Q about Pagefile, turn it off?

[CERO]

I was wondering, How much can I reduce Pagefile as it takes allot of space of your disk, and considering I am going to use 4GB, can I turn pagefile off if not by how much can I reduce this, I need to know for both my rigs, 1 is running XP Pro 32bits 2GB of ram and 1 with Vista 4GB of ram.

And another note during Prime (blend) I hear My raptor making noise , which means it getting taxed , I wonder if It is bad for a HDD, since it will use pagefile( HDD) in prime blend instead of full RAM, Any1 can give me some explanation on this 2?

[twilyth]

I'm not an expert, but I have played with my pagefiles a lot and can tell you that even with 4gig, you shouldn't turn it off.

How much you need depends on how many apps you have open at one time and how much memory each needs.

You can get a feel for this by running What's running. If you right click in the main process page, you can select items to display - including pagefile usage, peak usage, pagefile hits and misses, etc.

To keep your page file usage to a minimum, run FreeRAM XP Pro. This will let you free ram that isn't being used or is being leaked. It will also compress ram. But I would only run it on a fairly fast system. When it goes to free and compress you can get a significant slowing of your system - although you can tell it not to free when disk or cpu usage is high.

Let me know if you need help setting either up. Both utilities are free.

[uOpt]

You never want to run without paging space, especially not on a typical Windoze box.

By running without paging space you force the OS to keep junk from old, unused, idle applications in memory. The memory used up for that will then be missed and an increasing number of readonly mapped pages will be dropped from actually active applications as a result.

It is a misnormer that no paging space used means no paging goes on, because only read-write and copy-on-write mapped pages are ever moved to paging space. Readonly mapped pages get dropped let and right, but not to paging space. thus readonly mapped from active applications are dropped at an increased rate as you make it more difficult for the OS to move away read-write pages from inactive applications.

On a typical Windoze installation you have a metric ton of junk running in the background that you really want to have moved out.

[stevecs]

I always turn the system pagefile off. Have been doing that since windows 95/nt days. zero problems with turning it off (well, on the old system it was hard to keep it off, windows tried to re-activate it all the time) but since xp/2003 and even 2000 no problems. As long as you have enough memory to run what you need. This I've done both for servers as well as home systems.

[Soulburner]

Don't turn it off.

1.5x amount of RAM, same min/max.

[stevecs]

If you have the memory why would you _EVER_ want to swap? same is true for any os (mainframe, unix, mac, windows), you name it. a pagefile is a poor-mans means to accomplish what more memory would do but at a lower cost and slower. that's it. If you have the $$ disable it, buy memory.

[Soulburner]

If you have the memory why would you _EVER_ want to swap? same is true for any os (mainframe, unix, mac, windows), you name it. a pagefile is a poor-mans means to accomplish what more memory would do but at a lower cost and slower. that's it. If you have the $$ disable it, buy memory.

I don't think you understand. You can disable the pagefile, but it has zero benefit in Windows because of the way it works.

[RADCOM]

You never want to run without paging space, especially not on a typical Windoze box.

By running without paging space you force the OS to keep junk from old, unused, idle applications in memory. The memory used up for that will then be missed and an increasing number of readonly mapped pages will be dropped from actually active applications as a result.

It is a misnormer that no paging space used means no paging goes on, because only read-write and copy-on-write mapped pages are ever moved to paging space. Readonly mapped pages get dropped let and right, but not to paging space. thus readonly mapped from active applications are dropped at an increased rate as you make it more difficult for the OS to move away read-write pages from inactive applications.

On a typical Windoze installation you have a metric ton of junk running in the background that you really want to have moved out.

Listen to this man he is in the know Windows also needs a paging file for the memory dump if/when it crashes. Given the huge amount of disk space and its price relative to memory it's a no brainer. If you have several drives it might be worth moving the bulk of the pagefile off the system drive onto the outer rim of one of your data drives.

[stevecs]

I'll admit that I am not a windows expert by any means coming from a mainframe/midrange/unix background. However on the windows boxes that I have used without fail all of them have performed better without a paging file. This is also with systems up to 16GiB of ram.

