Where to put that pagefile.sys partition

[Jootec from Mars]

OK. I got two SATA harddrives - a 36gb 10,000 rpm boot drive and a 200GB
7,200 rpm 8MB cache drive.

I use XP Home and Win2K on my machine and want to create a single
pagefile.sys partition for both to use. I understand the read/write speed of
a drive gets slower the further you get from the outer cylinders.

So is it better to have the pagefile partition (3GB) as the 3rd partition on
the 10,000rpm drive after the 8GB Win2K partition and the 6GB XP Home
partition? (May be i can shrink those partitions slightly since I'll be
having a specific pagefile partition) Or is it better to have it as the
first partition on the 7,200 rpm drive?

The 10,000 rpm drive will also contain the serious apps partition for Win2K.
The 7,200 rpm drive will contain a games partition for XP and a digital
video partition(Win 2K). Although I do aim later to buy another humongous
ATA drive for more digital video storage and processing.

Thanks in advance

James

 

[Rod Speed]

It really doesnt matter if you do the only thing
that makes any sense, have enough physical ram
so that it isnt used much except at boot time.

OK. I got two SATA harddrives - a 36gb 10,000 rpm
boot drive and a 200GB 7,200 rpm 8MB cache drive.

I use XP Home and Win2K on my machine and want to create a single
pagefile.sys partition for both to use. I understand the read/write speed
of a drive gets slower the further you get from the outer cylinders.

 

[dg]

I have a hint to add to this, from personal experience. No matter how much
RAM you have, don't disable the paging file. I use 2gb and I even let XP
manage the size on its own which ends up with a huge file, but it leaves the
system very stable. I am not sure why but you can have some strange
problems when you disable your paging file or manually set the size. Maybe
some folks do it with no problem, but I have seen problems start and stop
because of changing paging file settings. In a newsgroup like this I will
probably get flamed for this post, as I have no evidence or real theory
behind this. Maybe other folks had the same problems?

--Dan

 

[Al Dykes]

OK. I got two SATA harddrives - a 36gb 10,000 rpm boot drive and a 200GB
7,200 rpm 8MB cache drive.

I use XP Home and Win2K on my machine and want to create a single
pagefile.sys partition for both to use. I understand the read/write speed of
a drive gets slower the further you get from the outer cylinders.

So is it better to have the pagefile partition (3GB) as the 3rd partition on
the 10,000rpm drive after the 8GB Win2K partition and the 6GB XP Home
partition? (May be i can shrink those partitions slightly since I'll be
having a specific pagefile partition) Or is it better to have it as the
first partition on the 7,200 rpm drive?

The 10,000 rpm drive will also contain the serious apps partition for Win2K.
The 7,200 rpm drive will contain a games partition for XP and a digital
video partition(Win 2K). Although I do aim later to buy another humongous
ATA drive for more digital video storage and processing.

Thanks in advance

James

The degree of "tuning" you are talking about is a fantasy unless you
make performance measurements, make changes, see what the bottleneck
is with the application you want to run fastest, and repeat until
you've reached the point of diministing returns.

For what you are talking about, I suggest you set up a vanilla,
no-partitions system and learn how to run perfmon.exe to see what the
bottleneck is for each of your applications, and then make changes to
eliminate that bottleneck. If you've got enough RAM the frequency of
page file access will be low enough that you won't notice an
improvement if you speed it up.

How do you know that you need 3GB swap space ? Swap space requirement
is driven my your application.

You're correct in that it's good to put the swap space on the lowest
latency disk. OTOH, partitioning can force the disk to do long seeks,
which may offset any speed advanatage.

I'm of the opinion that partitioning doesn't help performance, or ease
of backup. Multiple disks, on seperate channels does.

My $0.02

 

[Bob Willard]

OK. I got two SATA harddrives - a 36gb 10,000 rpm boot drive and a 200GB
7,200 rpm 8MB cache drive.

I use XP Home and Win2K on my machine and want to create a single
pagefile.sys partition for both to use. I understand the read/write speed of
a drive gets slower the further you get from the outer cylinders.

