Windows 10 Page file

PC Configurations, motherboards, etc, etc

Moderators: valis, garyb

Post Reply
fidox
Posts: 804
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2003 4:00 pm
Location: Slovenia
Contact:

Windows 10 Page file

Post by fidox »

Hey !

I have a question about Windows 10 Page file.
Where do you have located your Windows 10 Page file ?
On system disk or if you have more than one disk, did you moved Page file to other disk ?
Did you leave "system managed" or manual settings.
What's your best experience for Page file, while using Scope and Windows 10 ?

Thanks for any kind of tip, opinion, recommendations.

Best,
Matej
User avatar
valis
Posts: 7307
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: West Coast USA
Contact:

Re: Windows 10 Page file

Post by valis »

If you're using an SSD, it doesn't matter. Unless of course it's very restricted on space, in which case set it to also use a secondary SSD (you need some small amount on the primary boot drive still to manage memory dumps and other kernel related tasks).

If you're using a spinning (mechanical) HD, set your min/max size for your pagefile to be 1.5-2x the amount of ram up to 16GB, thereafter you can either make it equal to or keep it at 16GB. The correct way is to estimate it at a fair usage load of RAM by using PerfMon (performance manager) and watching your memory paging under a high workload, then set it to be about 30% larger than that size for safety's sake, but I haven't done this in years.

For the record: I have 2 3D machines here with >128GB of RAM and have pushed them to where there was no physical memory left while running multiple video/compositing applications that use RAM to 'render' previews. Outside of massive samplelibrary usage where you for some reason need them all in physical ram (no disk streaming), I can't see coming close to this usage on a DAW.
fidox
Posts: 804
Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2003 4:00 pm
Location: Slovenia
Contact:

Re: Windows 10 Page file

Post by fidox »

valis wrote: Mon Apr 20, 2020 12:07 am If you're using an SSD
If you're using a spinning (mechanical) HD.
Thanks for your answer !
On this computer i have SSD 512gb and HD 2TB. I have putted page file to HD, but just used min and max same value, as windows recommended the value. Here i have 12gb of ram.

On my main audio machine, i have 1x SSD and 2x nvme stick 512gb and 128gb on pcie adapter, with 16gb of ram.
User avatar
valis
Posts: 7307
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: West Coast USA
Contact:

Re: Windows 10 Page file

Post by valis »

The reason for locking it on a spinning HD, is because when it dynamically allocates it winds up being fragmented. Windows defrag will diminish this to some degree. But when I do it after first setting up a system, I know that the Pagefile is in a largely contiguous state near the beginning of the HD (always use the first partition for windows). And by locking it, it never gets reallocated.

If you have an SSD, you really ought to use that for your pagefile. Processes will threadlock when waiting on disk access and finding the disk busy--or waiting on a queued file iop. Bugs me to no end. As a bonus there's no concern with a pagefile about fragmentation.
User avatar
garyb
Moderator
Posts: 23248
Joined: Sun Apr 15, 2001 4:00 pm
Location: ghetto by the sea

Re: Windows 10 Page file

Post by garyb »

we are not in win98 anymore....
Post Reply