Your comment on crash dumps et al, yes that is valid you need a paging/swap file to store that to which needs to be at least the same size as your physical ram. This was a grand idea ages ago (even under unix) but with systems now in the 64-128GiB ram space it's completely infeasible. Not to mention the fact that I can probably count on one hand the number of people here at work who would even know how to do a debug against the core file. So yes it would have some utility but with the lack of people that have the knowlege even if a complete system crash occured the file still becomes useless. Then it's further mitigated by the frequency of windows crashes (ie, not many at all, and MUCH less for unix. windows may have one every 6months-1 year (this is over 5000 machines) unix much less (hard pressed to think of the last one perhaps two years ago on the old SGI unit) and this is across about 1500 or so systems. Now these are production environments so they do not change much. I've found that most of the 'crashes' happens when you OC or at initial install due to bad hardware which I don't count (as w/ OC I expect it more, and initial hardware you have lemmons every now and then).

Now if you have any data as to why windows specifically needs a page file (besides the two that at least in my case are mitigated (crashes & core dump analysis)) I would be very interested to see what it is in the OS that needs it.

[tommyshango]

ive never heard such blasphemy. i trust that its true im not even saying that. i just honestly have never heard anyone say anytihng remotely like this before. i definately agree with you about the memory dump because it by my own personal experience is faster if you just exit out of that damn thing than letting it waste 2 minutes of your time to do absolutely nothing. the rest i have no clue...e very single thing you read speaks contrary to it but i have a strong feeling you are right. i really want to try this out on my own systems. thanks

[adamsleath]

turned it off , set it at all sorts of sizes...

moved it from one disk to another..never noticed ay difference.

i now have a 4gb pagefile on another drive separate to c:\

maybe i should just not have any pagefile.

i dont know and i dont care any more

[alfaunits]

I wish someone would make some number tests instead of uOpt crapping about read-only swapping every time a pagefile topic arises. He knows Linux, I'll give you that (couldn't care less), but not Windows.
I notice major speed bumps without the pagefile, and still nothing that won't work without it.

Do some numbers - or stop this bickering topic!

[hixie]

I have a 4GB pagefile on my I-RAM

[safan80]

for 32bit xp and x64 xp I turn the pagefile off. for vista x64 I leave it on.

[IanB]

I have a 4GB pagefile on my I-RAM

That's a hell of a waste of an i-RAM... Better off putting your OS on it and adding enough memory to remove the need for a pagefile at all.

[tommyshango]

so i dont get it.. completely contradicting statements.. which is it

yes or no?

[CERO]

wow allot of replys after my sleep, thnx all for your input appreciated, got to know more about this now

another Q: if u got 2x1Gb = 2GB installed @ XP, is the amount of pagefile @ default enough?
And second what happen if I swap now my incomming 2x2GB G.Skills in, I know XP wont recon 4GB but just like 3GB, would windows adjust automaticly the right amount of pagefile for the 4GB? I would format my OS anyways, but if I reinstall with the 4GB, I ques the amount of pagefile would be adjusted to suit the 4GB of ram?

[uOpt]

Getting concrete numbers is highly nontrivial since you need to simulate user behavior over hours of use to get the exact same paging behavior in a reproducible manner to then compare the performance of different setups. We write simulators like this to test our server applications at work, and it is challenging to say at least even for non-interactive use.

A pagefile can of course be a real disadvantage if your OS makes bad decisions about what to move out, what to drop and what to keep. Linux used to be very stupid in this regard but straightened up nicely. Windows? Who knows. You can't even see the exact policies, lacking source code.

The most common example of paging space making the OS not do what you want is this situation: interactive usage of big applications (e.g. webbrowser or office in foreground) and then big filesystem activity in the background. Then the OS wants to use more RAM for filesystem buffer cache. If the OS is stupid and doesn't anticipate what you want then it might think it is even worth paging out some of your foreground application. Remember that the foreground office-type application looks "idle" to the OS even if you constantly click around. That load is nothing compared to e.g. a large file copy where some process constantly says "more more more!". In this situation, if you have paging space you might come out worse, as if you don't have paging space then the OS cannot make this stupid decision.

"Modern" applications written in Java and .net also change some of this because they have almost no readonoly maps. In a real application compiled normally all the code is readonly mapped, including all DLL's code. Running with no swapspace gets this stuff dropped from memory all the time. With Java/.net applications all pages are dynamic memory and would have to be moved to paging space, hence no paging space means they stay resident. Of course this is a huge waste of memory in the first place, and now severely hurts filesystem performance.