So is it better to have the pagefile partition (3GB) as the 3rd partition on
the 10,000rpm drive after the 8GB Win2K partition and the 6GB XP Home
partition? (May be i can shrink those partitions slightly since I'll be
having a specific pagefile partition) Or is it better to have it as the
first partition on the 7,200 rpm drive?

The 10,000 rpm drive will also contain the serious apps partition for Win2K.
The 7,200 rpm drive will contain a games partition for XP and a digital
video partition(Win 2K). Although I do aim later to buy another humongous
ATA drive for more digital video storage and processing.

Thanks in advance

James

You are correct that modern HDs have higher datarates on outer bands
than on inner bands, but the fall-off is rather gradual. For a
fairly modern HD, with its rather typical 16 zones, the datarates fall
off at roughly 3% per zone. So, the innermost zone is only half the
outer zone, but the difference between the penultimate zone and the
ultimate zone is ~3%, and the difference between the antepenultimate
zone and the ultimate zone is ~6%. {And that's the first time in
~40 years that I've been able to use the word 'antepenultimate' in a
sentence; gotta love it.}

Datarates to the physical device are cloaked by caches. HDs usually
have both read-ahead and write-behind caches; OSs frequently have
both as well; and RAID hardware may also do caching behind your back
(RAID5 requires caching).

Do not assume that a 10K RPM HD will have higher peak datarates than
a 7200 RPM HD; you need to look at the specs for the specific HDs to
know. The primary effects of 10K RPM over 7200 RPM are: lower average
access time, and higher price.

In summary, I think you are over-thinking your pagefile strategy. Let
the OS manage it, and don't sweat it. If measurements show that your
pagefile is costing serious performance on your system with its normal
workload, then the solution is simple: buy more RAM.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Bob Willard" advised:

In summary, I think you are over-thinking your pagefile strategy.
Let the OS manage it, and don't sweat it. If measurements show
that your pagefile is costing serious performance on your system
with its normal workload, then the solution is simple: buy more
RAM.

What if the RAM is maxed out at the largest size allowed by
the motherboard and you do a lot of editing with big media files?
Wouldn't putting the pagefile on a 2nd (or 3rd) hard drive having
its own IDE channel be worthwhile? I once somehow ended up
with a pagefile on a different hard drive - on a different IDE
channel from the one the system hard drive was on - while testing
multi-booting of the archived versions of the same system, and
defragmentation seemed to go more quickly than usual.

Since a 7,200 rpm ATA/133 60GB hard drive with 8MB of
cache memory costs around $75, and a PCI ATA/133 controller
card to supply extra IDE channels goes for about $30, mebbe a
"page drive" might be the way to go - especially if you have an
extra hard drive lying around. Think of a pagefile 60GB in size
on its own IDE channel....

*TimDaniels*

 

[Al Dykes]

"Bob Willard" advised:


What if the RAM is maxed out at the largest size allowed by
the motherboard and you do a lot of editing with big media files?
Wouldn't putting the pagefile on a 2nd (or 3rd) hard drive having
its own IDE channel be worthwhile? I once somehow ended up
with a pagefile on a different hard drive - on a different IDE
channel from the one the system hard drive was on - while testing
multi-booting of the archived versions of the same system, and
defragmentation seemed to go more quickly than usual.

Significant pagefile activity happens only when the "working set" of
your application (plus the operating system) exceeds the physical RAM
on your system.

See http://www.memorymanagement.org/glossary/w.html and google
"working set" for a flood of hits. Generations of people have gotten
their PhDs on this topic.

You can't tell what your working set is except by measuring it with
perfmon. For a well written program large program, the working set
will be small, compared to the entire memory footprint. The pages in
the working set will be in memory and the rest may be kept in the
pagefile. If the working set exceeds physical memeory enough
you get "memory thrashing".


Overall, you have no idea what will be the limiting factor
(called the bottleneck) of a hardware/OS/application combination
unless you've already built something similar already.

