What is the relationship between RAM memory, and Page file?

[orcutt989]

[lynx]

None at all, they are just good friends.

[tesco]

memory is where the computer stores stuff that the CPU will be using...it's faster than a hard drive but not as big a capacity. it looses all of the info when the power is lost.

the pagefile is a designated harddrive space where files are stored that the cpu may use eventually but cant fit into memory...it's very slow loaiding stuff form the hard drive\page file.

[orcutt989]

So, is it good to have a large page file? And when you do ctrl+alt+delete, it is showing your memory? Or page file usage?

[peat moss]

So, is it good to have a large page file? And when you do ctrl+alt+delete, it is showing your memory? Or page file usage?

When you hit the three finger salute ,press performance tab .

[orcutt989]

But why does my machine slow down when I get to about 300mb out of 512mb RAM? And my pagefile is 1248mb? And alos my processor is a p4 3ghz?

[peat moss]

This site could explain better than I could .


http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm

[tesco]

don't make the page file too big or else windows will start to use it more than your ram...slowing down the system.

when you here the hard drive thrashing around when you open or close programs, that is usually the page file.

[orcutt989]

Hmm.. So 1.5x your amount of ram is good enough?

[lynx]

Hmm.. So 1.5x your amount of ram is good enough?

Usually more than enough. I've got 512MB ram and 512MB virtual memory.

There are 2 important bits, if you can do it. The first thing is to have an unfragmented page file. The second thing is that if you've got more than 1 drive put the page file on the drive which does not hold your system.

Assuming you have 2 drives, defrag the non-system drive, then create a new page file on that drive and set minimum and maximum size the same. Now delete the page file on the system drive and reboot.

If you have only 1 drive but 2 or more partitions, you can create your page file on any partition. You won't gain any performance advantage but it may be more useful in terms of space allocation. Create a page file on a partition which is not the final destination, then delete the one from the system partition (if different) and reboot. Now defrag the destination partition and create a page file with minimum and maximum size set to the same value on that partition. Finally delete the original page file and reboot.