Page file on HD1, HD2 or HD1 and HD2, that's the question?

[EastCoasthandle]

I'm curious to know which is offers the best performance when using pagefile. Is it better to just use a separate hard drive or use both your main and 2nd hard drive?

[theonedub]

I read in the past that its better for the page file to be on the non-OS drive, but I think its logical to think that it depends on what the second drive is.

In my case the second HDD is a WD Caviar Green, no way will it be beneficial to put the page file on that slow drive compared to leaving it on my Samsung F1 main drive. Right?

[OSWiz]

Google "page file". MS has several recommendations based on what you're doing with your system. Very rarely will you need to split the page file across physical drives. And if you do, they recommend a very small file on the boot drive and the bulk on a separate physical drive.

[OSWiz]

Originally Posted by theonedub

I read in the past that its better for the page file to be on the non-OS drive, but I think its logical to think that it depends on what the second drive is.

In my case the second HDD is a WD Caviar Green, no way will it be beneficial to put the page file on that slow drive compared to leaving it on my Samsung F1 main drive. Right?

Of course, put the page file on your fastest drive ... e.g. mine is contained solely on my SSD.

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by theonedub

I read in the past that its better for the page file to be on the non-OS drive, but I think its logical to think that it depends on what the second drive is.

In my case the second HDD is a WD Caviar Green, no way will it be beneficial to put the page file on that slow drive compared to leaving it on my Samsung F1 main drive. Right?

Overall use the faster HD regardless if it's your main HD or not. But I wonder if it's beneficial to include the second drive though? IE: use system managed for both drives. There is very little information about it and was wonder about it.

Originally Posted by OSWiz

Google "page file". MS has several recommendations based on what you're doing with your system. Very rarely will you need to split the page file across physical drives. And if you do, they recommend a very small file on the boot drive and the bulk on a separate physical drive.

That is not particularly helpful. If you have an actual link then provide it.

[theonedub]

Originally Posted by OSWiz

Of course, put the page file on your fastest drive ...

"Right?" as in "Does that make sense to you?" not as in "Is that right?"

[Kreij]

If you have a lot of RAM, I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference.
Mine's on my OS drive.

[OSWiz]

Originally Posted by theonedub

"Right?" as in "Does that make sense to you?" not as in "Is that right?"

you know, I've read nearly every manual, guide, recommendation from MS, not one of them said to ignore common sense

[qubit]

Assuming your hard drives have the same performance, you'll get better overall system performance if you put it on a second drive, for sure. It's all down to that little HD head not having to thrash around for the page file and all the other files.

However, it doesn't seem to make much difference. I saw a review of different page file configs a while back (in a paper computer mag, no less. PC Pro or something) and they're all pretty close really. I put mine on a second drive anyway, but it doesn't make any tangible difference to me.

Ironically, you'll get the best speedup when you're system is low on RAM and already struggling to the point where you're just sitting there while it thrashes the HD. Something like Vista 64-bit on a 512MB RAM slow CPU system would benefit the most from a page file on a separate HD - but you'd never run a system like this anyway. You wouldn't...?

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by qubit

Assuming your hard drives have the same performance, you'll get better overall system performance if you put it on a second drive, for sure.

However, it doesn't seem to make much difference. I saw a review of different page file configs a while back (in a paper computer mag, no less. PC Pro or something) and they're all pretty close really. I put mine on a second drive anyway, but it doesn't make any tangible difference to me.

Ironically, you'll get the best speedup when you're system is low on RAM and already struggling to the point where you're just sitting there while it thrashes the HD. Something like Vista 64-bit on a 512MB RAM slow CPU system would benefit the most from a page file on a separate HD - but you'd never run a system like this anyway. You wouldn't...?

Good info, thanks!

[qubit]

Oh bum, I'd just edited it while you quoted me! Only a little edit to add a bit.

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by qubit

Oh bum, I'd just edited it while you quoted me! Only a little edit to add a bit.

Yeah, I got it, thanks for the info though. It was exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

Originally Posted by Kreij

If you have a lot of RAM, I don't think it makes a whole lot of difference.
Mine's on my OS drive.

Yeah, I tried looking around for that kind of information and came up with nothing.

[95Viper]

There is not much that MS, itself, has put out about optimizing the pagefile.
You sorta gotta hunt around for the info, but, here are a couple of reads...

Learn Best Practices for Optimizing the Virtual Memory Configuration

RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by 95Viper

There is not much that MS, itself, has put out about optimizing the pagefile.
You sorta gotta hunt around for the info, but, here are a couple of reads...

Learn Best Practices for Optimizing the Virtual Memory Configuration

RAM, Virtual Memory, Pagefile and all that stuff

If you have more than one physical disk, moving the page file to a fast drive that doesn’t contain your Windows system files is a good idea. Using multiple page files split over two or more physical disks is an even better idea, because your disk controller can process multiple requests to read or write data concurrently. But don’t make the mistake of creating two or more page files using multiple volumes on a single physical disk.

Good stuff, thanks!

I also found this interesting:

Should you enlarge your page file? Most users won’t need to do this. But you might want to keep an eye on the green line in the Memory chart on the Overview tab of Resource Monitor. If that line is spiking off the top of the graph a great deal of the time during your normal work, you might consider increasing the maximum size of your page file. (Note that you should disregard page file spikes and disk activity in general that takes place while you’re not actually working. This is likely to be the result of search indexing, defragmentation, or other background processes and does not indicate a problem with your actual work performance.

[{JNT}Raptor]

Had a buddy awhile back do extensive testing on this Issue with multiple HD's in the system.....he found that the fastest access point was on the leading edge of a secondary drive for the pagefile....this was with 4gig DDR installed.

Hope it helps.

[EastCoasthandle]

Originally Posted by {JNT}Raptor

Had a buddy awhile back do extensive testing on this Issue with multiple HD's in the system.....he found that the fastest access point was on the leading edge of a secondary drive for the pagefile....this was with 4gig DDR installed.

Hope it helps.

Yeah, any personal experience is welcomed.

[TRIPTEX_CAN]

I found my system to run a little better with my pagefile moved to my data HDD. I suppose if your running SSD for OS it would be better to leave it on that drive.