Virtual Memory Partition

I'm not sure if Virtual Memory is even necessary these days, with so much real memory. Lots of controversy about that.

Anyhow, I have seen a recommendation before to have the swap file on its own small partition, rather than on a drive with other files.

If one is to do that, would it make more sense to have it as a NTFS partition, like the larger drives, or a FAT32 one, being just a few GB in size? Would FAT32 be faster for a swap file?

Do people still recommend having the swap file a fixed size, rather than letting it shrink and grow? Is it still recommended to have it 1½ times the size of physical memory?

Would the answers to the questions above be the same for all OSes--XP, Vista, and 7, 32 or 64 bit?

 

The 1½ or 2 times the size of RAM makes no sense. That rule would meant that the bigger the RAM, the bigger HD space you would need to allocate for virtual memory/swap file. This is illogical. Virtual Memory/Swap File is used
when your program runs out of RAM and needs to use the HD as if it were physical RAM. The bigger the RAM, the less likely it is going to happen. Hence, the bigger the RAM, the size of HD space allocated for virtual memory should be smaller, not bigger.

 

I totally agree with you, that it makes no sense logically, that more physical memory would mean more virtual memory needed. That doesn't make sense.

Yet, common sense aside, that is what many experts have recommended for years, and they just might know something that you and I don't understand.

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In any case, what about the question regarding a separate partition for he swap file--NTFS or FAT 32?

 

It used to be recommended by some 3rd party defragmentation programs (Norton I think) to make the the page file a fixed size. The argument was that if you let windows manage the file size then it will keep changing and the file and drive will get defragmented. This is the same reason why some recommended to move it to a 2nd partition.

You can still do this. Use NTFS and not FAT32. It might have a minimal effect.

Putting the page file on a 2nd physical drive makes a little more sense since the operations on the page file do not effect operations on the main windows drive. However what many people did in their desktops was to use an small older driver for this. This drive would have much worse performance than the main drive which was newer.

My recommendation is that unless you have a small SSD and really need the extra few GB that you might free up. Leave everything at windows default which is to let windows manage the page file and it is located directly on c:\

 

Linux users routinely do this, so you can ask them what their rationale is in the forum below this one.

Just try not to mention Windows. It might cause an apocalypse.

 

I agree. The old pagefile static size has not been relevent since the windows 98 days. The "experts" determined this long ago, but the non-experts keep repeating because they read it somewhere a long time ago.

As for putting a swap file on a different partition...no. This results in your harddrive head having to do a lot more searching moving back and forth across the platter when swapping pages of memory. Another disk is one thing, but not another partition.

 

Why NTFS rather than FAT32, for a swap drive partition? My understanding was, the advantages of NTFS are--no limit on partition size, and the security features, neither of which would be relevant for a small swap-drive partition. Isn't FAT32 a little faster?

Also, if one has a separate partition like that for the swap file, does it have to be a primary partition, or could it be a logical one?

But you think it best just to use the default windows-managed virtual memory, on the main drive? No performance increase from keeping it on a separate partition, fixed size, etc.? Have there been tests to determine that?

Thanks for the info.

Merry Christmas!

 

it doesn't "keep changing". it only changes when needed, and only expands if memory really is needed. and it expands in big chunks, to not have to expand often. one of my systems had a pagefile, that after several years had to expand quite some times. the resulting amount of fragments: 4. and that with a severalgb pagefile. that means NOTHING.

it still is, if you want to be able to use as much memory as your apps might need. a fixed amount of memory means apps crash, if there isn't enough available (unimportant if you turn off page file, or set it to fixed size, as you ask about). if you let it get os managed, it can expand as needed, to always have rooms for your apps.
the result: no chance for a memory-related crash, ever.

only with a dynamic page file, you can have a dynamic system that sometimes can go out of bounds, and still is 100% reliable.

 

which experts say that pagefiles are unnecessary.

Precisely.

Would these be the experts who write the windows desktop and server kernels?

 

at least not the experts from microsoft (a.k.a. mark russinowich, who wrote a big article about it this year, and is considered god of windows )

 

Dave. do you have a link to that article? I searched for it on Google, and didn't find it.

 

"mark russinovich page file" first hit

Pushing the Limits of of Windows

he has tons of info.