Page File size - I've been thinkinig.

Was wonderinig what to set that too, I set it a while back to 10 gig :O)
reason being I have piles of spare disk space so I thought "I might as
well make use of it!!"

Any I returned to the issue recently as I was a bit concerned about
performance.
More page file needed I thought :O|

However upon futher though I think the big page file may be the problem
not the solution.

I have 1.25 gig of memory and most of the time there seems to be a fair bit
free,
currently 735 meg 'available'.

I now think I would be better off without a pagefile at all. I think page
files are only
good for frequently used stuff and I don't have enough of it and that now
they system
is wasting time writing a load of 'crap' to the page file which will
probably never be
needed again.

For example I was cleaninig out a load of stuff I recorded from TV, some big
files
up to 3 gig. Now I think once it reads em in (so I can see what is recorded)
it is writing them back to the page file.A total waste of time.
I would go as far as to say it more than halving my computers speed on many
occasions. (writes take a long time).

Im gonna set it to zero. It's pointless having one with 1.2 gig of ram.

"Lord Turkey Cough" <spamdump@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:4SgQi.39167$aN2.19712@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net...
> Was wonderinig what to set that too, I set it a while back to 10 gig :O)
> reason being I have piles of spare disk space so I thought "I might as
> well make use of it!!"
>
> Any I returned to the issue recently as I was a bit concerned about
> performance.
> More page file needed I thought :O|
>
> However upon futher though I think the big page file may be the problem
> not the solution.
>
> I have 1.25 gig of memory and most of the time there seems to be a fair
> bit free,
> currently 735 meg 'available'.
>
> I now think I would be better off without a pagefile at all. I think page
> files are only
> good for frequently used stuff and I don't have enough of it and that now
> they system
> is wasting time writing a load of 'crap' to the page file which will
> probably never be
> needed again.
>
> For example I was cleaninig out a load of stuff I recorded from TV, some
> big files
> up to 3 gig. Now I think once it reads em in (so I can see what is
> recorded)
> it is writing them back to the page file.A total waste of time.
> I would go as far as to say it more than halving my computers speed on
> many
> occasions. (writes take a long time).
>
> Im gonna set it to zero. It's pointless having one with 1.2 gig of ram.


OK done it. Will let you know it what effect it has :O)



>
>

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 04:24:32 GMT, "Lord Turkey Cough"
<spamdump@invalid.com> wrote:

>Was wonderinig what to set that too, I set it a while back to 10 gig :O)
>reason being I have piles of spare disk space so I thought "I might as
>well make use of it!!"
>
>Any I returned to the issue recently as I was a bit concerned about
>performance.
>More page file needed I thought :O|
>
>However upon futher though I think the big page file may be the problem
>not the solution.
>
>I have 1.25 gig of memory and most of the time there seems to be a fair bit
>free,
>currently 735 meg 'available'.
>
>I now think I would be better off without a pagefile at all. I think page
>files are only
>good for frequently used stuff and I don't have enough of it and that now
>they system
>is wasting time writing a load of 'crap' to the page file which will
>probably never be
>needed again.
>
>For example I was cleaninig out a load of stuff I recorded from TV, some big
>files
>up to 3 gig. Now I think once it reads em in (so I can see what is recorded)
>it is writing them back to the page file.A total waste of time.
>I would go as far as to say it more than halving my computers speed on many
>occasions. (writes take a long time).
>
>Im gonna set it to zero. It's pointless having one with 1.2 gig of ram.
>

You don't need a 10GB pagefile, but in some cases you could
need one even with 1.25GB of memory. While the system will
run (many) things without a pagefile, eventually when you
run something that needs more virtual memory it may cause a
problem. Try a 2GB pagefile.

When your system reads a bit TV capture file, it is not
writing any of that out to the pagefile. The pagefile is
only for things that need to remain in memory (but you're
ran out), or addt'l address space reserved by applications
that "might" end up using up to that much memory even if
they don't.

If you have excessive HDD activity it is more likely due to
filesystem fragmentation, or some other OS setting you have
changed from the defaults.

In alt.comp.hardware Lord Turkey Cough <spamdump@invalid.com> wrote:

| Im gonna set it to zero. It's pointless having one with 1.2 gig of ram.

