Doing a re-format soon, and I was wondering what's the best way to have the page file setup?

Will have 2x 7200.10's in RAID0 and 2x 7200.7's on their own - don't mind partitioning etc. Have 4GB of RAM (although atm only have 3GB).

ive always been told its good to have the page file on a seperate drive/partition. aparently it gives a small performance increase.

Keep page away from a hard drive which has any programs on it. I have mine on a media drive (storage only). This way it doesn't bog things down when the system is getting a kickin'.

I agree with above. And 2048mb min and max should be ok

I've always heard the page file should be 2x your RAM.

AFAIK that was for old computers. Nowadays with 4Gb Windows should use as less page file as possible. But I´m may be wrong

Quote from DeadWolfBones :

I've always heard the page file should be 2x your RAM.

Doesn't sound right, maybe the wrong way around? I have 2GB of RAM and have a 1GB page file.

Quote from mcintyrej :

Doesn't sound right, maybe the wrong way around? I have 2GB of RAM and have a 1GB page file.

No, he's right.

ATM I have two 4GB page-files, one on my RAID0'ed 7200.7's and one on my single 7200.10.

Quote from Jakg :

No, he's right.

No you are both wrong.
It's 1.5x

That's what MS is saying

Quote :

A frequently asked question is how big should I make the pagefile? There is no single answer to this question, because it depends on the amount of installed RAM and how much virtual memory that workload requires. If there is no other information available, the normal recommendation of 1.5 times the amount of RAM in the computer is a good place to start. On server systems, a common objective is to have enough RAM so that there is never a shortage and the pagefile is essentially, not used. On these systems, having a really large pagefile may serve no useful purpose. On the other hand, disk space is usually plentiful, so having a large pagefile (e.g. 1.5 times the installed RAM) does not cause a problem and eliminates the need to fuss over how large to make it.

Here is also something really interesting:
http://members.shaw.ca/bsander ... tualMemoryPageFileEtc.htm

Quote :

A common recommendation is to make the page file 1.5 times the size of the installed RAM.
This recommendation makes sense only for computers with small amounts of RAM (256 MB or less).

Read BBO's post above, 1.5 times is a good metric to go with, as it's a 'safe' figure. However, if you're using "Fast User Switching" in Windows, you may want to make ths bigger, as the pagefile is used for storing sessions.

Then, simply keep your pagefile away from your boot and system disks. It makes very little difference if it's on another disk that's written to/read from frequently - as the idea is that you rarely touch your page file (if you've got adequate RAM for the tasks you're performing, that is).

In addition, NTFS partition with a 4kb cluster is the 'best' solution for a pagefile partition (and I would suggest giving it it's own partition if you plan to use a different cluster size for everything else... if you are using 4kb universally, then you can bung it on a low-ish-traffic disk). You also want to set the min and max sizes for the page file to the same size, just for simplicity's sake. Of course, the best choice is an altogether separate disk/array for the pagefile itself.

Finally, out of the RAID-0 and non-RAID-0 choice... put the pagefile on the RAID-0, you'll get better performance out of it. Never, ever, put your pagefile in any array that has error correction (RAID-1 mirroring is also a culprit here).

1.5-2 times is right. You should ALWAYS have pagefile at least equal in size to ram.

i use the ol` 1.5*ram rule, on a FAT partition(dedicated to pagefile,FAT for eliminating NTFS overhead, pagefile is rather slow), paging executive disabled *1* and many other tweaks.
([HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management]

DisablePagingExecutive=1 Will load your core WinXP files into system RAM and keep them there. Use this tweak if you have 512MB RAM or more.).
try looking here and here.. for a collection..here.

So I should not put it on the OS drive (which will be a 7200.10 RAID0 array) but instead put it on the other slower drives, and I should have a 6GB page file...?

Quote from Jakg :

So I should not put it on the OS drive (which will be a 7200.10 RAID0 array) but instead put it on the other slower drives, and I should have a 6GB page file...?

I would at first ask myself if the performance gain of your Raid0 is worth the double risk (if one drive fails= Data on both drives are lost)

Then what do you do with your PC?
Do you often photoshop big files that takes more of your physical Ram, or do you just play games etc.

About the size:
A good way would be to monitor how much of the pagefile is in use.

The best way (but usually not practicable) would be to put the pagefile then on a single disk with nothing else on it.
At least put it on another disk then the OS as then the read/write activity will be allocated between these both HDD.
But maybe that doesn't matter as your Raid0 is faster then all the others disks you have in use.

In the end it really depends on your system and on what you do with it in general.
I would monitor it and check how big it will be when you do the usual stuff you do
and if there is really a noticable performance win when you place it on this or that disk.

Quote from Jakg :

So I should not put it on the OS drive (which will be a 7200.10 RAID0 array) but instead put it on the other slower drives, and I should have a 6GB page file...?

Quote from JamesF1 :

...keep your pagefile away from your boot and system disks...

I did read that but I thought i'd double check it - sorry!