Build something, learn how to identify the bottleneck,
solve it, and repeat the process until the system is fast enough.

If you're looking for the best possible concurrent IDE performance
each disk should be on it's oen channel.

Since a 7,200 rpm ATA/133 60GB hard drive with 8MB of
cache memory costs around $75, and a PCI ATA/133 controller
card to supply extra IDE channels goes for about $30, mebbe a
"page drive" might be the way to go - especially if you have an
extra hard drive lying around. Think of a pagefile 60GB in size
on its own IDE channel....

Physical RAM in excess of you application's working set buys
you very little performance.

Pagefile size in excess of what your application mix needs gets you
absolutly nothing.

Pagefile size has no relationship to physical ram size for the sake
of this discussion.

 

[Bob Willard]

"Bob Willard" advised:




What if the RAM is maxed out at the largest size allowed by
the motherboard and you do a lot of editing with big media files?
Wouldn't putting the pagefile on a 2nd (or 3rd) hard drive having
its own IDE channel be worthwhile? I once somehow ended up
with a pagefile on a different hard drive - on a different IDE
channel from the one the system hard drive was on - while testing
multi-booting of the archived versions of the same system, and
defragmentation seemed to go more quickly than usual.

Since a 7,200 rpm ATA/133 60GB hard drive with 8MB of
cache memory costs around $75, and a PCI ATA/133 controller
card to supply extra IDE channels goes for about $30, mebbe a
"page drive" might be the way to go - especially if you have an
extra hard drive lying around. Think of a pagefile 60GB in size
on its own IDE channel....

*TimDaniels*

If measurements show that your pagefile is costing serious performance
on your system with its normal workload, then the solution is simple:

If you can add more RAM to your MB, then
buy more RAM
Else
buy a new MB with more RAM
Endif

Think about it: if you are wasting time and getting frustrated due
to an inadequate amount of sub-microsecond access time RAM, then adding
HDs with multi-millisecond access times will not lead to happiness.

But, before you spend any money on hardware, read Al D's note and do
the measurements.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

If measurements show that your pagefile is costing serious performance
on your system with its normal workload, then the solution is simple:

If you can add more RAM to your MB, then
buy more RAM
Else
buy a new MB with more RAM
Endif

Read again. My comment was predicated with the
statement that the RAM capacity of the motherboard
was maxed out, i.e. at maximum memory capacity, so
"more RAM" is not an option, and "a new motherboard"
is generally considered an extravagant solution to any
PC problem. Your response is appropriate to the
question "What is the best way to minimize paging?",
not to whether having a pagefile on a separate hard drive
with its own IDE channel would make for faster paging
than a pagefile on a partition on the same hard drive as
the system. I submit that if one is prepared to futz around
with a separate and specifically-located partition to speed
paging, then putting a page file on a separate hard drive
and channel (if they are available) is a better solution,
although far short of increasing the amount of RAM.
Remember that the original poster's question was
"Where to put that pagefile.sys partition?", not "How
can I minimize paging time?"

*TimDaniels*

 

[Alexander Grigoriev]

You can expect paging performance to be access-time bounded, not
transfer-rate bounded. Your best bet is to put it in the middle of the
drive.

Anyway, for a premium one'd pay for a SCSI paging drive, it's possible to
buy quite a lot of RAM.

 

[Marc de Vries]

in response to:


Read again. My comment was predicated with the
statement that the RAM capacity of the motherboard
was maxed out, i.e. at maximum memory capacity, so
"more RAM" is not an option, and "a new motherboard"
is generally considered an extravagant solution to any
PC problem.

Buying a disk, or spending time rearranging a disk for 0.001%
performance gain is an extravagant solution too.

Buying a new mobo for a 1000% performance gain is usually not an
extravagant solution.

