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What's the ad and disadvantage to have a bigger pagefile
- Thread starter cyklop0
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This is taken from the Win2000 Help file about pagefile.sys:
Managing your computer's performance
Windows 2000 allocates resources according to its settings and manages devices according to what your system needs. However, you can adjust Windows 2000 to improve its performance, particularly by changing the way Windows 2000 uses processor time and memory.
Managing processor time
System processing is managed directly by Windows 2000, which can allocate tasks between processors while also managing multiple processes on a single processor. However, you can set Windows 2000 to give a greater proportion of processor time to the application in which you are currently working. This can result in faster response time from the programs and applications you use while you work. Or, if you have background processes such as printing or disk backup that you want to run while you work, you may prefer to have Windows 2000 share processor resources equally between background and foreground programs.
Managing Computer Memory
When your computer is running low on RAM and more is needed immediately to complete your current task, Windows 2000 uses hard drive space to simulate system RAM. In Windows 2000, this is known as Virtual Memory, and often called the pagefile. This is similar to the UNIX swapfile. The default size of the virtual memory pagefile (appropriately named pagefile.sys) created during installation is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer.
You can optimize virtual memory use by dividing the space between multiple drives and especially by removing it from slower or heavily accessed drives. To best optimize your virtual memory space, divide it across as many physical hard drives as possible. When selecting drives, keep the following guidelines in mind:
Try to avoid having a pagefile on the same drive as the system files.
Avoid putting a pagefile on a fault-tolerant drive, such as a mirrored volume or a RAID-5 volume. Pagefiles don't need fault-tolerance, and some fault-tolerant systems suffer from slow data writes because they write data to multiple locations.
Don't place multiple pagefiles on different partitions on the same physical disk drive.
Appears that splitting it among physical drives is beneficial but between partitions on the same drive may not be. Keep in mind that the same read/write heads on a drive have to access all partitions on that drive, so the search may actually take a little longer.
Managing your computer's performance
Windows 2000 allocates resources according to its settings and manages devices according to what your system needs. However, you can adjust Windows 2000 to improve its performance, particularly by changing the way Windows 2000 uses processor time and memory.
Managing processor time
System processing is managed directly by Windows 2000, which can allocate tasks between processors while also managing multiple processes on a single processor. However, you can set Windows 2000 to give a greater proportion of processor time to the application in which you are currently working. This can result in faster response time from the programs and applications you use while you work. Or, if you have background processes such as printing or disk backup that you want to run while you work, you may prefer to have Windows 2000 share processor resources equally between background and foreground programs.
Managing Computer Memory
When your computer is running low on RAM and more is needed immediately to complete your current task, Windows 2000 uses hard drive space to simulate system RAM. In Windows 2000, this is known as Virtual Memory, and often called the pagefile. This is similar to the UNIX swapfile. The default size of the virtual memory pagefile (appropriately named pagefile.sys) created during installation is 1.5 times the amount of RAM on your computer.
You can optimize virtual memory use by dividing the space between multiple drives and especially by removing it from slower or heavily accessed drives. To best optimize your virtual memory space, divide it across as many physical hard drives as possible. When selecting drives, keep the following guidelines in mind:
Try to avoid having a pagefile on the same drive as the system files.
Avoid putting a pagefile on a fault-tolerant drive, such as a mirrored volume or a RAID-5 volume. Pagefiles don't need fault-tolerance, and some fault-tolerant systems suffer from slow data writes because they write data to multiple locations.
Don't place multiple pagefiles on different partitions on the same physical disk drive.
Appears that splitting it among physical drives is beneficial but between partitions on the same drive may not be. Keep in mind that the same read/write heads on a drive have to access all partitions on that drive, so the search may actually take a little longer.
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