Windows 10 best practices still include alternate page file locations?


  1. Posts : 46
    Windows 10 pro
       #1

    Windows 10 best practices still include alternate page file locations?


    Back in the heady days of tweaking Windows 7 installed on an SSD, there were a number of recommendations to get best/fastest/goodest functionality. One moved user profiles, temp dirs, (just about anything where data was read/written and rewritten) off the SSD to an HDD. Now, being forced to use Win10pro, I'm trying to figure out how much of this is still considered a good idea. It is a 1TB SSD and it has most of it's space available now that I moved the profiles; My temp files, for whatever reason are still pretty much where they were before the transition. But I'm unclear on one issue: creating multiple page file locations.

    In my Win7 setup, I had the minimum required pagefile set up on the SSD and then had two small partitions on HDDs with large pagefiles filling them (as I recall, it was all based on a calculation of available RAM and some other voodoo I no longer remember). And, for the most part, I had a pretty nice setup for office work and gaming and a bit of creative work (although most of that was done on my DAW).

    Sorry - should not have posted this. I dug around more and found the answer to my question. If I knew how to delete this message, I would.

    What is the current recommendation for page file setups for a 16GB RAM system?
    Last edited by obieephyhm; 25 Mar 2021 at 12:28. Reason: answered own question.
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  2. Posts : 9,765
    Mac OS Catalina
       #2

    Let windows manage the Page File as always.
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  3. Posts : 1,746
    Windows 10 Pro x64 22H2
       #3

    obieephyhm said:
    What is the current recommendation for page file setups for a 16GB RAM system?
    If you want to manage size manually then 32 GB page file is the recommended size.
    The only question that remains is why do you need manual assignment?
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  4. Posts : 1,255
    Windows 10 Pro
       #4

    You won't do better than having a system managed pagefile on the OS drive if it is an SSD. You can easily do worse. The operational and performance characteristics of an SSD are an almost perfect match for the typical usage patters of the pagefile. The characteristics of a normal HD drive could hardly be worse.

    Having more than one pagefile on the same physical drive has never been best practice. On a standard HD that will hurt performance and on an SSD it is pointless. There has long been a recommendation to put a pagefile on a second physical drive. The reason was to reduce disk contention between the pagefile and the OS files when the pagefile was on the same drive as the OS. But that assumes that the second drive had comparable performance to the OS drive. If the OS drive is an SSD and the secondary a standard HD that will not be even close and performance will suffer. That is one of the reasons why you need to understand the reasoning behind a recommendation rather than following it blindly.

    The original use for multiple pagefiles was that with old 32 bit processors or an OS older than XP it was not possible to have a pagefile larger than 4 GB. On a busy server or heavy use workstation that often was not enough.

    Of course with 16 GB RAM it probably won't matter where the pagefile is put.
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  5. Posts : 4,594
    Windows 10 Pro
       #5

    A 32GB page file on a system with 16GB is ridiculous, you really don`t even need a page file at all unless a program requires one.

    I haven`t used a page file in over 10 years on any system with 16GB or higher.

    How to determine the appropriate page file size for 64-bit versions of Windows - Windows Client Management | Microsoft Docs

    What Is the Windows Page File, and Should You Disable It? (howtogeek.com)
    Last edited by AddRAM; 26 Mar 2021 at 04:42.
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  6. Posts : 1,746
    Windows 10 Pro x64 22H2
       #6

    @AddRAM

    It's not ridiculous, I didn't make that number myself, there was 7 chapter article on MS docs called "pushing the limits of windows physical memory" about memory and how memory in Windows works, portion of it was about manual page file size and how to calculate it.

    Unfotunatelly that article is now 404, but anyway here is a link:
    https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/...ysical-memory/

    The link you posted doesn't go far from that article:
    Maximum page file size
    3 × RAM or 4 GB, whichever is larger. This is then limited to the volume size ÷ 8.
    Rationale for 32GB page file with 16GB or RAM is full memory dump, for which you need page file of minimum the RAM size.
    In that case it would be silly to set your page file to exactly the ram size of less.

    It would be good to find that link in search engine cache or waybackmachine, it was far more informational than current MS docs.
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  7. Posts : 4,594
    Windows 10 Pro
       #7

    I added another link to my post.

    I just see it as extra wear and tear on your SSD, especially if you only have a small say 128GB SSD, that`s all
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  8. Posts : 1,746
    Windows 10 Pro x64 22H2
       #8

    I see, the geek is correct in that we should not disable page file.

    In the mean time I found my original link here:
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ry/ba-p/723674

    Chapters are "Service Unavailable - DNS failure" but I found some of them here:
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ry/ba-p/723674
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ry/ba-p/723750
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...es/ba-p/723848
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ds/ba-p/723824
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...ol/ba-p/723789
    https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/...-1/ba-p/723881

    There’s no end of ridiculous advice out on the web and in the newsstand magazines that cover Windows, and even Microsoft has published misleading recommendations. Almost all the suggestions are based on multiplying RAM size by some factor, with common values being 1.2, 1.5 and 2. Now that you understand the role that the paging file plays in defining a system’s commit limit and how processes contribute to the commit charge, you’re well positioned to see how useless such formulas truly are.
    You can read more on "Virtual Memory" chapter, overall entry article is very informative.

    - - - Updated - - -

    AddRAM said:
    I just see it as extra wear and tear on your SSD, especially if you only have a small say 128GB SSD, that`s all
    Ofc. if one has so small SSD then there aren't many choices left.
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