Your response is appropriate to the
question "What is the best way to minimize paging?",
not to whether having a pagefile on a separate hard drive
with its own IDE channel would make for faster paging
than a pagefile on a partition on the same hard drive as
the system. I submit that if one is prepared to futz around
with a separate and specifically-located partition to speed
paging, then putting a page file on a separate hard drive
and channel (if they are available) is a better solution,
although far short of increasing the amount of RAM.
Remember that the original poster's question was
"Where to put that pagefile.sys partition?", not "How
can I minimize paging time?"

It doesn't matter if the original poster asked the wrong question. As
long as he gets the right answer

But seriously: Have you ever encountered a situation where you need
more RAM for your applications then your mobo allowed? I doubt that
very much.

Expecially with large media you rarely need a lot of ram. For example,
when you edit a 2GB movie file, you only need several tons of MB of
memory. The reason for this is that you are editing streaming media,
and the application only need to load and edit a minute at a time.
In other situations the writer of an application that edits 2GB files
knows that putting all of that in memory will create huge problems, so
the programmer will find a way edit the file in small bits.

So the situations where you have maxed out your mobo with RAM and you
are still swapping are ***EXTREMELY*** rare.

In such a situation the placement for the swapfile is very simple:
You have to put it on the most used partition on the least used drive.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Buying a disk, or spending time rearranging a disk for 0.001%
performance gain is an extravagant solution too.

Not if you already have a spare 7,200 rpm hard drive
lying around unused (as I have).

Buying a new mobo for a 1000% performance gain is usually
not an extravagant solution.

With my Dell Dimension, it would also involve buying
a new power supply and reloading a ton of software
and buying new RAM to match the motherboard. It
would be more cost-effective to simply buy a new
computer

But seriously: Have you ever encountered a situation where you need
more RAM for your applications then your mobo allowed? I doubt that
very much.

Doubt all you want, but when I tripled my RAM size,
the time to defrag the disk dropped by half.

So the situations where you have maxed out your mobo with RAM
and you are still swapping are ***EXTREMELY*** rare.

Really? According to Dell, my mobo's RAM is maxed out
at 384MB. Although it will really take twice that, to get it
would involve throwing out the three 128MB sticks that I
have now. Would you be satisfied with 384MB of RAM
nowadays? Would you consider defragging a rare usage?

In such a situation the placement for the swapfile is very simple:
You have to put it on the most used partition on the least used drive.

Right! Like on a spare hard drive that has a dedicated IDE
channel.

You have to remember, Marc, that different people have
different budgets, hardware access, and time, and it's best
to just answer their specific questions as best you can and
only THEN point out what you consider to be better solutions
IF they have the requisite budget, hardware access, and time.
IOW, the "best" solution for you may not be the "best" for
someone else.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Al Dykes]

Not if you already have a spare 7,200 rpm hard drive
lying around unused (as I have).




With my Dell Dimension, it would also involve buying
a new power supply and reloading a ton of software
and buying new RAM to match the motherboard. It
would be more cost-effective to simply buy a new
computer

Yes, absolutly,

Doubt all you want, but when I tripled my RAM size,
the time to defrag the disk dropped by half.

Most of us didn't buy a computer to run defrag, ;-) and it's
an irrelevant benchmark. What mix of programs to you want to
run better, and how much better ? Lets get specific. Without
goals spending time or money is pointless.

The common set of applications (windows+Internet Explorer+Outlook (or
another email client)+MSOFFICE runs fine in 256MB, and 384MB
is plenty. (all running at once.)

What do you run ? What's the slowest task you want to speed up
(and I don't mean something you do infreqently like full backup.)

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Most of us didn't buy a computer to run defrag, ;-)
and it's an irrelevant benchmark. What mix of
programs to you want to run better, and how much
better ? Lets get specific. Without
goals spending time or money is pointless.

Why are you asking me? I didn't ask the question -
which, BTW, was "Where to put that pagefile.sys
partition?", NOT "What is the 'best' way to speed
up my system?".

As for defrag, I consider it representative of an
app that does a lot of file I/O and file reconstruction.
It's not a benchmark, but it does point in the right
direction. It's good enough for me for that purpose.
If it's not good enough for you for that purpose, it's
not good enough for *you* for that pupose.

