Question about page filing

[DragonFury]

My computer is running with 32 gigs of memory. Now because I am running with so much memory Windows 7 decided to jack the page filing up to 45 Gigs eating up a large portion of the 128GBs SSD. Now should I move the page filing to a different drive (I have a set of 320 momentus lap top HDD's in RAID 0) or kill it completely? Killing it has caused some rather interesting issues, not exactly sure if it is related or not will have to play with it a bit more to verify.

[KnightRid]

I always have mine on a separate drive or turned off.

You can set it manually, you know. Go to control panel --> System --> advanced system settings --> click settings under performance --> advanced tab --> Chnage under virtual memory.

Set it to what you want, move it, turn it off, etc. If you want to keep it but make it smaller then just manually set the size and you should be golden.

[DragonFury]

I was curious to see if peeps had serious issues turning it off. Every other page says yes while others say no.

[KnightRid]

I think there are some programs that may give problems, especially if they do not release the memory when closed but it seems to be few and far between with a newer OS and newer programs.

You can always try it and see. If you get errors then you know you have to turn it back on.

Personally, I hate the way Windows handles memory. I wish it would be more like Linux but MS thinks their way is better

[DragonFury]

what i don't understand is if you are using gobs of memory already then why would you need a page file that is equal to or greater then the memory you have installed. isn't the idea of using more memory is to take that type of stuff off of the storage device so it can work faster? SO far it appears water fox doesn't like not having a page filing, not sure about nightly, firefox forget trying to get that browser to run stable on my computer.

[KnightRid]

what i don't understand is if you are using gobs of memory already then why would you need a page file that is equal to or greater then the memory you have installed. isn't the idea of using more memory is to take that type of stuff off of the storage device so it can work faster? SO far it appears water fox doesn't like not having a page filing, not sure about nightly, firefox forget trying to get that browser to run stable on my computer.

That is what I always thought page filing was for, just extra fake memory. It seems Microsoft, in all it's wisdom, decided to let Windows use every particle of memory to allow faster booting of frequently used programs and for the basic windows OS. It is supposed to release the cached memory super fast if a program calls for it but I think this is where the problem is. I do not think programs always call for it correctly so Windows doesnt release it and then tries to use virtual memory that is not there. I am an idiot so this may not be correct but it is my reasoning behind it ;)

Some programs will work just fine if you add a small virtual memory footprint rather than having it off or using the huge one windows recommends. try a 1gb or 2gb max and see how it works. If no problems over a week or so, try reducing it.

[kenc51]

what i don't understand is if you are using gobs of memory already then why would you need a page file that is equal to or greater then the memory you have installed. isn't the idea of using more memory is to take that type of stuff off of the storage device so it can work faster? SO far it appears water fox doesn't like not having a page filing, not sure about nightly, firefox forget trying to get that browser to run stable on my computer.

Hibernation

When you put windows into Hibernation, it needs to copy ALL data in memory to disk prior to going to standby.
If you've 32GB of RAM, then it will want 32GB of HDD space in case you were somehow using 32GB of ram just before hibernation.

If you have no need for hibernation, then don't worry about using the default size windows recommends.

[DragonFury]

Thank you everone I will be playing around with different settings to see what works best .

[Major_A]

I had mine turned off completely then some game (don't remember which one) wouldn't start because I didn't have a page file. So I manually set it to 1GB. Considering the most RAM I've ever seen used was 8GB (using Photoshop) I don't see the point of a pagefile at all, especially with 32GB of RAM.

[DragonFury]

Currently have it set at 800-850 seems to be doing really well under windows 8. I personally think that the os should kick it out once you go over a certain point on system memory.

[egloeckle]

what i don't understand is if you are using gobs of memory already then why would you need a page file that is equal to or greater then the memory you have installed. isn't the idea of using more memory is to take that type of stuff off of the storage device so it can work faster? SO far it appears water fox doesn't like not having a page filing, not sure about nightly, firefox forget trying to get that browser to run stable on my computer.

Hibernation

When you put windows into Hibernation, it needs to copy ALL data in memory to disk prior to going to standby.
If you've 32GB of RAM, then it will want 32GB of HDD space in case you were somehow using 32GB of ram just before hibernation.

If you have no need for hibernation, then don't worry about using the default size windows recommends.

Yup, old thread, was out for a few weeks, sorry.

Hibernation does not use the page file. It uses hiberfile.sys. I wouldnt disable the page file completely, some programs get very angry and do odd things if it is turned off, though shrinking it to a gig or two is fine.