How about an independent drive for the virtual memory paging file?

[Bazango]

I am running Windows XP Pro SP3 and I am looking for a cheap fix to improve performance. I got to thinking about memory and I remembered that a good part of memory is managed by a paging file on the hard drive. It is possible to move this paging file on to another hard drive.

It occured to me that maybe it might be interesting to install a hard drive specifically for this paging file. An old 20-30 Gb drive might be a good way to improve memory performance.

Anyone have any experience doing this? Does it help memory performance? If it does, is it worthwhile to spend on a high performance drive? What about solid state drives? Is it necessary to format this drive with a file system? Does it help to purge the drive of any file system?

Any and all tips or clues would be appreciated.

[Train]

Since you did not post the computer spec's, I have to ask, how much ram do you have?

1 GB for XP is optimum and should you have 2 GB, you will not need to worry about the Virtual either way and just leave it right where it is. Yes, XP does a good job of handling the various memories.

[Midknyte]

I'd add more ram before trying to fool with the pagefile. The pagefile is used when you run out of physical memory.

[Bazango]

Since you did not post the computer spec's, I have to ask, how much ram do you have?

1 GB for XP is optimum and should you have 2 GB, you will not need to worry about the Virtual either way and just leave it right where it is. Yes, XP does a good job of handling the various memories.

Sorry, I have 1GB ram.

Can no one say whether my memory performance would increase with a seperate drive running the virtual memory page? And just out of curiosity, would such a drive require a file system?

[Midknyte]

I don't think you'll notice a major difference. Hard drive access is way slower than RAM access. Adding a pagefile on a separate drive might help a bit, but it's not like adding another 512 or 1GB of ram.

The fact that you are even hitting the pagefile is a problem. See what apps are running in the background. Maybe you can kill some of those processes to free up memory.

yes, it would require a file system.

[Bazango]

Thanks, that covers it. Thanks, all.

[Train]

Crossing the IDE with the page file back when ram sticks were smaller did help, but with sizes of stick available today and the speeds of the cpu's, that no longer holds true. Plus NTFS {XP} does a lot better than what ever we had in DOS {9X} for handling things.

[Sterling_Aug]

I manually set my page file size to 1GB min/max if I have 2GB or more RAM installed. There is no reason to waste hard drive space if Windows never uses the page file anyway.

[Bazango]

I manually set my page file size to 1GB min/max if I have 2GB or more RAM installed. There is no reason to waste hard drive space if Windows never uses the page file anyway.

Does that really make sense any more now that hard drive space has gotten so huge?

[Sterling_Aug]

Does that really make sense any more now that hard drive space has gotten so huge?

Why waste space if you do not need it and never use it? I want the space for my files not Windows bloat. My one machine has 4GB RAM and Windows creates a 6GB page file. Is there a good reason to waste 5GB of drive space for no reason?

[europanorama]

i have a slow amd 1800+ and 2gb. i have an ide-raid(not two drives for the system) but one as external swapdrive. advantage of this setup: i have more driveslots free. ide 1 and ide 2 are holding the optical-drives(2) and a temporary ide-backup-drive.i was told swapfile to be 1.5x ram min/max. and yes w2k is telling me using 3070/3070 when i set to 3000/3000.
i have read about using that swapdrive to install e.g the stitching program panotools(for panoramas). on the samei will install wxp for the first time on a 320 gb-drive. i have all parts outside the case. i am reflecting about using that ide-raid-system but replace the 30gb swapdrive by a 80gb. adviced elsewhere here. other people adviced that no speedier than the 30gb is needed. so opposite meanings.
since the 30gb maxtor gets quite hot its an easy decision. and i can store there data on a seperate partition.
when i see that a simple videopan(nikon coolpix p50 on a electric turntable) is not running smootly on my gigabyte 7n400 pro2 but on a simple cheap vista-celeron-laptop(maybe with only 1gb ram) then i will soon get a better system. or wait what wxp can handle.
thank you for your opinions.

[europanorama]

wxp installed on 320 drive wd3200aajb 320/8.
c-partition only used- 20 gb. swapfile 2000/4000 aprox.(what wxp proposed for my 2gb-ddr-ram-system). should i change to 2000/2000? i will use this system for photo/panorama-work only. very large files. btw: the dvd-burning-problems occured most probably due to overheating. was 60 degr.c, now 34/45 degr. c (sys/cpu).

[Sterling_Aug]

Fragmentation of the page file if it is set to 2000/4000 will have so little effect on your performance, that I would leave it alone.

[BipolarBill]

A fixed pagefile is always best if you're not working with HUGE images. It's bad enough that the pagefile needs to be used at all because the hard drive is a slug compared to RAM. Dude, it's mechanical. A variable pagefile adds to the misery by making you wait for Windows to adjust the size of the pagefile.

I don't like a pagefile that "breathes".

[Bigjakkstaffa]

As previously stated, a set pagefile is generally recognised as being the best way to configure the pagefile, with the Min and Max sizes set equal to prevent resizing. Another way of increasing PF Performance is indeed to place the pagefile on a disk or partition other than the one which the OS is installed on -- however the gains from this arent going to be earth shattering. I certainly wouldnt be setting up dedicated hard disks/partitions purely for the pagefile but if you have a second drive or partion already, by all means shift the PF onto it.

Particularly with RAM being as cheap as chips these days, i'd grab yourself another stick or two for a more noticable performance increase and fix your pagefile at a set size.

--Jakk:t

[Steve R Jones]

And then there's tha part about an old 20-30 Gb drive is probably running at 5400 rpm and would slow things down.

And, if and when you move the pagefile to another drive - it's best that the drive is on a different IDE channel....

[europanorama]

later i will add a new 320 gb winxp-drive in ide-raid-manner. i will have four channels in total. ide3(onemaster winxp-drive), ide4(swapdrive maybe 80gb), ide 1(temporary backup-drive), ide 2(optical-drives).
btw: i can leave cdrom as bootdrive instead of scsi(default). but then i must leave floppydrive empty and no boot-cd/dvd left inside. dont know yet if non-boot-cd/dvd had an effect.
will try the whole new setup with cable-select. i wonder if i can use also my sata-connectors. beside these internals i have usb to sata-case. my board does have sata I. adding sata II makes no sense, right?