A 12gb pagefile.sys needed on a SSD 64-bit system with 12gb ram?

[crewxp]

Hey, I'm trying to free up space, as SSD's are incredibly small. I only have my daily programs on it (Win7, Adobe Suite, Web-Browsers, Visual Studio)

I noticed that my pagefile.sys is 12gb, do I need it? I know its been asked before and people say that it's recommended to leave it, but 12gb of it?! I have 12gb of expensive ram, a good setup, and of course 64-bit.

So all in all, do I need it at all? Would u guys recommend it? Or maybe if it's needed, is there a way to trim it down or place it somewhere else? I have an Intel X25 80gb, and only have about 20gb free.

Thanks.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

Your page file is the most frequently used area of your storage disk. Granted lots of RAM minimizes page file usage but many programs (i.e. AutoCAD) force pagefile writes. I would recommend that you use Task Manager to monitor page file usage over a few days of typical usage and then pick a size that jives with your system demands. I am gonna guess that 2 GB is more than enough.

This article is written to address servers" but the info does apply

http://blogs.technet.com/clinth/archive/2009/09/03/the-case-of-the-enormous-page-file.aspx

While I recommend against this for everyday usage, you can also set the page file to say 1 GB min and 2 GB max......wee if it ever gets higher than 1 GB......if it does, try 2 and 4 and so on. Once you know, set it to a fixed size (min = max value)

 

[sminlal]

I have a system with 12GB of RAM and I've simply turned off the pagefile altogether. I have more memory than I need and I've never had more than about 9GB of RAM used (and then only rarely), so there's really no reason on earth why I need one. I haven't seen any issues at all related to a lack of pagefile:

But I do use "hybrid sleep" and therefore I have a Hiberfil.sys in the root directory that's almost 10GB in size. Unfortunately there's no way to move that one, the only option would be to disable sleep altogether, which I'm not willing to do.

 

[crewxp]

Yeah, I thought about removing it entirely. But I guess for performance reasons, it's best to leave it, but make it smaller?

You said to monitor task manager to see how much it uses, how can I do that? I see something called Paged Kernel Memory (MB) under Performance, and it says 490MB paged and 174 nonpaged. Is that it?

thx bud

 

[sminlal]

The easiest thing to do is to simply look at the memory graph under the Task Manager "Performance" tab. The memory graph shows "committed" memory with the top of the scale being the "commit limit" (these two figures are also shown as rounded numbers in the "Commit (GB)" in the lower-right area of the tab).

The "Commit Limit" is the maximum amount of memory that the OS and all programs can claim. The current amount (the graphed figure) is how much the OS and all programs are claiming right now.

With no page file, the limit is the amount of RAM. With a page file, the limit is the amount of RAM + the size of the page file. For example, if you have 12GB of RAM and a 12GB of page file, then the graph maximum represents the 24GB commit limit and the half-way point on the graph represents how high the usage can get and still fit (barely) entirely in RAM. If, in that situation, your graph never gets above the 1/4 mark, than you'd never need to use more than half your RAM and you certainly wouldn't need any pagefile.

You'd want to leave some safety margin - for example if my peaks exceeded say, 75% of my available RAM then I'd probably add some page file "Just in case". If the system runs out of memory then programs asking for more memory just hang hang until something releases some memory.

 

[Mimoso]

Hey, I'm trying to free up space, as SSD's are incredibly small.
Or maybe if it's needed, is there a way to trim it down or place it somewhere else? I have an Intel X25 80gb, and only have about 20gb free.

By default System Restore uses 15% of the disk capacity so you can save up to 12 expensive gigabytes by changing the system restore settings.