Ryan Laurie said:
I have 2 Raid 0 drives one with the OS on it and one that is blank they are
both the same speed. I have 2 GB's of memory and Windows Vista Ultimate.
What is the best performance setup with the page file? Should I partition
the 2nd drive with 4.5 GB and setup a minimum of 2048 and a max of 4096
and
set the OS partition with a minimum of 2048 and a max of 2048 for the dump
file. I need help with this I'm being told so many different things I
need
someone who knows the correct answer. If I am wrong please let me know
what
Hi Ryan,
There's a lot of conflicting advice out there.
I believe Microsoft's advice for XP still applies to Vista:
How to configure paging files for optimization and recovery in Windows
XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482
The key factor here is space for a memory dump. If your system hits a STOP
error (aka BSoD), it will throw a memory dump. This dump can be essential
for diagnosing the cause of the STOP. You might not be interested in
examining your own dump; but Microsoft, Nvidia etc may want to see it. at
the STOP crash, the system will write the memory dump to the paging file on
the Boot volume (ie, the C: drive). If there is no paging file on C: no dump
can be created. If the paging file on C: is too small, the memory dump will
be truncated, and possibly unusable.
To make sure you can take a good dump, configure a page file on C: drive, at
least as large as your physical memory (2GB in your case). That way, the
page file will be able to hold an entire memory dump, in the event of a
crash.
If you want to supplement this with an extra page file on the second drive,
well, that's an option. It isn't required. There may be some slight
performance benefit to having paging spread over two spindles (well, 4
physical spindles, if it's RAID 0). if you have 32-bit Vista, it's never
going to use more than 4GB of virtual address space, anyway. With 2GB of
RAM, you'll probably find your system is not paging heavily, most of the
time. So with 2GB of RAM and a 2GB page file on C: drive, the second page
file will only be very lightly used, if at all.
Of course the only way to tell "for sure" is to run Performance Monitor, and
track your paging activity and disk IO, to see how much impact paging is
really having. But as a rule of thumb, I'd say:
- set up a system-managed page file on C:drive
- the system will make it large enough to hold a dump;
- configure a second page file on D: if you're seeing really heavy paging;
set it to "system managed".
If you're running 64-bit Windows, then you have access to a much larger
virtual address space (larger than 4GB). In that case, there could
definitely be an advantage to having a second page file on D: drive. Again,
make it "system managed" for best balance of performance and size (human
users rarely outsmart the system, despite a few outraged cries to the
contrary. Human users tend to go by vague "it feels feels faster" kind of
measures, while the system is polling the performance counters in real-time,
and adjusting the page file accordingly)
That's my 2 cents; hope it helps.
