getting rid of paging (virtual memory). good idea or not

i am thinking of solutions for SSD longevity

if I wana get rid virtual memory, would that be a good idea. i.e. set it to zero manually.

whats going to happen, consequences etc.

I also thinkin about adding an SD card in a card reader and redirecting virtual memory there probably. Or what about put a solid state drive in the PCMCIA slot to take all the temp files and paging etc.

any advices

 

SD cards are not fast enough to run virtual memory on.

 

lets say i were to get a 20mb/s sd card. most of the time the page file just sits there anyway. programs don't actively call it that much right. plus dont it direct most of the load to RAM first cause its faster anyway SSD or not. Its only when it starts peaking that it directs to virtual

 

I have the paging file disabled all the time, i have 4GB RAM, always have 1.5 GB free with the paging file diabled! less hard disk thrashing, longer life, longer battery life

 

When i used to disable this, i always begun to get "memory could not be read" errors and such.

 

had mine disabled since 3 years now, on all operating systems,XP, Vista, and now Win7 with 0 problems.

 

If not mistaken, the lower the virtual memory(pagefiles), the faster the system.
Correct me if I am wrong. Thanks.

 

Well it depends, you can only lower it or disable it if you have enough RAM for your usage.

Anything above 3 GB RAM is safe to disable the paging file, unless you run CAD programs or come in contact with reall huge files all the time, then you might need more than 3 GB. I have 4 GB so I have nothing to worry about, as even after I startt my system and start all my usual programs, I still have 1.5 GB of FREE RAM left. So I disable the pagefile which offcourse will cause faster speeds since the data is accessed from the RAM itself rather than from the page file (HDD). RAM is much faster than your HDD

 

No you're wrong at least 99% of the time.

Pagefile is mainly used to page out inactive things in the ram. The data from your active programs will always reside in the ram. Thus if you disable the pagefile, all you're doing is taking those inactive data back to the ram. It has virtually no effect in terms of "speed" on the programs you use.

 

I have 4 Gigs of ram and run SSD's. My page file has been disabled for a couple years now and I've experienced zero problems.

I also have disc defrag disabled on my SSD's, as well as hibernate.

I've reduced the frequency of restore points and reduced the amount of restore points.

 

That also mean if you have a lot of RAM, you don't need pagefiles?
I remember I read it somewher that lower the pagefiles the faster the system.
Due to the system cache or whatever I forgotten.

 

Well.. it depends on what you're doing.

Does 12GB of ram sound a lot to you? Well.. if i had 12GB of ram, I'll still run out of ram in certain situations thus page file is necessary for me.

It's best to just leave the pagefile settings alone for most people.

If you have lots of ram, just load the kernel into the ram and that'll speed up the computer dramatically.

 

Again you are wrong. There are no carefully planned and executed studies that support your notion that disabling the pagefile will result in any user discernible increase in speed. If you have any FACTS to back up your assertion, please share them with the rest of us. (Everyone else don't hold your breath waiting. I have challenged MaXimus, numerous times on this and he has yet to provide any verifiable proof, or ANY proof for that matter.)

Gary

 

He's not completely wrong. There are certain situations where disabling the page file will indeed help increasing the performance.

E.g in a server environment where the servers have tonnes of ram and the whole OS is loaded into the RAM while the server is heavily loaded, having the OS paged out the will slow the server down when it needs the paged out file. However, these situation is rare and normal users won't ever encounter this situation.

 

So, you did agree with me after all. Thanks.
By the way, what do you mean by karnel, load , ram stuffs?

 

1) Open the regedit tool (Start -> Run -> regedit.exe )

2) Use the navigation in the left and go to HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management


3) Double click the DisablePagingExecutive attribute, and put 1 in the decimal value field This will make the drivers and the XP kernel run in memory.

4) Double click the LargeSystemCache attribute, and put 1 in the decimal value field
This will improve performance of the kernel

The kernel is basically the core of Windows.

 

Is this workable for Windows Vista?

 

Not quite entirely true. From a purely technical view, and depending on how you define "inactive," you might be correct - insofar as "inactive" means "the CPU is not currently executing these instructions or working with this data." Otherwise, you're not correct - at least on a Windows-based system - a page file is basically used to leverage a given amount of RAM so that it effectively appears as if you have some multiple of that RAM. As part of that "leveraging," the OS will page actively running programs (code and/or data, as needed) in and out, as necessary, to maintain the illusion that all active programs are constantly running.

Of course, as has been noted in this thread, with modern computers that have 2GB or more (got 6GB here ), the frequency with which the OS needs to page running programs in and out drops, and may even disappear (for example, I doubt if I've ever hit a point where the OS in my new system "needed" to page anything in and out, given that it has 6GB of RAM).

On older systems, however, the page file can be absolutely necessary to permit the computer to operate. For example, on my old system, which had only 768 MB of RAM total, doing any sort of half-way sophisticated compositing in GIMP with the image files I get from my DSLR would quickly run up a RAM budget greater than the total amount of physical RAM available. As a consequence, the page file got used on that system, and I can tell you that it is slow as molasses compared to pure RAM-only operations.

That all being said, however, whether you should have a page file at all, and if so, what minimum and maximum sizes should be specified for your page file is utterly and wholly dependent on the specific specs of your system and the details of how you generally use the system (e.g., heavy image/video-editing versus document editing and email).

In short, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question of whether one needs a page file, and if so, what size it should be. There's a reasonably decent article on the implementation of virtual memory (of which the page file is a constituent part) in Windows-based systems (Win2K and up) written by Bruce Sanderson here. That article includes some pointers on determining your optimum page file requirements (i.e., yes/no, and how big), including some pointers on monitoring your current usage of RAM and virtual memory in a way that will give you some useful information. Beyond that, the Wikipedia article on Paging includes some useful references and external sources that one can look into if one is really, really mad about finding the exact sweet-spot of their system page-file-wise.

 

That scenario makes no sense to me. If the OS needed a paged out file, that would mean there was a situation where it needed to page out the file in the first place. And if the server had been running without a page file in this scenario, whatever app had forced a pageout by requested memory would have crashed for lack of memory. If the OS was all loaded into memory and there is enough memory that it would not require a pagefile, then it would not be paging anything out and there would be no performance increase by not having a pagefile. But having one would be a safety measure if there was a sudden unexpected need for additional memory.

Gary

 

LargeSystemCache can cause widespread disk corruption on anything other than Server 2003. Go read technet for a while.

 

Danger, Will Robinson. Danger!

Handing out such info to someone who asks:

is pretty dangerous, don't you think? I can see it now, DarkSilver will be back in a few days whining about how his system won't boot any more or something is corrupted etc.

That sort of info should be given to someone who fully comprehends the ramifications. Or point them to a place with a detailed explanation of the technique and ramifications. But just the raw instructions seems a tad dicey.

Gary