VOTE: where to place your virtual memory? (swap file)

Ghot said:

Q: Where do you place your virtual memory?

A: I don't remember.

check the backup

F22 Simpilot said:

You can try and turn off all drives and set one drive for its pagefile (that's how it works, each drive has its own pagefile), but I'm sure the OS is going to say, "hey, bro, mind turning on my pagefile again? I can't breath. *cough cough*." Thus you're back to square one rounded to the nearest decimal point. So there's your math...

The only way is to symlink the pagefile file to another hard drive. But as was mentioned, with today's HDD speed with flash based media it's pretty much a zero issue. Back in the day with platter HDDs it may have made more sense to place the pagefile on another HDD.

People misunderstand how a pagefile per drive works.

suppose each drive had a 3GB pagefile on drive C and D but 0S needed extra 4 GB of RAM, OS would use pagefile on one drive and use 3GB, then it would use 1GB on pagefile on other drive.

A drive does not need a pagefile - it is the OS that needs it.

The ability gor multiple psge files dates back to days when drives had limited capacity so you could spread out the size burden across multiple drives.

These days, there is rarely any need to have multiple pagefiles as far bigger drive capacities.

So choosing a single drive is common sense nowadays.

Rules are very simple.

If a single ssd, choose that drive and have a single page file.

If 2 or more SSDs, choose whichever suits e.g. fastest or most capacity.

The same applies if only HDDs. We all agree if one SSD and 1 HDD, use SSD. Sure it adds a small life penalty to SSD but you get far greater performance.

I have two identical nvme drives - OS is on drive 0, Pagefile is on drive 1. This is slightly faster than using pagefile on C drive. Main reason I do it is drive 1 is largely static data, so by putting pagefile on drive 1, it. goes some way to balancing drive wear raking burden of drive 0. Sure that is probably not really needed but every little helps.



Perhaps the most important point is pagefiling only happens if you do not have enough RAM.

If pc is capable of RAM expansion, adding more RAM is the best option.

I wanted to add more RAM to my 2yr old main laptiop (it has 16 GB) and when I opened it up to have a look, I found to my horror, all the RAM was soldered with no expansion slot.

It seems this is becoming a more common practice (cheaper and forces user to buy another pc if more RAM is needed - this is sharp practice!

F22 Simpilot said:

You can try and turn off all drives and set one drive for its pagefile (that's how it works, each drive has its own pagefile), but I'm sure the OS is going to say, "hey, bro, mind turning on my pagefile again? I can't breath. *cough cough*." Thus you're back to square one rounded to the nearest decimal point. So there's your math...

The only way is to symlink the pagefile file to another hard drive. But as was mentioned, with today's HDD speed with flash based media it's pretty much a zero issue. Back in the day with platter HDDs it may have made more sense to place the pagefile on another HDD.

i am not really sure why you are so cynical lately. No one is attacking you and tbh don't really have the energy atm to deal with that sort of energy.

As we break into x64 more and more over time the page file is becoming less relevant, its basically that now, if it was a hard requirement on c drive then we would not be able to set other drives, further in if it was a hard requirement at all then we would not be able to turn it off.

in unix we don't even have to provision one if we don't want and i think as a whole it was never really meant to be requirement only there as redundancy if needed. We are past really needing one because we have exceeded that requirement.

You need another option in the poll.

I have enough memory so don't need a page file.

Tests:
The Windows 10 Pagefile And Running Without One - TweakHound

Callender said:

You need another option in the poll.

I have enough memory so don't need a page file.

Tests:
The Windows 10 Pagefile And Running Without One - TweakHound

I want to add in the end of the sentence...

I have enough memory so don't need a page file... for the moment

what was it Gates said.. we will never need more then 640KB of Ram.

A comment: many third-party program installs will look for 2 things, one is the Virtual Memory [1GB usually enough] and the other is the existence of the Temp folder. Some drafting/drawing type programs may also need a scratch folder, a place to hold its data while being worked on.