Optimum Way to Set the Paging File

[pennstater]

All,

I recently built a new computer and installed my copy of Win XP on it. Ever since my first days in building computers and installing OS's, I have always set aside some space in a logical partition to hold Windows' pagefile.sys. This kept it from get fragmented and therefore increased performance, or so I thought (and by how much, I do not know - probably marginal, but I'm anal about how the OS is set up on the disk).

I have read recent articles where it says NOT to put the page file in a separate partition, as it causes the read/write head of the HDD to move "too much". Most articles say to locate, if possible, the page file on a separate HDD on a separate controller. In my current config, I can do that, but the question comes down to whether that's wise or not. Here is why I am asking that question...

My primary boot/system drive is a WD Raptor 74Gb (16Mb cache). It is connected to my SATA 1 port. My second drive is a Maxtor DiamondMax 10, 7200RPM, 120Gb drive. It is connected as a master drive, by itself, on the primary PATA port. I originally had the page file set in its own 10 Gb partition on the Raptor drive, but after reading some of these articles, I switched it over to its own partition on the Maxtor drive.

Is/was this a good thing to do? The Maxtor drive is definitely slower, but it is on its own controller. Should I keep the page file there (on the Maxtor), move it back to its own partition on the Raptor, or simply let it reside on the Raptor's main partition with the rest of the system files?

For what its worth... I set the min and max size of the file to be the same, which is 3072Mb, or 1.5 times my system RAM (2Gb).

Any suggestions, thoughts, and/or opinions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[dunklegend]

I also have 2GB of RAM and at least in my experience the pagefile is not used too much because 2GB is a good amount of memory.

I also had my pagefile in a different drive but it gave me some BSODs (I don't know why) so I switched it to the same HDD.

I know that it's recommended to have it in a different drive than your OS, so if you have your pagefile in a different drive and you have no problems then I think you should leave it as it is.