ATTENTION: You are viewing a page formatted for mobile devices; to view the full web page, click HERE.

Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

how to reduce pagefile usage?

<< < (10/10)

tomos:
- in the past, I've tried setting a harddrive partition aside and putting the PF there, but PF usage and disk activity were elevated.-Darwin (August 12, 2007, 10:46 AM)
--- End quote ---

was that partition on the same drive? (I'm wondering whether to try putting paging file on a different drive)


Well... as I understand it, there are some apps, such as Adobe Photoshop, that insist of swapping data to file, so if you're running anything that requires it, not running a PagingFile will be a liability.
--- End quote ---
re photoshop,
I think it uses it's own "paging file" -
from the Photoshop 5.5 help:-
When your system does not have enough RAM to perform an operation, Adobe Photoshop uses a proprietary virtual memory technology, also called the scratch disks. Virtual memory is disk space used for storing data during a work session when the amount of RAM is insufficient. (This scratch disk space is not a Windows swap file [swap file = paging file?] or Mac OS virtual memory, but is used only when working in Photoshop.)
...
The amount of free space on the scratch disk must be greater than or equal to the amount of RAM you have allocated to Photoshop. To ensure good performance, Photoshop writes the entire RAM contents to the scratch disks during idle times. If the scratch disks run out of free space, Photoshop quits taking additional RAM—regardless of what you have allocated to the program. This means that if you’ve allocated 60 MB to Photoshop [1999 standards :) ] but you have only 10 MB of free space on your scratch disk, Photoshop will use only 10 MB of RAM.which you can allocate yourself -
I'm given an option of allocating 4 different scratch disks, not sure why four...
as far as I know if you dont allocate it, it's taken automatically from C drive (mind you mine says "startup"  :-\ )

tomos:
following cmpm's google link above
I got a few recommendations -
One was if you have say 2GB memory & two drives, to have a paging file of that size on each drive.

Then from: http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm
Should the file be left on Drive C:?

The slowest aspect of getting at a file on a hard disk is in head movement (‘seeking’). If you have only one physical drive then the file is best left where the heads are most likely to be, so where most activity is going on — on drive C:. If you have a second physical drive, it is in principle better to put the file there, because it is then less likely that the heads will have moved away from it. If, though, you have a modern large size of RAM, actual traffic on the file is likely to be low, even if programs are rolled out to it, inactive, so the point becomes an academic one. If you do put the file elsewhere, you should leave a small amount on C: — an initial size of 2MB with a Maximum of 50 is suitable — so it can be used in emergency. Without this, the system is inclined to ignore the settings and either have no page file at all (and complain) or make a very large one indeed on C:

In relocating the page file, it must be on a ‘basic’ drive. Windows XP appears not to be willing to accept page files on ‘dynamic’ drives.

NOTE: If you are debugging crashes and wish the error reporting to make a kernel or full dump, then you will need an initial size set on C: of either 200 MB (for a kernel dump) or the size of RAM (for a full memory dump). If you are not doing so, it is best to make the setting to no more than a ‘Small Dump’, at Control Panel | System | Advanced, click Settings in the ‘Startup and Recovery’ section, and select in the ‘Write Debug information to’ paneland for Skywalka
Can the Virtual Memory be turned off on a really large machine?

Strictly speaking Virtual Memory is always in operation and cannot be “turned off.” What is meant by such wording is “set the system to use no page file space at all.”

Doing this would waste a lot of the RAM. The reason is that when programs ask for an allocation of Virtual memory space, they may ask for a great deal more than they ever actually bring into use — the total may easily run to hundreds of megabytes. These addresses have to be assigned to somewhere by the system. If there is a page file available, the system can assign them to it — if there is not, they have to be assigned to RAM, locking it out from any actual use.and
How big should the page file be?