The common set of applications (windows+Internet Explorer+
Outlook (or another email client)+MSOFFICE runs fine in
256MB, and 384MB is plenty. (all running at once.)

Obviously, the original poster had more in mind than those
office apps, so you're answering a question that wasn't asked.
Why not ask *him* how much RAM his system has and
what he intends to run? And then remember - he didn't ask
whether he needs more RAM, he asked where he should
put the pagefile to use it most effectively.

What do you run ? What's the slowest task you want to
speed up (and I don't mean something you do infreqently
like full backup.)

What is so insignificant about backup speed? Backup is an
important operation and it should be done frequently. Anything
that speeds that process makes the backup more likely to be
done. As for *full* backup versus *incremental* backup,
that's a religious topic.

In reply to the original poster's question about where to put
the pagefile to make its use fastest, my answer is still to put it
on a separate hard drive that has a dedicated IDE channel.
Let *him* decide if that is cost-effective for him to do so,
given his resources and applications..

*TimDaniels*

 

[Marc de Vries]

Not if you already have a spare 7,200 rpm hard drive
lying around unused (as I have).

Adding Ram isn't an extravagant solution if you happen to have it
lying around unused too.

With my Dell Dimension, it would also involve buying
a new power supply and reloading a ton of software
and buying new RAM to match the motherboard. It
would be more cost-effective to simply buy a new
computer




Doubt all you want, but when I tripled my RAM size,
the time to defrag the disk dropped by half.

What defrag program was that???
Such tools normally don't and shouldn't use much memory at all.
Or did you run it while you were doing a lot of other work at the same
time eating the 348MB ram you have?

Really? According to Dell, my mobo's RAM is maxed out
at 384MB. Although it will really take twice that, to get it
would involve throwing out the three 128MB sticks that I
have now. Would you be satisfied with 384MB of RAM
nowadays? Would you consider defragging a rare usage?

With "maxing out ram on the mobo" I meant that you put as much ram in
as the mobo will accept. Most mobo's will accept at least 1GB.

Dell probably only lists the memory configurations that they have
tested themselves.

Adding more ram to your 348MB would indeed mean replacing one of the
ram sticks. But do you really consider that an extravagant solution
when it means that you get huge performance gains?

When you have filled your mobo to the maximum the mobo will accept,
for example 1GB, and you still want more, then you get expensive
solutions (like replacing the mobo) that some would find extravagant.

BTW I have 256MB of RAM in my laptop that I use for work, and it is
enough for normal work. (outlook, Word, and some IE sessions open.
Next to that Exchange system manager, Agent newsreader, and our
servicedesk applications)

For my desktop at home I use 1 GB. Mainly for 3D renderwork. (and it
run out of virtual memory once, with windows managing the swapfile
)

Right! Like on a spare hard drive that has a dedicated IDE
channel.

You have to remember, Marc, that different people have
different budgets, hardware access, and time, and it's best
to just answer their specific questions as best you can and
only THEN point out what you consider to be better solutions

That's precisely what I did.

I pointed out that looking for the best placement of the swapfile
concerning performance is wasted time, because it gives minimal
performance gain in any case.

Then I pointed out the only solution that would really give
performance gain.

Then I told the best placement for the swapfile for best performance.

IF they have the requisite budget, hardware access, and time.
IOW, the "best" solution for you may not be the "best" for
someone else.

Seems to me that the OP got the information he needs to determine
himself what is the best solution for him.

Marc

 

[Timothy Daniels]

What defrag program was that???
Such tools normally don't and shouldn't use much memory
at all. Or did you run it while you were doing a lot of other
work at the same time eating the 348MB ram you have?

I used the standard defrag utility in Win98, and it was done
with all other apps, including anti-virus and firewall, shut down.

With "maxing out ram on the mobo" I meant that you put as much
ram in as the mobo will accept. Most mobo's will accept at least
1GB.

And some, such as mine, accept a lot less. Must your advice
to others be based on the size of *your* motherboard?

