Windows file question? pagefile.sys

[jussi]

Sorry for yet another computer question. But I'm realizing 2 extremely large files are eating up the space on my ssd. One of them was a hiberfil.sys which causes windows to go hibernate. I simply disabled that because sleep mode seems to work fine and got 1/4 of my hard drive space back.

The other one is pagefile.sys. Currently taking up 32gb. From what I can gather windows uses it as a RAM reservoir in case the app your using eats up all the actual RAM and is the 1 to 3 times the size of actual RAM. I currently have 32gb of RAM installed and doubt any app will ever use all of it. Can I disable it or move it to a secondary hard drive?

[trungdok]

Which Windows version are you using? You can change the size of it to something small... like 100mb. Usually the option to change it is in System Properties, go to Advanced tab, Performance settings, Advanced tabs again, then Change Virtual Memory.

You can also just delete it too, but making it into something small should be better.

[jussi]

Win 7. I see you can just disable instead of deleting it. I'll try that first and if it does something wonky I'll do as u suggest. Thanks

[woodturner]

The other one is pagefile.sys. Currently taking up 32gb.

That is the virtual memory paging file. It allows your applications to run faster. If you don't mind your applications running a little slower, you can disable it or reduce the size of it.

[JSUPreston]

If your rig is like mine, I have a smaller SSD drive for boot/programs, and a traditional spinning disk for mass storage. I moved my pagefile to the spinning disk for space on the SSD.

Gonna show my age now, but I still talk with folks on a daily basis that don't know that pagefile.sys is the Windows version of swapper.dat. They are still stuck in an OS/2 world.

[dbhost]

Disabling paging / swap file / partitions isn't exactly a great idea as it is there for applications to stash infrequently used data. The old rule of thumb was to have your page file 3x the physical RAM. That isn't the rule anymore due to the large size of physical RAM on modern systems. But I wouldn't put it below 1x the physical RAM unless you want system performance problems.

You can, and probably ought to, if you have a separate physical drive, move the page file off to that drive. That hard drive MUST be accessible at boot time however, so don't push it off to a flash drive and remove the flash drive for example...

[dbhost]

If your rig is like mine, I have a smaller SSD drive for boot/programs, and a traditional spinning disk for mass storage. I moved my pagefile to the spinning disk for space on the SSD.

Gonna show my age now, but I still talk with folks on a daily basis that don't know that pagefile.sys is the Windows version of swapper.dat. They are still stuck in an OS/2 world.

Uh.. I have an OS/2 Warp 4 VM on my Linux box at home.

[JSUPreston]

Uh.. I have an OS/2 Warp 4 VM on my Linux box at home.

I think I still have a copy of Warp 4 server somewhere as well.

[jussi]

Disabling paging / swap file / partitions isn't exactly a great idea as it is there for applications to stash infrequently used data. The old rule of thumb was to have your page file 3x the physical RAM. That isn't the rule anymore due to the large size of physical RAM on modern systems. But I wouldn't put it below 1x the physical RAM unless you want system performance problems.

You can, and probably ought to, if you have a separate physical drive, move the page file off to that drive. That hard drive MUST be accessible at boot time however, so don't push it off to a flash drive and remove the flash drive for example...

Ok. Thanks. I'll move it to the spindle drive.

[jussi]

If your rig is like mine, I have a smaller SSD drive for boot/programs, and a traditional spinning disk for mass storage. I moved my pagefile to the spinning disk for space on the SSD.

Yah that's exactly what I have and those 2 files took up half of the ssd. After I installed 2 games I had like 10gb left

[sscherin]

Right click my computer
chose properties
Click "Advanced System settings"
Advanced tab
In the performance box click "settings"
Advanced tab
Virtual Memory box click change

Here you can change and move the page file.

I have my file set to
automatic UNCHECKED
Custom size
1000mb initial
1000mb maximum

You can also choose to select "No Paging file here" if you wish