Page File Question

[Guest]

Hello,
I wanted to know if two page files is better than one. I have read through
the forums and read all the different articles but here is my situation that
I cannot decide. Here is my rig to understand where I am coming from a
little more.

Pentium 4 - 3.4 Ghz
2 Gigs RAM (Dual Channel)
RAID 0 (Two 10,000 RPM 36 Gig Raptors Striped for a total of 69 Gigs)
One 80 Gig IDE drive for storage (music and such)

My question is with the above setup should I put a 4 gig page file on BOTH
the C and D drives, or just one 4 gig on the 80 gig. I ask because the
Raptor drives are SATA and the 80 gig is just IDE. I need maximum
performance, redundancy is of no meaning to me. I would appreciate any
advice that anyone might have in this situation. Thanks.

-Ryan

 

[Jim]

Hello,
I wanted to know if two page files is better than one. I have read
through
the forums and read all the different articles but here is my situation
that
I cannot decide. Here is my rig to understand where I am coming from a
little more.

Pentium 4 - 3.4 Ghz
2 Gigs RAM (Dual Channel)
RAID 0 (Two 10,000 RPM 36 Gig Raptors Striped for a total of 69 Gigs)
One 80 Gig IDE drive for storage (music and such)

My question is with the above setup should I put a 4 gig page file on BOTH
the C and D drives, or just one 4 gig on the 80 gig. I ask because the
Raptor drives are SATA and the 80 gig is just IDE. I need maximum
performance, redundancy is of no meaning to me. I would appreciate any
advice that anyone might have in this situation. Thanks.

-Ryan

I would put a single pagefile on the fastest disk. That would be the 10000
rpm devices.
Jim

 

[Guest]

I thought this might be the case, anymore thoughts from an MVP?

 

[Jim]

It really doesn't take long to find out for yourself which way works best on
your system.
Jim

 

[Ron Martell]

Hello,
I wanted to know if two page files is better than one. I have read through
the forums and read all the different articles but here is my situation that
I cannot decide. Here is my rig to understand where I am coming from a
little more.

Pentium 4 - 3.4 Ghz
2 Gigs RAM (Dual Channel)
RAID 0 (Two 10,000 RPM 36 Gig Raptors Striped for a total of 69 Gigs)
One 80 Gig IDE drive for storage (music and such)

My question is with the above setup should I put a 4 gig page file on BOTH
the C and D drives, or just one 4 gig on the 80 gig. I ask because the
Raptor drives are SATA and the 80 gig is just IDE. I need maximum
performance, redundancy is of no meaning to me. I would appreciate any
advice that anyone might have in this situation. Thanks.

-Ryan

The ultimate answer to any performance related question regarding page
files is that you should have sufficient RAM so as to eliminate any
need for Windows to relocate active memory content from RAM to the
page file so as to allow that RAM to be used for other, currently more
important, items.

Note that this does not mean that a page file is not needed if there
is sufficient RAM. Address locations in the page file are also used
to satisfy the unused portions of memory allocation requests, and the
page file must exist in order for this to happen. Otherwise RAM must
be used for these items.

As to multiple page files, the conventional wisdom has always been
that having multiple page files, one on each physical drive, would
give the best performance because that allows Windows to use whichever
page file is most efficient for each specific paging operation.
However I have never seen comparative benchmark tests run on a system
where there was a substantial difference in performance between the
different disk drives such as you have.

I would suspect that in your instance if you configured a page file on
both drives that you would find that the one on the 80 gb IDE drive
would be used the most, as the operating system and application
program files are on the RAID drives. And this could provide the
best performance because the savings in drive head repositioning time
would likely more than offset the difference in data transfer rates
because of the higher rotational speed and more efficient drive
interface.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."