The page file is taking too much space from my limited SSD. Can disable it? Will it have any adverse effects? Can I atleast lower it? If I can how low can I go?
Additionally what else could be taking up space on a clean Win7, it's taking 45 GB space after clean install...
A lot of questions I know. I appreciate all the help.
It depends on how much virtual memory you use. You definitely don't need "RAM x IdioticMultiplier" pagefile. Pagefile larger than your RAM is useful only when you're saving full memory dumps, and you never need full dumps unless you're debugging something crazy. With 16GBs of RAM you may probably disable it altogether, unless you're editing really large graphic files, for example.
Hibernation is enabled by default, so there's your 16GB right from the start. Other than that - WinSxS, but you're talking about clean, fresh install, so it shouldn't take much space (yet).
Some people claim that disabling pagefile is perfectly harmless but others claim that you should never do it. If I were you I'd keel the pagefile but I'd put it on a mechanical drive.
I think Windows 7 comes with hybernation enabled. That must be taking quite a bit of the space. You can disable it if you don't use it.
Here are some easy to do things: http://www.howtogeek.com/173713/6-ways-to-free-up-hard-drive-space-used-by-windows-system-files/
I've made my pagefile 200MB min and 500MB max. One guide I looked at recommended 500MB-1GB. Had no problem whatsoever. Also disabled hibernation. Open cmd with admin rights and paste in the line and hit enter.
powercfg.exe /hibernate off
I love you guys :D Yeah I don't use hibernate and it gave me 10 gigs back ;) Gonna also lower page file.
I run without page file on basically all my windows machines. I have yet to die, or notice any ill effects. Obviously if you start having problems where dumps would yield useful information then you would be without said information. Me personally...I just reinstall windows at that point. You could literally spend the same amount of time tracking an issue down that it takes to reinstall.
Windows needs a page file from want I read so I tend to set it manual at a small size like 1G. Under linux I dont have a swap disk at all.
Your machine tanks when it runs out of ram and starts swapping. I run on the assumption I will run software I know wont use more than the 16G ram in my system and if I need more Ill buy the ram and not the swap space to use it.
Yes, I set it to 1Gb on every one of my mechanical drives. I don't set a different value for minimum and maximum either. I set it to the same value and let it rest like that. I've never had an issue.
Then I use UltimateDefrag's boot defrag option to set the pagefile on the very beginning of the disc for faster access in case it's ever needed.
I remember reading that GTA V doesn't work too well without a pagefile even if you don't run out of RAM while you're playing. The game constantly writes to pagefile for some reason. Maybe Rockstar has addressed that in one of the patches, but that was the case when the game was first released last year. Maybe there are other games and applications that require it as well, so it's a good idea not to turn it off completely.
I have 8gb ram and no page file at all. totally disabled. I probably wouldnt do that with a work pc though
On windows it prolly never going to listen too you dont care and make a swap file anyway. 8G is pretty impressive in most cases :)
Yes, I set it to 1Gb on every one of my mechanical drives.
A friend of mine recently had a series of blue screens caused by having multiple page files on different drives.
It gave the error Page Fault in Non-paged Area. It stopped happening when he moved it to one drive.
I'm just saying. If you start seeing issues with that error, do that first.
@Netami If you wish to minimize the OS usage of your drive, disabling hibernation is the first thing to do. The next thing is to remove all Windows Updates cached files once you are fully updated. The safest way to do that is to just do a Disk Cleanup on the drive and allow it to remove System Files. You've probably done this. I'm just mentioning it in the off-chance you haven't heard of or done that yet.
Another thing I do that's a bit more advanced is to move directories that tend to get large to a mechanical hard drive and create a junction to their original location.
For example, Chrome takes up a lot of space in AppData. I log out and log in as the Default Administrator, copy the Chrome AppData to a location on another drive, delete the old Chrome AppData folder, then create the junction to the original location.
Specifically, a junction is a redirect. It's saying "ok, now go to this other path to get your files." This can be a bit confusing, but programs usually don't question it and do so fine.
So, say I have my Chrome AppData folder in the following path: C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Chrome and I want to move it to U:\user\AppData\Roaming\Chrome because U: is a mechanical drive.
I would log in as the default administrator (you have to enable it in Computer Management to access that account, usually). Create the folders (i.e. U:\user\AppData\Roaming) then I would open Command Prompt or Powershell and do the following commands:
cd C:\Users\user\AppData\Roamingrobocopy /e /copyall /SL /R:1 /W:15 Chrome U:\user\AppData\Roaming\rmdir /S Chromemklink /J Chrome U:\user\AppData\Roaming\Chrome
First you move to the Roaming directory to make typing easier.
Then you copy all files with robocopy preserving file permissions and information to the mechanical hard drive's Roaming.
Then you delete the entire original Chrome folder.
Then you create the Junction to the Chrome folder on the mechanical drive.
You can do this safely with anything that isn't a system file. i.e. can't do it with Program Files folder. I mean, you can, but don't. Please please don't.
I usually do it to my entire user folder. Because, usually, those files don't need to be fast because they are small.
Once you've done that, if you go to look at the C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Chrome folder, it will have a shortcut icon on it.
If you click it and enter it, File Explorer says it's at C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Chrome, but if you create a file here, it will be in U:\user\AppData\Roaming\Chrome because that's where you actually are. That's why it can be confusing, but it's very useful.
Let me know how that works out when it turns out you have a duff GPU or DIMM :-)
Being able to analyse a minidump is actually useful. The last one I looked at showed me that some crappy AV software needed to be uninstalled. Problem resolved in 10 minutes.
If trying to install Windows into a small drive then as already said, fix the page file to a smaller size and disable hibernation.
Good to know. But was his pagefile size managed by Windows or manually set to a specific size? Because I heard that that can happen if you let Windows adjust the pagefile size.
Get a 256 gb ssd.
Oh okay don't let me stop you can buy it for me =P I'm planning to get additional SSD's just not quite yet maybe in few months, need to buy other stuff first.
It's worked out fine thus far. I can't foresee that changing anytime in the future.
I haven't run pagefiles on my Windows systems for over a decade. There is no issue whatsoever as long as you don't run out of RAM.
That being said, I never cheap out on RAM. 16GB is the least amount of RAM that I've had in a very long time. And when I only had 32GB I'd run out of RAM because Chrome likes RAM (well, that and I ran 400-500 tabs).
In my opinion, the dumbest thing you can do to system performance is allow the OS to make the decisions of what and when to page memory contents out to slow ass storage media. Windows has good memory management, but it's not better than never wasting time paging at all.
With the exception of a kernel dump (that 800MB that Windows warns you about, and something you'll never use unless you are a developer) there is no reason you need a pagefile at all under Windows.
The whole point of moving the pagefile to hdd is to reduce wear on the ssd from what i understand. I still run with a pagefile but it is the hdd. Somethings use it and most things don't even with 8gigs.
I totally agree but im lead to believe windows must have it.
powercgf -h off will do the same thing with less typing.
;)