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Questions tagged [pagefile]

Use for paging for virtual memory management.

In computer operating systems, paging is a memory management scheme by which a computer stores and retrieves data from secondary storage for use in main memory. In this scheme, the operating system retrieves data from secondary storage in same-size blocks called pages. Paging is an important part of virtual memory implementations in modern operating systems, using secondary storage to let programs exceed the size of available physical memory.

Wikipedia

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How can I move the page file to another physical disk location?

I would like to know exact instructions for moving the page file from 1 disk location to another disk in Windows 7. I.e. from an SSD to a non-SSD drive. I've spent about two hours searching - Google, Bing, Blekko - and read many forums. Please…
JL.
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Should I disable swap file if I have lots of RAM or should I move it to a virtual RAM drive?

Imagine I have tons of RAM. Let's say 64GB. That's a lot for even gaming PCs. Now the default location of a pagefile in Windows is on the main OS drive, be it HDD or SSD, which are faster in general, but still not as fast as RAM. Something tells me…
user1306322
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What are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys files, and can I safely delete them?

I noticed two big (~ 2GB) files (hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys) at the root of my C: drive and wondered what they were. I searched on google and found some interesting links, but did not find any answer on this site. I guess it would be good to have…
marco-fiset
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What is the purpose of "C:\swapfile.sys" in Windows 8?

On Windows 8 there are the following two files in C:\ pagefile.sys - no surprise. It is as big as I configured as my page file size swapfile.sys - it is 256MB in size What is the purpose of this additional swapfile.sys file? I'm looking for an…
usr
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Windows pagefile size with large RAM and SSD

I just upgraded my Windows 7 machine from 12GB to 24GB RAM - both for running more VMs and for future proofing. My C drive is an SSD with 129GB formatted size. I was surprised to find out that the SSD only has 68GB free (most of my files are on D:…
Avi
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Any reason not to disable the Windows pagefile given enough physical RAM?

The question of disabling the Windows pagefile has already been discussed quite a bit, for example here and here and here. People continue to upvote answers that say "you should not disable your pagefile even if you have plenty of RAM", but I have…
EMP
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How can I shrink my 12GB pagefile.sys?

Even though I only have 4GB of RAM, I have a 12GB pagefile.sys. From what I've read about the topic, this is bigger than the x1.5 rule-of-thumb and it's also taking a huge chunk of space on my hard drive. I tend to run a lot of applications and tabs…
Elizabeth Frazier
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Can I remove pagefile.sys to save space on my SSD?

My computer has Windows 8 installed on a SSD. The SSD is only 250GB large and I'm trying to clear up some space. WinDirStat found that a large file is "PageFile.sys". It's 8GB. Looking on google, I found tutorials on how to remove it, but not much…
Jon
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Should the pagefile be placed on the SSD or the HDD?

I have read quite a bit about the placement of page files lately (researching my question) and have not found an answer specific to my question, so hopefully someone here can help. New system being built: Windows 7 pro 64bit 16GB RAM AMD FX-8350 8…
Garry
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Windows Swap (Page File): Enable or Disable?

From my personal experience I've noticed that disabling the page file in Windows XP has given me, in general, the most speed gain out of any other software change I can make. Obviously this has to be done when a significant amount of RAM is…
Joe Phillips
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How can I make my computer use more RAM?

I'm running Windows 7 64-bit with 8GB of RAM. The problem is, I very rarely use all of it. I do some video editing from time to time and it definitely comes in handy then, but for everyday use, I'm not making best use of it. Are there any settings…
Nick Brunt
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How to kill tasks in Windows 7 when even Task Manager won't open or respond?

Occasionally one of my computers will get so bogged down that everything locks up, Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work, Task Manager won't open, or they work, but are opening so slowly that it will take hours or days to shut down other processes and regain…
endolith
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How do I decrease the size of the page file?

I just upgraded my laptop RAM to 12GB (W510, 4 DIMM slots), and since I am using a SSD, I find hard drive space to be quite precious. However, since I have more than enough RAM for most stuff, I think I can get by with probably around 4GB of page…
FurtiveFelon
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Windows page file on multiple hard drives

I cant find any documentation or articles online online for this... how does Windows handle page files on multiple hard drives? Does windows treat them as a concatenation, writing to one till its full then moving to the next? Or does it treat them…
Keltari
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What's wrong with disabling the Windows page file?

People say that you always need a page file, and that it will increase performance, but my Windows 7 is set to run without a page file. I simply don't understand why people say this - I have 6 GiB of RAM, and the only time I even came close to…
user541686
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