It still amazes me how there is so much discussion about pagefile.
We seem to have three groups of users:
- the overly cautious. They let Windows manage their pagefile because it is risky to disable it, some programs might still use it. Of course this leads to space waste, 8/16 GB on a SSD is a lot to lose.
- the overly confident. They have a fast SSD and lots of RAM so they disable the pagefile. No space wasted but there is a risk some programs will not work correctly.
- the third group uses a fixed pagefile size (1 to 4 GB usually). The benefit is no pagefile fragmentation. This is a more sensible compromise but it's still not optimal. Set it too low and some programs might fill it up. Set it too high and there is space waste.
There is another way.
1. Use the fastest drive available, usually the same drive as the operating system.
2. Use manually adjusted setting.
3. Set the minimal size to 512/1024 MB and max 4096 MB or even higher, doesn't matter really.
This setup will use the minimal size 99.99999% of the time, virtually it will not grow.
Space waste is minimal, almost 0% chances of fragmentation, 100% chances all programs will work without problems.
The ideal minimal size can be find by observing pagefile utilization over time using AIDA64 (memory section) or a similar utility. It will report current usage and max usage. Use the max usage as a guideline, round it up to 256/512/1024 and set this as starting size for pagefile. Some will get by with as little as 256MB, while some will need 1024MB.
For example:
Low end system - 256MB minimal size, 4096MB max. It will not reach max anyway but why risk setting it lower then there is no gain?
Mainstream - 512MB starting size, 4096 max
Power users - 1024MB starting size, 4096 max
We seem to have three groups of users:
- the overly cautious. They let Windows manage their pagefile because it is risky to disable it, some programs might still use it. Of course this leads to space waste, 8/16 GB on a SSD is a lot to lose.
- the overly confident. They have a fast SSD and lots of RAM so they disable the pagefile. No space wasted but there is a risk some programs will not work correctly.
- the third group uses a fixed pagefile size (1 to 4 GB usually). The benefit is no pagefile fragmentation. This is a more sensible compromise but it's still not optimal. Set it too low and some programs might fill it up. Set it too high and there is space waste.
There is another way.
1. Use the fastest drive available, usually the same drive as the operating system.
2. Use manually adjusted setting.
3. Set the minimal size to 512/1024 MB and max 4096 MB or even higher, doesn't matter really.
This setup will use the minimal size 99.99999% of the time, virtually it will not grow.
Space waste is minimal, almost 0% chances of fragmentation, 100% chances all programs will work without problems.
The ideal minimal size can be find by observing pagefile utilization over time using AIDA64 (memory section) or a similar utility. It will report current usage and max usage. Use the max usage as a guideline, round it up to 256/512/1024 and set this as starting size for pagefile. Some will get by with as little as 256MB, while some will need 1024MB.
For example:
Low end system - 256MB minimal size, 4096MB max. It will not reach max anyway but why risk setting it lower then there is no gain?
Mainstream - 512MB starting size, 4096 max
Power users - 1024MB starting size, 4096 max
