page file ?

[beamish]

Hello, Unit has 1gb memory, two 120gb harddrives, WindowsXP Home(oem generic).
Page file size set by Windows. The OS has created a page file in each drive.
Does this cause a performance problem?

Thank You.
Take Care.
beamish.

 

[Will Denny]

Hi Beamish

Please try the following article:

"Virtual Memory in Windows XP"
http://aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

 

[t.cruise]

With that much RAM, the page file should have little usage, unless you use a program like
Adobe Photoshop that specifically requires its usage no matter how much RAM you have. You
shouldn't see any perceivable performance hit.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

With that much RAM, the page file should have little usage, unless
you use a program like Adobe Photoshop that specifically requires its
usage no matter how much RAM you have. You shouldn't see any
perceivable performance hit.

I'm not a Photoshop user, so take what I say with a grain of
salt. But my understanding is that Photoshop does not use the
Windows page file, but instead creates its own virtual memory
file.

 

[Kenny]

I'm very much a beginner to Photoshop but this virtual memory area is known
as the scratch pad and it's recommended to have it on a separate drive or
partition from the program.

 

[Ron Martell]

Hello, Unit has 1gb memory, two 120gb harddrives, WindowsXP Home(oem generic).
Page file size set by Windows. The OS has created a page file in each drive.
Does this cause a performance problem?

Thank You.
Take Care.
beamish.

Not in the slightest. If anything it will improve performance because
Windows will select whichever page file is most efficient for any
given paging operation.

And with 1 gb of RAM it is quite likely that you are not going to
encounter anything much in the way of actual paging activity from
Windows.

Good luck


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

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[beamish]

Not in the slightest. If anything it will improve performance because
Windows will select whichever page file is most efficient for any
given paging operation.

And with 1 gb of RAM it is quite likely that you are not going to
encounter anything much in the way of actual paging activity from
Windows.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada

Hello, Good to know. Thank You.
Take Care.
beamish.

 

[Mark]

And with 1 gb of RAM it is quite likely that you are not going to
encounter anything much in the way of actual paging activity from
Windows.

Hardly. Copy a 2GB file from one drive to another and watch XP swap
out your applications to make the disk cache larger.

Mark

 

[Ron Martell]

Hardly. Copy a 2GB file from one drive to another and watch XP swap
out your applications to make the disk cache larger.

Mark

In over 20 years of using a PC I have never once copied a 2 gb file.





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

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[Alex Nichol]

Hello, Unit has 1gb memory, two 120gb harddrives, WindowsXP Home(oem generic).
Page file size set by Windows. The OS has created a page file in each drive.
Does this cause a performance problem?

No - but it may be less than ideal, and probably using far more disk
that needed (not that you are short, but why waste it?). Usually in XP
one active page file is enough. On a two drive machine it is best on
the second drive, as being usually the one with less other activity,
though at 1GB the amount of actual traffic should be negligible. But
you need a small amount provided for on the drive that is booted from.
Read up at www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

 

[Alex Nichol]

Hardly. Copy a 2GB file from one drive to another and watch XP swap
out your applications to make the disk cache larger.

I have just done so for your benefit on a 768MB machine that has the odd
15MB parked in a 100 MB page file (the system always seems to do this as
a precaution).

The usage of the page file did not increase *at all* during the
operation and there was no traffic to or from the file. The system
balances priorities and will only increase cache above a basic minimum
if there is *nothing* more important around. Copying does *not* involve
loading an entire file into Virtual memory space.

You seem to have started from an assumption that Windows memory
management is as you put it in another thread 'brain dead'. You clearly
do not know enough about how it works to make any such assertion

I suggest you go and find out something about how it operates before
making any further comments