Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   Anonymous
   Unregistered

   http://www.howtogeek.com/126430/htg-explains-what-is-the-windows-page-file-and-should-you-disable-it/

   HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It?

   http://members.shaw.ca/bsanders/WindowsGeneralWeb/RAMVirtualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

   http://www.howtogeek.com/95915/heres-why-disabling-the-windows-pagefile-is-pointless/

   For years, Windows tweaking people have tried to convince everybody that if you disable the pagefile, you’ll get a big performance boost. One of our readers did a ton of testing to prove that this is not true.

   http://www.tweakhound.com/2011/10/10/the-windows-7-pagefile-and-running-without-one/

   What can happen if I screw it up? or What can happen during testing?
   Low memory errors resulting in a pop-up screen (if you’re lucky), Program / event log errors, blue screens, disk corruption. Possible data loss as a result.
   - Bluescreens (possibly resulting in data loss / corruption) Windows usually isn’t the culprit here. Most of the time it is a driver or program leaking memory (*cough* firefox *cough*). In the past I’ve seen some Windows gadgets leak memory.
   - I have read of people complaining of problems coming out of Sleep mode without a page file. I’ve been unable to reproduce this issue.
   Important Links and Notes
   The links below are ones you need to read and understand when discussing the Windows pagefile.

   Posted 12 years ago #
2. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   The page file is sort of like a safety valve, more-or-less catching the overflow of any data that can't fit into available memory -- you always want some memory free & available for the next app you're going to start & run. Data that's stored in memory is stored in memory because you'll access it more often -- data stored in the page file is accessed more than data spread across you hard drive(s). 3 problems with the swap or page file are 1) reading from a hard drive is slower than reading from RAM, 2) it can take up a lot of space, & 3) since it's by default saved from one Windows' session to the next, it's a potential security weakness, e.g. it can contain data like passwords. Note that the part about being slower varies with how fast [or slow] your system reads/writes the page file on the hard drive, & some hardware reads/writes to/from RAM faster than others, so the difference in speed may be less. Mileage varies.

   Like lots of folks I can boot into 32 bit XP Pro & 64 bit win7 -- win7 64 lets me use all my RAM, while XP Pro limits it to almost 4 GB, so you might expect the same app to be faster running in win7 than in XP Pro -- 99% of the time, no. If more/less RAM has no effect, I'd think the page file would be irrelevant. Where it would likely come into play is if I had enough apps running that they used all of that almost 4 GB in XP. It may be interesting to see how win8 handles the page file with RT [ARM] &/or x86 tablets.

   Having the swap file on a SSD with fast reads/writes helps if the stuff you do on your system regularly uses it, helps enough that hybrid drives work kinda the same way -- data that's accessed more often is copied to the much smaller SSD part. Some Intel motherboards let you add a small SSD that works the same way, storing copies of files & data that you access most. How much any of that helps, including going to the heart of the matter & having more RAM, depends on how you use your system. Video editing for example benefits from more RAM, *may* benefit from a hybrid drive, encoding video not so much [though reading/writing the video to/from SSDs helps]. Always playing the same game or running the same app means always accessing some of the same data, so storing that data on the SSD part of a hybrid drive helps -- if you run something different each time you start Windows, the files/data that hybrid drive last stored on its SSD are useless.

   Posted 12 years ago #

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