There is a great deal of myth surrounding this question. Two big fallacies are:

    * The file should be a fixed size so that it does not get fragmented, with minimum and maximum set the same
    * The file should be 2.5 times the size of RAM (or some other multiple)

Windows will expand a file that starts out too small and may shrink it again if it is larger than necessary, so it pays to set the initial size as large enough to handle the normal needs of your system to avoid constant changes of size. This will give all the benefits claimed for a ‘fixed’ page file. But no restriction should be placed on its further growth. As well as providing for contingencies, like unexpectedly opening a very large file, in XP this potential file space can be used as a place to assign those virtual memory pages that programs have asked for, but never brought into use. Until they get used — probably never — the file need not come into being. There is no downside in having potential space available.

For any given workload, the total need for virtual addresses will not depend on the size of RAM alone. It will be met by the sum of RAM and the page file. Therefore in a machine with small RAM, the extra amount represented by page file will need to be larger — not smaller — than that needed in a machine with big RAM. Unfortunately the default settings for system management of the file have not caught up with this: it will assign an initial amount that may be quite excessive for a large machine, while at the same leaving too little for contingencies on a small one.

How big a file will turn out to be needed depends very much on your work-load. Simple word processing and e-mail may need very little — large graphics and movie making may need a great deal. For a general workload, with only small dumps provided for (see note to ‘Should the file be left on Drive C:?’ above), it is suggested that a sensible start point for the initial size would be the greater of (a) 100 MB or (b) enough to bring RAM plus file to about 500 MB. EXAMPLE: Set the Initial page file size to 400 MB on a computer with 128 MB RAM; 250 on a 256 MB computer; or 100 MB for larger sizes.

But have a high Maximum size — 700 or 800 MB or even more if there is plenty of disk space. Having this high will do no harm. Then if you find the actual pagefile.sys gets larger (as seen in Explorer), adjust the initial size up accordingly. Such a need for more than a minimal initial page file is the best indicator of benefit from adding RAM: if an initial size set, for a trial, at 50MB never grows, then more RAM will do nothing for the machine's performance.
maybe I'm quoting too much ... worth going there for a read at any rate..

Darwin:
Hi Tom -

I have one physical drive that I had partitioned in three about two and a half years ago. Initially I had a big partition for My Documents and user settings (like Outlook and IE), a small (@2GB) partition for my Paging File, and a medium sized partition for Windows and Programs.

I've since gotten rid of the small paging file partition altogether and have placed my paging file on the windows/programs partition. It's set to 1.5 times my RAM (so 1536MB) and is fixed in size. I don't have a paging file at all on the My Documents partition. The setup works well and is more stable than the previous one.

Caveat here: IF you try the small partition for paging file setup (assuming you've a single physical drive) MAKE SURE that it's assigned to a letter higher up the chain than any other partition as it will royally screw up programmes and settings if you decide to get rid of it later! This is because, say, you've put your My Documents folder onto partition F and your PF on E (this a lone example, from many, of what happened to me). Great! However, when you remove the PF from E and absorb partition E back into C or F, F is automatically re-labelled E and all of your links are broken. I used Partition Manager to do this and it offered, and I accepted, to fix all of the links. However, it didn't find all of them and this is where the problem came in. Hope that's clear - it took me months to fix everything  >:(

tomos:
Hi Tom -

I have one physical drive that I had partitioned in three about two and a half years ago. Initially I had a big partition for My Documents and user settings (like Outlook and IE), a small (@2GB) partition for my Paging File, and a medium sized partition for Windows and Programs.

I've since gotten rid of the small paging file partition altogether and have placed my paging file on the windows/programs partition. It's set to 1.5 times my RAM (so 1536MB) and is fixed in size. I don't have a paging file at all on the My Documents partition. The setup works well and is more stable than the previous one.-Darwin (August 12, 2007, 01:00 PM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks Mike!
no, I was thinking of trying it on new computer with two drives.. I'll see,
it almost sounds like if you have enough memory it's not that important so I might be as well to follow your (current) example seeing as it's working well for you

Darwin:
I was thinking of trying it on new computer with two drives..
--- End quote ---

The received wisdom is that if you've two physical drives, set your PF on a partition on the non-OS containing drive... Apparently, that's the way forward!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page

Go to full version