Dell probably only lists the memory configurations that they have
tested themselves.

Exactly. That is why I mentioned that it is said to take twice
the amount that Dell lists.

Adding more ram to your 348MB would indeed mean replacing one
of the ram sticks. But do you really consider that an extravagant solution
when it means that you get huge performance gains?

1) Again, Marc, read my posting. I referred to replacement of a
*motherboard* as being extravagant.

2) Maxing out *my* PC's RAM (i.e. doubling its size) would require
replacing all 3 existing 128MB sticks. At current prices at Crucial,
that would cost between $340 and $360. But whether the original
poster's budget or motherboard could accommodate such increases
weren't even considered in the responses.

3) I did not claim that *any* gains would be "huge".
I did point out that the defrag time (which indicates *some* gain)
dropped by half when the RAM was tripled. I did *not* claim
that such a degree of gain would be seen with any other app or
utility, although *some* gain is likely.

4) My response addressed the question which was about where
to put a pagefile for maximum performance. And my answer
was to put it on a separate hard drive that has a dedicated IDE
channel. It still is.

5) The use of more RAM, a new CPU, a new motherboard, or
a new PC entirely, are answers to other questions which were
not asked.

*TimDaniels*

 

[dg]

What defrag program was that???
Such tools normally don't and shouldn't use much memory at all.
Or did you run it while you were doing a lot of other work at the same
time eating the 348MB ram you have?

I think it is funny to use defrag as a performance test. Think about it,
you defrag your drive and record the time it took. You then add ram and run
a defrag again, WOW-IT ONLY TOOK 5% AS MUCH TIME! Hmmm, I wonder why it
defragged so fast the second time, could it be because the drive was just
defragged before adding memory? Eh?

--Dan

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I think it is funny to use defrag as a performance test. Think about it,
you defrag your drive and record the time it took. You then add ram
and run a defrag again, WOW-IT ONLY TOOK 5% AS MUCH
TIME! Hmmm, I wonder why it defragged so fast the second time,
could it be because the drive was just defragged before adding memory?

Give me a break. The defrags done after the memory increase were
done after the same amount of time and activity as the previous defrags.
Before the increase, they consistently took about 40 minutes. After
the increase, they consistently took about 20 minutes.

*TimDaniels*

 

[mcse-pro]

Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 12:01 am Post subject: Where to put that
pagefile.sys partition by

Jootec from Mars
Guest

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK. I got two SATA harddrives - a 36gb 10,000 rpm boot drive and a 200GB
7,200 rpm 8MB cache drive.

I use XP Home and Win2K on my machine and want to create a single
pagefile.sys partition for both to use. I understand the read/write speed of
a drive gets slower the further you get from the outer cylinders.

So is it better to have the pagefile partition (3GB) as the 3rd partition on
the 10,000rpm drive after the 8GB Win2K partition and the 6GB XP Home
partition? (May be i can shrink those partitions slightly since I'll be
having a specific pagefile partition) Or is it better to have it as the
first partition on the 7,200 rpm drive?

The 10,000 rpm drive will also contain the serious apps partition for Win2K.
The 7,200 rpm drive will contain a games partition for XP and a digital
video partition(Win 2K). Although I do aim later to buy another humongous
ATA drive for more digital video storage and processing.

Thanks in advance

James

James,

I think you simply asked; where shoul I place the pagefile.sys file
when I have two SATA drives. You didn't say anything about
bottlenecks, perfmon, penultimate zone, defrags or anything else that
was suggested due to misunderstanging of your question or technical
arguments by the respodents. Frankly, I cannot believe some of the
responses I have read that were submitted by pseudo "experts."

The best answer simply is: place your PageFile on your secondary drive
- your 200 gb 7,200 rpm drive. Make the PageFile 1.5 times the RAM
minimum and 3 times that figure for the maximum. For a good article
about the technical details and the reasons why it should be done
this way, please take a look at the
following article:
http://www.petri.co.il/pagefile_optimization.htm


Good luck and best wishes, JD

It pays to be an MCSE

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