Optimize System By Using Separate Drive Letter For Virtual Memory?
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Infopackets Gazette Reader Don K. writes:
“Dear Dennis,My computer has 1000 megabytes of
primary system memory (RAM). I recently partitioned
(split) one of my hard drives into a separate drive letter (Drive Z, for example) and set it as a dedicated unit handle all my virtual (secondary) memory.After it was all said and done, a friend of mine commented that
having 1 gigabyte of RAM in my machine is plenty of primary memory, and I’ve wasted my time trying to optimize my system by setting up a separate drive letter for virtual memory. Do you agree with my friend’s comments?”
My response:
First, let me say that you should always have a virtual memory
page file enabled on your system, regardless of how much RAM you
have. In the unlikely event that an application runs ramped and
gobbles up every last bit of your RAM, your system would most likely
crash (if no page file was enabled). By not having a page file,
you’ve essentially cut off your temporary memory "drainage" point,
which can be dangerous.
As for the separate hard drive partition set aside for virtual
memory: it’s not necessary, but it’s certainly a
good system optimization because
there’s less of a chance that the page file will get fragmented as
it grows and shrinks (compared to having it on the same drive letter
as Windows, for example). As you know,
fragmentation can slow your computer’s response (more
fragmentation = the longer it takes for your hard drive to
access the page file = the longer you have to wait).
As for how big your ‘virtual memory’ partition should be: the
rule of thumb is roughly twice the amount of physical memory. So, I
wouldn’t go any bigger than 2 gigabytes on your particular system.
On a side note: the page file on my computer with 768 meg RAM is
currently set at 768 virtual memory, with a maximum value of 1.5
gigabytes — and that’s the default value.
Similarly, Infopackets Gazette Reader Peter D. asks:
“Dear Dennis,I’m running Windows 2000 Professional on a machine that uses a
Pentium 3 processor. After around 1 hour online, a RAM defrag utility I use
reports that most of my RAM has been lost and I need to
defragment my RAM.
Can you tell me why I lose most of my RAM, and why it’s necessary
to defrag constantly? PS: your newsletter is great.”
My response:
RAM is just that - Random Access Memory -
which means that it will get fragmented *very* quickly as computing
information is randomly written, read, and deleted from memory. It
is true: RAM gets fragmented much more faster than a hard drive
because it’s used more frequently - hence, the same reason why RAM
is referred to as Primary Storage,
and hard drive memory is referred to as
Secondary Storage.
[Optimize System By Using Separate Drive Letter For Virtual Memory?, continued ]
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One Comment
Larry Miller
November 13th, 2008
at 3:31pm
Putting the pagefile on a separate partition is a good idea, but only if it is on a separate physical disk. Otherwise it will impair performance.
Pagefile fragmentation is not a major performance issue except in extreme cases. If the pagefile is on a separate partition fragmentation may be lessened, but you will be creating a more serious problem - seek time. To lessen this the pagefile should be as close as possible to the other files on the disk. A separate partition will always increase this distance.
The best way to eliminate pagefile resizeing and fragmentation is proper configuration. This is quite simple, make the initial size large enough to handle all normal needs. If this is true then no resizing or fragmentation will occur, even after months of heavy use. But make the maximum size at least twice this value, but no more than 4GB on 32 bit Windows. This will give all the advantages of a fixed pagefile and yet allow the pagefile to meet unusual needs. After a reboot (or sooner) the pagefile will revert to it’s original and unfragmented size.
In many cases the default settings will accomplish this nicely.
Larry Miller
Microsoft MCSA