Page File guidance?

RussA

RussA

RussA

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Joined
30 Oct 2007
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60
What are the guidelines for allocating ram space for page-swap files? My mate has a 1GB, old athlon PC and I wanted to check the setting of the paging file. What would be the recommended file size and what are the rule-of-thumbs (if any) that apply to this area?

Thanks.
 
RAM has no bearing on pagefile except to say the less RAM you have the bigger the pagefile needs to be. I have 1GB and I use a 4GB pagefile, but that's because I have an old 20 GB IDE harddrive that is used exclusively for it. When you create the pagefile, make sure you delete the old one, and defrag the computer. That way you are assured that the pagefile isn't fragmented upon creation.
 
it all depends on what you read.

I read somewhere that Microsoft have sujested that a 1.5 x your ram is the ideal amount.

Personaly i've gone with that, i've also moved mine to a different drive than where the OS is installed.

I was considering editing my registery to clear the page file everytime i shutdown. (due to a lack of resources and slow speed - but i haven't got round to it yet!!):rolleyes:

hope it helps
 
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On my games PC I have 2GB ram and have set the pagefile to 1GB, I'd go less but some software moans.
Other PCs have it disabled.
My rule of thumb is have it as small as you can get away with! But then, I'm always low on HD space....
It really depends what you use the PC for, but swapping all your ram in and out of the pagefile is slow, so close stuff down before loading big apps/games.
 
blastman said:
I was considering editing my registery to clear the page file everytime i shutdown. (due to a lack of resources and slow speed - but i haven't got round to it yet!!):rolleyes:
Click to expand...

There's no point in doing that unless it's likely to contain sensitive information that someone might come and take.
All it does is make the PC take longer to shutdown and wear out that bit of the HD faster (assuming fixed size).
 
blastman said:
iI read somewhere that Microsoft have sujested that a 1.5 x your ram is the ideal amount.
Click to expand...

I never really understood the logic behind rules of thumb like that, because the less RAM you have, the more likely it is that you will need to use the swapfile.

At work I've got a workstation used for IE7 which has 128meg RAM. Using that rule, the swap file should be 192meg, making a total of 320meg. Yet the peak commit charge sometimes exceeds that value.

Conversely my primary workstation has 1.5gig RAM. There would be little point in having a 2.25gig swapfile.
 
Some people don't ahve a swapfile at all, because they want to "force" their system to use their RAM, but lets face it, sometimes you need the temp storage. I reckon if you have 8GB of ram then perhaps you can get away with no swap file, but if you have the harddrive space then a good 1.5-2.5GB should be plenty
 
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