and such stuff, but about the file content. how it does it exactly, no clue. afaik, it's not even file based per se, but somehow sector based. but i never cared much. i just read about it, and saw, that after backing up 4 vista systems, the backup storage used around 7gb on the home server

and yes, of course it has "stups" for the files in the backups.. somehow.

how exactly i don't care actually

 

what do you do when your notebook dies?

on the netbook, you would be able to still do some basic tasks at least. hw redundancy on your trips? not?