Is it time to ditch the swapfile

alphanumeric said:

I killed hibernation and the hiberfil.sys file from the command prompt. I never ever use sleep or hibernation on my laptop.

I agree however I don't need the space and for emergency reasons I keep available.

swarfega said:

The swap file was created in the early days of Windows when hardware was expensive so rather than getting a new hard drive, you had the swap file to help you out.

With Windows 10 due next month, I wonder if its time to ditch the swap file and and disable it completely.

No.

First, that was not why the swap file was created. Windows is an inherently Virtual Memory based system. Everything is virtual memory, and windows picks and chooses what to store in physical memory. By disabling the swap file, you actually hurt performance because Windows cannot do this anymore, and cannot optimize its working sets.

In addition, certain functions will not work properly, like crash dumps. So if you get a BSOD it may not be able to write a dump and you would be in a reboot loop. Further, some software explicitly utilizes pagefiles such as Photoshop.

You can create a very small pagefile, but I wouldn't recommend that either... just let windows manage it. You get the most out of it then. Windows can then optimize its internal working sets to make the most room for caches and buffers to keep performance up.

Hi there

I think you have to distinguish between PAGE and SWAP files. SWAPPING consists of a "Dump" or Copy of a users address space in it's entirety whereas PAGING consists of simply copying out to HDD those parts of memory that are not actually being concurrently used by the system when another process needs more memory and there isn't enough in the system.

I'm not sure if it's possible to actually set a SWAP file on Windows -- however provided you have enough REAL RAM you can actually turn off the paging file -- Windows will use REAL RAM to create a paging file if it needs one any way and there isn't any HDD space or allocations.

However it's best to leave the OS to manage this sort of stuff -- HDD space is cheap enough anyway.

I think though that Windows tends to forget the difference between SWAP and PAGE -the terms in classical OS design ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE although Ms might erroneously have made them so.

Cheers
jimbo

swapfile.sys appeared in Win8 methinks
pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, and swapfile.sys

I've always used custom page file, usually 1/4 to 1/2 the memory installed (older Wins wanted it all or 3/4). As Mystere explained, the page file isn't what it used to be.
Hibernation always gets turned off on these machines, even the laptop
I haven't researched swap file.

Anyway, the only reason you need a pagefile to match installed memory is for a full memory dump. A minidump will tell you lot, and that only requires 256 KB - if the cause of the dump is re-occurring, you can increase your environment to get a full dump if needed.

The minimum pagefile is 16 MB, but I usually run a 1.5 or 2 GB page file on C:

[QUOTE=Slartybart;249862]swapfile.sys appeared in Win8 methinks
pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, and swapfile.sys

I've always used custom page file, usually 1/4 to 1/2 the memory installed (older Wins wanted it all or 3/4). As Mystere explained, the page file isn't what it used to be.
Hibernation always gets turned off on these machines, even the laptop
I haven't researched swap file.[QUOTE]
.............................
All three types of file are explained here:- http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-8/hd...-in-windows-8/

Bob Frost

[QUOTE=Dude;249895][QUOTE=bobfrost;249891]

Slartybart said:

swapfile.sys appeared in Win8 methinks
pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, and swapfile.sys

Good link Bob, thanks for sharing.

Here is another link to an interesting MS article on sizing the pagefile:-

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/2860880

Bob Frost