[Chum]

The OS (XP pro) is on C drive. Some geek told me I should move the paging file to the D drive for better performance. Is there really a benefit?...I have 1 gig of ram...

 

[schusterjo]

If you have 2 drives and you want to run raid if you have raid support from the mobo.

Now basically raid is set up several ways I will post a link in a sec to explain the differences of them. Depending on the controller (motherboard) and type of drives you can see speed increase from 20% - %50 (%50 I have not seen personally but have read several articles that claim it.) depending on drives, just plan on getting a %25-30 increase, that sounds more like it.

http://www.poweroid-video-editing.co.uk/Reviews/Articles/Storage/RAID_0.asp

 

[crjdriver]

What has raid got to do with the question???

If you want to move the page file to another physical drive [NOT another partition] you might see some very small improvement. This used to be done years ago, however with modern systems having at the very min 1gig of ram the page file is not really accessed that much. It really is a moot point with a modern system.

Bottom line if you want to do it, it will do no harm. Will you see any big performance gain? No.

 

[schusterjo]

I was simply trying to show him how to gain performance out of 2 identical drives. raid is probably what his friend was talking about anyway and he didn't know what he was taking about.

 

[JohnWill]

Well, I don't see RAID mentioned, only a different drive letter. Presumable, since he has dual drives, the D: drive is the second drive. In any case, I'm not sure how the association between moving the paging file and RAID was made.

Of course, I have to agree with Chuck here, it's really a moot point.

 

[Chum]

JohnWill is correct! Believe me...my geek friend was NOT taliking about a RAID config.

I know the paging file is not accessed much...but I did see a performance boost in the following example...
Playing Half-Life 2 (with old configuration), when I would shut down the game...it would take about 20 seconds to completely display the desktop. With paging file on D it loads much quicker.
Thanks for the replies...

 

[maxibhoy]

Going slightly off topic here i've asked this question a few times but no-one can give me an answer. Question: If you have loads of ram say 4gb or even 8gb running with 64bit o/s why is it still advisable to have a paging file? Every where i've seen it's always quoted that not having a paging file at all is strongly discouraged regardless of amount of ram. I have my page file on seperate drive from o/s because it can't do any harm but certainly haven't noticed any performance gain nor did i really expect to but again it can't hurt.

 

[JohnWill]

The paging file is used when Windows takes a crash dump, and if it's not present, it results in a hard stop with no clues left behind. That's the reason for always having some sort of paging file, even if it's only 50mb or so.

 

[maxibhoy]

Ahhh, Was beggining to think there was something mistic involved with it although i thought it was still strongly advised to have a large one at least size of ram. Is this the case in win 9x as if i'm right i don't think it matters too much on those platforms provided you've plenty ram again?

 

[JohnWill]

Well, the other problem with having a really small paging file, or not one at all, is that when Windows runs out of real memory, it just stops with an error. If you're 100% sure you will never run out of real memory, you spent too much on memory, and probably not enough on the other components.

 

[maxibhoy]

I just spent too much Full Stop!!!

 

[Mulderator]

even if it's only 50mb or so.

Do you remember when your hard drive wasn't even that big?

 

[maxibhoy]

Hey my first computer specs where as follows: Acorn Electron 2mhz cpu, 32kb ram, 32kb rom. And we thought it was a truly amazing machine aswell. Can't imagine what's in store in the next 20 or 30 yrs.

 

[JohnWill]

My first computer was a home-built 8080 creation with 8" floppy drives.

 

[sirhcb4]

Actually one of the big reasons for not completely removing the paging file is that your memory will become fragmented and is only fixed by a reboot. Alowing the page file to do its job lets the memory be cleared and reallocated.

 

[griffinspc]

Another opine, I have 2 identical SATA drives. I created a small partition on the 2nd drive, 10GBs at the front of the drive, and made that my page file. Not 10GBs of course but it was an easy size to create and no big deal if not all used. I run 2GBs RAM and have a clean running XP Pro install, no crapware, and I keep defragged and spyware / malware free. No RAID. I use the 2nd drive as an image and backup drive with storage for ISOs and install programs.

I ran the page file on the Windows installed partition drive as a test knowing I'd probably move it after testing when I built the machine just for fun. I know, weird!

At any rate I saw a 2 to 7% performance boost after moving the page file depending on what I was testing and what test criteria I was using, i.e., games, office apps, etc. I used performance tests like Winbench and others plus my own observations.

To sum up I believe there is a difference in keeping the Windows OS folder on it's own partition on the C drive and the page file on it's own partition on the D drive. I also believe that placing the Program Files on a separate partition "D" in my case is a good move.