Fragmented Page File

  • Thread starter Thread starter Walter E.
  • Start date Start date
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Walter E.

I am running Win XP Pro on a P4 1.5 GHz with 512 MB Ram.

While I was defragmenting my c drive, I noticed that the allocation clusters
for the page file do not form a contiguous segment but are kind of spread
out among the other data clusters. The page file is split in about 20
segments.

I noticed this both in the Win XP defragger and the Vopt defragger. Computer
seems to be running fine, though.

Is this fragmentation of the page file desirable? If not, what can I do
about it?

Thanks
 
-----Original Message-----
I am running Win XP Pro on a P4 1.5 GHz with 512 MB Ram.

While I was defragmenting my c drive, I noticed that the allocation clusters
for the page file do not form a contiguous segment but are kind of spread
out among the other data clusters. The page file is split in about 20
segments.

I noticed this both in the Win XP defragger and the Vopt defragger. Computer
seems to be running fine, though.

Is this fragmentation of the page file desirable? If not, what can I do
about it?

Thanks
--
Walter
The Happy Iconoclast www.rationality.net
-


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Click to expand...
 
I have found diskeeper 7 and 8 excellent defragers,
relative to the built-in, in speed, options, paging file
degfragmentation, and fragmentation prevention. They have
increased my sytem speed on XP PRO notably and appear
quite stable and robust. Have run it for over a year now.
 
Hi!Walter!

Fragmentation occurs when a file is written to a drive and there isn't
sufficient contiguous space on the drive to hold each part of the file
in order. When a drive is relatively empty, fragmented files are less
likely to occur since there are numerous large blocks of space
available. As the drive fills up and files are also deleted, different
sized pockets of empty space occur making it more difficult to find
larger areas of contiguous space. Defragmenting the drive gathers the
pieces of files that weren't able able to be written contiguously and
reorders them on the drive. The performance gain is achieved by the hard
drive heads not having to move to many different locations on the hard
drive platters to gather the pieces of a file when it's accessed.
By default, Windows XP creates a pagefile that can be expanded and
contracted depending on the amount of extra virtual memory that's
needed. If the initial block of drive space that was allocated at setup
becomes surrounded by additional files that have been saved to the
drive, a fragmented page file can occur when the operating system
expands it past the initial size.
By design, Windows XP will not allow a page file to be defragmented when
the computer is online. Online in this case does not mean when it's
connected to the internet, but when it is powered on and the operating
system has been loaded and ready for use. This is why you can defrag
1000 times from inside XP, check the defrag log page file section and it
will never show it being defragmented. To get around this problem using
the free method, it's necessary to:

Eliminate the fragmented pagefile

Create a temporary page file on another drive

Reboot

Defragment the drive that held the original page file

Eliminate the temporary page file

Recreate the original page file

Reboot


http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314848
regards/

ssg/pronetworks.org
 
I don't know about you guys but I got VoptXP to defrag my pagefile. It is
all in a contiguous file at the start of the drive. Very nice. It does a
couple of restarts but gets the job done.

Doug
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Walter said:
I am running Win XP Pro on a P4 1.5 GHz with 512 MB Ram.

While I was defragmenting my c drive, I noticed that the allocation clusters
for the page file do not form a contiguous segment but are kind of spread
out among the other data clusters. The page file is split in about 20
segments.

I noticed this both in the Win XP defragger and the Vopt defragger. Computer
seems to be running fine, though.

Is this fragmentation of the page file desirable? If not, what can I do
about it?
Click to expand...

It really does not matter very much. The use of the file is largely on
a page by page basis, and to different points in the file as likely as
not, so it does not matter if you can't get a continuous read, Anyway
with a reasonable amount of RAM the actual amount of to and fro traffic
is not that big.

If it concerns you, set the page files size to No Page file (and ignore
warnings), reboot without one, do a defrag, using a tool that
consolidates free space, and then start it up again. But come to think
of it, if you get a tool that will do that (I don't know Vopt to know if
it does) it is quite likely to have a means of defragging the page file
 
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