[uOpt]

If you have the memory why would you _EVER_ want to swap? same is true for any os (mainframe, unix, mac, windows), you name it. a pagefile is a poor-mans means to accomplish what more memory would do but at a lower cost and slower. that's it. If you have the $$ disable it, buy memory.

I thought this is obvious but just in case: of course 6 GB of RAM is better than 2 GB of RAM plus 4 GB of paging space in every respect.

But 2 GB of RAM are a joke for today's application demands, and my 4 GB machines are pretty much cracking under the load now.

[The Legend]

I thought this is obvious but just in case: of course 6 GB of RAM is better than 2 GB of RAM plus 4 GB of paging space in every respect.

But 2 GB of RAM are a joke for today's application demands, and my 4 GB machines are pretty much cracking under the load now.

What sort of demands are you talking about?

2GB is almost more than any average user could use in a given time, much less having 4GB.

Granted most people on computer forums aren't average and I don't doubt that 4GB can be a bottleneck in some graphically intensive systems such as a CAD or HD workstation, but what exactly are you doing that you are using more than 4GB of RAM?

[uOpt]

What sort of demands are you talking about?

2GB is almost more than any average user could use in a given time, much less having 4GB.

Granted most people on computer forums aren't average and I don't doubt that 4GB can be a bottleneck in some graphically intensive systems such as a CAD or HD workstation, but what exactly are you doing that you are using more than 4GB of RAM?

A little fileserving, some VMware and a Firefox alone drive my 4 GB workstation over the edge on a regular basis.

[The Legend]

A little fileserving, some VMware and a Firefox alone drive my 4 GB workstation over the edge on a regular basis.

I too use VMWare and Firefox on a daily basis and barely broke a sweat when I was using 2GB. I think the 'little filesharing' is more like 'a lot filesharing'. :p

I guess it depends also how much memory you have allocated to VMWare, but are you running a simple Linux distro? I couldn't imagine more than 1GB being allocated to VMWare, but to each his own.

[alfaunits]

7-8 VMs running Microsoft I/O stress (this is what I do at work for file system tests), ~20 torrents, Music or DVD, and Warcraft 3 play.
No pagefile, and it runs.

Turn on the pagefile - starts the lag in the game, music cracks/pauses without te game running even.

Give me a break, mate, you can't measure? It's not like you need a PhD in rocket science! Do FPS check with/without a pagefile.

We have NEVER considered a case where x GB is NOT enough - the questions were always "IF x GB IS ENOUGH, should I turn off the pagefile?". You always go around with Linux mayhem.
Bottom line, as someone who works around the Windows VM/CM/FS, and who DID see the policies you talk about I say - if you have sufficient RAM, you're way better off without the pagefile. Not talking about uOpt's work (donno what it is - don't care), not talking about a server (doh), not talking about an office computer with 256MB of RAM. We're talking XS computers with at least 2GB of RAM.
BioShock requires 3GB of RAM, BTW, if you have less you will need the pagefile. That's the only one I ever noticed asking for the PF that really needs it.

P.S. NEVER use Explorer to copy any considerable amount of files (>200MB), or uOpt will come and brag it slows down the system. (donno why I mention this, who in da world uses Explorer any more

A little fileserving, some VMware and a Firefox alone drive my 4 GB workstation over the edge on a regular basis.

[uOpt]

I too use VMWare and Firefox on a daily basis and barely broke a sweat when I was using 2GB. I think the 'little filesharing' is more like 'a lot filesharing'. :p

Fireserving, not filesharing, there are a couple diskless machines behind there. Depending on what's running in the basement these diskless OS installs will live in VMware or a physical machine.

I don't know what you guys do different, but even right now with the machine pretty freshly rebooted, no disk traffic, just firefox, cvs/cvsup and DVD playing running, no google earth, no vmware started yet since the reboot the machine started using paging space. 4 GB machine, 64 bit kernel with working remapping, so actually 4 GB usable.

I forgot google earth earlier, it's a hog.

I think the only difference between us is that I am used to 4 GB or more and you are not, sorry. Once all this junk runs smooth on 4 GB there is no going back to anything below.

[RootX]

An excellent article can be found here

Just like uOpt said, do not turn it off, try to optimize it instead.