Page Files.

[Bubba]

Just a general question regarding page files.

Errata:

1) My system has three physical hard disks, (C,D,E). On drive C (sys vol) I
have a page file of 64 mb. I don't really want any paging on this drive as
it contains the OS and I only want to accomodate the crach log requirements,
2) Data Drives D & E, System Managed (currenly 3072mb each),
3) 2 GB of ram (and other stuff).

The Data drives are 10K RPM - 500GB mirrored volumes (hardware Raid).

I've noticed that sometimes the system is slowwww! I mean a simple dble
click on a jpeg brings up Pic and Fax Viewer. I then may go into Photosshop
cs2 do some editing etc. Then exit (the adobe cleanup manager runs and
sometimes stays in memory - but this is an issue for Adobe).

I have a scheduled restart that occurs every day at 6:00.

This really seems to help, until sometime later. I should also mention that
this is a high end multi-media system with WinTV PVR, Snapstream, Pinnacle
etc. (All of which are memory pigs).

In any case, is there a better solution to optimize pagefiles? For example,
just put a pagefile on one of the secondary disks.

Thanks.

 

[R. McCarty]

With your RAM, I'd suspect little traffic on the Pagefile. You really don't
need a Pagefile on each of your 3 physical drives/volumes.You'd want the
Pagefile on the 1st Logical partition of one of the non-System drives. I'd
also redirect Temp variables and other "Scratch/Workspace" folders to that
same secondary drive.

In some cases it might be beneficial to have a dedicated (SATA) controller
and drive for just those purposes.

Are these RAID arrays built with traditional PATA technology drives or w/
SATA ? Also have you done any benchmarking to make sure the drives
are running at optimal throughputs ?

 

[Bubba]

Thanks for the reply.

I was just editing a video file with Pinnacle and noticed that the Pagefile
size PEAK was 1.44 GB! While Ram usage (again Peak) for Pinnacle was 684mb.
This makes no sense at all.I just got off the phone with Pinnacle and they
tell me to increase the Pagefile, place pagefiles on MULTIPLE drives and of
course ADD more Ram. Well XP won't use more than 4GB or ram so that does no
good. However, they tell me that XP will use up to 8GB of ram. I've been an
MCSE and MCT for 25 years and I know that to be a bogus statement!

So, I ran Photoshop CS2, took an image file that was 1600x1200. I doubled
the image size, Despeckled the image (takes a lot of ram to do this), double
the size again and diffused it. Ram usage was around 712 mb, while my disk
drives were thrashing like all hell. I mean really thrashing. I called Adobe
and they pretty much indicated the same as Pinnacle.

My ram is in two 1GB sticks (I know this to be a better config than
4x512mb - latency timing etc.)

My vid card has 1Gb or ram and it is not shared. This was another thing that
Pinnacle and Adobe wanted me to check.

So I'm really confused as to why the pagefile PEAK is so high. Could it be
that I have TOO much Pagefile space/ This was one of the points I found in a
Google.

Also, the Raided Drives are SATA. As for drive optimization, when I
installed the drives about 6 months ago, I formatted the drives to conform
to the type of data they would contain. For example, Drive E is used for
WinTV PVR captures and is FAT32 formatted . This is the recommendation of
Ulead, Pinnacle and Sony for video capturing.

This system (particularly the data drives as the OS drive doesn't really
change a lot) is defragged twice weekly. I've found this to be the best
cycle to do so. As the video files are typically 1gb to 2gb and I analyze
the files before a defrag so as to exclude them from the process.

My next step (just for curiosity) is to move all the data from drive E to an
external drive and reformat then put back.

Hmmm.

 

[Curt Christianson]

Hi Bubba,

R. McCarty gave already gave you an excellent answer to your query, and you
may already know this, but I have an excellent article on Virtual Memory
(Pagefile) written by the late MVP Alex Nichol:

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

Just an FYI.

--
HTH,
Curt

Windows Support Center
www.aumha.org
Practically Nerded,...
http://dundats.mvps.org/Index.htm

| Just a general question regarding page files.
|
| Errata:
|
| 1) My system has three physical hard disks, (C,D,E). On drive C (sys vol)
I
| have a page file of 64 mb. I don't really want any paging on this drive as
| it contains the OS and I only want to accomodate the crach log
requirements,
| 2) Data Drives D & E, System Managed (currenly 3072mb each),
| 3) 2 GB of ram (and other stuff).
|
| The Data drives are 10K RPM - 500GB mirrored volumes (hardware Raid).
|
| I've noticed that sometimes the system is slowwww! I mean a simple dble
| click on a jpeg brings up Pic and Fax Viewer. I then may go into
Photosshop
| cs2 do some editing etc. Then exit (the adobe cleanup manager runs and
| sometimes stays in memory - but this is an issue for Adobe).
|
| I have a scheduled restart that occurs every day at 6:00.
|
| This really seems to help, until sometime later. I should also mention
that
| this is a high end multi-media system with WinTV PVR, Snapstream, Pinnacle
| etc. (All of which are memory pigs).
|
| In any case, is there a better solution to optimize pagefiles? For
example,
| just put a pagefile on one of the secondary disks.
|
| Thanks.
|
|
|

 

[Bubba]

I removed the pagefile from the drive that does the vid capture and contains
all my multi-media data.

Now no more thrashing, memory usage is reasonable (PF is way down now...)
again and the system is responding QUITE admirably.

Thanks to all.

NB: this makes sense and it is actually the only way to effectively deal
with memory management and video/multi-medi capturing and editing systems if
one thinks about it.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Just a general question regarding page files.

Errata:

"Errata"? Why "errata"?

1) My system has three physical hard disks, (C,D,E). On drive C (sys vol) I
have a page file of 64 mb. I don't really want any paging on this drive as
it contains the OS and I only want to accomodate the crach log requirements,
2) Data Drives D & E, System Managed (currenly 3072mb each),
3) 2 GB of ram (and other stuff).

Two points:

1. 2GB of RAM is way more than almost anyone using Windows XP can make
effective use of. It's highly unlikely that with that much RAM you
will be doing any paging at all. So where you put the page file will
not be very significant in your case.

2. The single most important performance factor in page file settings
is head movement to and from it. Because that happens at mechanical
speeds, rather than electronic ones, anything you can do to minimize
it speeds up the computer. So it would be bad to put it on a second
partition on the main, or only, hard drive (because it puts it farther
away from the other used files), but good to put it on a second
physical drive. A good rule of thumb is to put it on the most-used
partition of your least-used physical drive (but see point 1 above; in
your case, it will hardly matter).

The best information on page file settings is this article by the late
MVP Alex Nichol: "Virtual Memory in Windows XP" at
http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm

 

[Bubba]

Just a slight error. No need to get all worried about a word in a doc is
there?

This was a post for a problem, not a grammar check.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Just a slight error. No need to get all worried about a word in a doc is
there?

Worried? I wasn't worried at all.

This was a post for a problem, not a grammar check.

It wasn't a grammar check. I simply wanted to make sure I wasn't
misunderstanding something you meant.