It depends on the amount of RAM you have and the amount of memory you use.
Todays applications tend to need more. As computers get bigger in memory,
the software developers steal it away from you with more bloated programs.

If you can possibly increase your RAM, that would be best. If using XP,
try to reach 3 GB but beyond that it's not much help. I don't know about
Vista. Linux can go up to 64GB in the 32 bit version.

I'm looking at a new desktop system for my Linux work and plan to make it
a swapless system with 8GB to 16GB of RAM. The intent is to avoid the
I/O activity of swapping.

--
|---------------------------------------/----------------------------------|
| Phil Howard KA9WGN (ka9wgn.ham.org) / Do not send to the address below |
| first name lower case at ipal.net / spamtrap-2007-10-14-1045@ipal.net |
|------------------------------------/-------------------------------------|

32 bit Windows can address 4 GB memory, so the most paging file it can use is 4 GB.
When WinNT was may main OS I tried running without a paging file and it would cause a crash after running for a while. I have not tried WinXP without a paging file so I don't know if it will work or not.

Lord Turkey Cough wrote:
>
> Was wonderinig what to set that too, I set it a while back to 10 gig :O)
> reason being I have piles of spare disk space so I thought "I might as
> well make use of it!!"
>
> Any I returned to the issue recently as I was a bit concerned about
> performance.
> More page file needed I thought :O|
>
> However upon futher though I think the big page file may be the problem
> not the solution.
>
> I have 1.25 gig of memory and most of the time there seems to be a fair bit
> free,
> currently 735 meg 'available'.
>
> I now think I would be better off without a pagefile at all. I think page
> files are only
> good for frequently used stuff and I don't have enough of it and that now
> they system
> is wasting time writing a load of 'crap' to the page file which will
> probably never be
> needed again.
>
> For example I was cleaninig out a load of stuff I recorded from TV, some big
> files
> up to 3 gig. Now I think once it reads em in (so I can see what is recorded)
> it is writing them back to the page file.A total waste of time.
> I would go as far as to say it more than halving my computers speed on many
> occasions. (writes take a long time).
>
> Im gonna set it to zero. It's pointless having one with 1.2 gig of ram.

Mike Walsh wrote:
> 32 bit Windows can address 4 GB memory, so the most paging file it can use is 4 GB.

The 4GB limit is tied to the physical address space. The pagefile
doesn't live here, so you can more than 4GB of pagefile

"Lord Turkey Cough" <spamdump@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:h3hQi.21$7a2.13@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net...
>
> "Lord Turkey Cough" <spamdump@invalid.com> wrote in message
> news:4SgQi.39167$aN2.19712@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net...
>> Was wonderinig what to set that too, I set it a while back to 10 gig :O)
>> reason being I have piles of spare disk space so I thought "I might as
>> well make use of it!!"
>>
>> Any I returned to the issue recently as I was a bit concerned about
>> performance.
>> More page file needed I thought :O|
>>
>> However upon futher though I think the big page file may be the problem
>> not the solution.
>>
>> I have 1.25 gig of memory and most of the time there seems to be a fair
>> bit free,
>> currently 735 meg 'available'.
>>
>> I now think I would be better off without a pagefile at all. I think page
>> files are only
>> good for frequently used stuff and I don't have enough of it and that now
>> they system
>> is wasting time writing a load of 'crap' to the page file which will
>> probably never be
>> needed again.
>>
>> For example I was cleaninig out a load of stuff I recorded from TV, some
>> big files
>> up to 3 gig. Now I think once it reads em in (so I can see what is
>> recorded)
>> it is writing them back to the page file.A total waste of time.
>> I would go as far as to say it more than halving my computers speed on
>> many
>> occasions. (writes take a long time).
>>
>> Im gonna set it to zero. It's pointless having one with 1.2 gig of ram.
>
>
> OK done it. Will let you know it what effect it has :O)


Seems to be running fine, nice and smooth no prblems to report
whatsoever. I can't see the point of having a cache with over a gig of ram,
its counter productive A giga of data by definition cannot be frequently
used.
It just creates a lot of unneccesary, wasting time, energy and disk space
and bearings!!
Possibly the worst idea in the history of computing!!


>
>
>
>>
>>
>
>

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:20:09 GMT, "Lord Turkey Cough"
<spamdump@invalid.com> wrote:


>Seems to be running fine, nice and smooth no prblems to report
>whatsoever. I can't see the point of having a cache with over a gig of ram,
>its counter productive A giga of data by definition cannot be frequently
>used.

Well... in that case some people wouldn't buy that much
memory?

You can disable the pagefile and everything will run fine,
even a trivially small percent faster, but then odd problems
can develop later.

For example I ran a gaming system fine with pagefile
disabled, then during some game (I forget what it is at this
point), it would randomly either freeze or kick me out to
the desktop (I forget which). Lots of people would've
suggested power/cooling/drivers/etc, but since I had fair
confidence of the prior checks I'd done to the system a
further investigation and enabling pagefile again resolved
the problem.


>It just creates a lot of unneccesary, wasting time, energy and disk space
>and bearings!!
>Possibly the worst idea in the history of computing!!

MS certainly doesn't want to rule out low-spec systems from
running windows. Regardless, the scenario you posed
previously about loading a video file would not cause it to
page out to virtual memory. IF you were doing something
particular, say loading that into a video editing
application which then proceeded to allocate a very large
chunk of memory for itself, in that case you would have a
small write to the pagefile allocating, typically not yet
paging out anything yet unless you had actually ran out of
physical memory for the task you were trying to do.

The disk space isn't very significant, it's not like anyone
should be trying to squeeze every last GB of space out of
their drive, as using the last portion is inherantly slower
and tends to end up more fragmented. The energy is even
less of a concern, it'd be a few mA difference in a system
using several amps per rail, and it's not as though the
drive wouldn't have been spinning since you are actively
using the system.

If you want to talk about waste in HDD access, consider
Vista which actively reads in, superfetches files just "in
case" you might want to use them, quickly filling much of
the memory so that unless the system is quite well endowed
with (otherwise more memory than would be needed), once you
start using applications requiring some of this memory the
superfetched data has to be discarded and re-read again
before next execution. Like filling a bucket then dumping
it out then filling and dumping all over again. This would
be great if it were a 2 mile trip to the nearest well, and
you had plenty of spare buckets. It's not so great when
Vista is shipped with even low-end PCs now.

A rule of thumb in linux is to make your swap file no bigger than the
ammount of physical memory in your computer. That is probably a decent
guideline to follow for windows as well. I would set it to 1gig and see if
you run in to any problems. If you do then increase it to 2gig but 1 should
be plenty alongside your 1gig physical ram.


"Lord Turkey Cough" <spamdump@invalid.com> wrote in message
news:4SgQi.39167$aN2.19712@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net...
> Was wonderinig what to set that too, I set it a while back to 10 gig :O)
> reason being I have piles of spare disk space so I thought "I might as
> well make use of it!!"
>
> Any I returned to the issue recently as I was a bit concerned about
> performance.
> More page file needed I thought :O|
>
> However upon futher though I think the big page file may be the problem
> not the solution.
>
> I have 1.25 gig of memory and most of the time there seems to be a fair
> bit free,
> currently 735 meg 'available'.
>
> I now think I would be better off without a pagefile at all. I think page
> files are only
> good for frequently used stuff and I don't have enough of it and that now
> they system
> is wasting time writing a load of 'crap' to the page file which will
> probably never be
> needed again.
>
> For example I was cleaninig out a load of stuff I recorded from TV, some
> big files
> up to 3 gig. Now I think once it reads em in (so I can see what is
> recorded)
> it is writing them back to the page file.A total waste of time.
> I would go as far as to say it more than halving my computers speed on
> many
> occasions. (writes take a long time).
>
> Im gonna set it to zero. It's pointless having one with 1.2 gig of ram.
>

"Michael Everson" <spam@qeidrafting.com> wrote in message
news:7NCQi.823$cR5.31@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
>A rule of thumb in linux is to make your swap file no bigger than the
>ammount of physical memory in your computer.

That is an old wives tale.

Does it really make sense to have a 128meg swapfile if you only have 128meg,
but have a 1gig swapfile if you have 1gig?

Let windows manage the size... If you have lots of ram you won't be hitting
it very often anyhow.