fsdfgdsafasdfda Posted February 9, 2010 Share Posted February 9, 2010 My system specs are listed in my sig. Basically, I'm curious about the optimal page file setup for my system, as well as whether or not to use ready boost. I'm running two Black Caviar 1tb's in a Raid0, for the OS and software installations. I'm also running two Black Caviar 1tb's as storage drives, that are independent of each other. I have a 4gb SDHC II card, rated at 15mb/s that I could use for readyboost. I have four 1gig sticks of matched 1066 RAM. Do I use readyboost or not? Do I run 3 separate page files, one on each storage drive, and one on the raid0? Do I run just 2 page files, one on each storage drive and none on the raid0? Do I just put one page file on the raid0 and call it a day? Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, BB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Singh400 Posted February 9, 2010 Share Posted February 9, 2010 No you don't need ReadyBoost, if anything using ReadyBoost with a system like that, would probably slow it down. As for the page file issue. I've got a similar setup. I got 3 HDDs and 1 SSD in this PC. The page file is on the SSD, and the HDDs don't have a page file at all. Just make sure you set it to a static size, so Windows isn't constantly changing the size of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe User Posted February 9, 2010 Share Posted February 9, 2010 That's a pretty powerful system, so you won't see much from readyboost. That being said, it's only about $25 for a 8GB readyboost drive, get one and plug it in and when you need to use it for something else you can turn off readyboost, and use it, then re-enable it again later. Even if you only get a 1% boost, you'll still have a drive to use for other things when you need it. Format the drive exfat for Windows 7. If you want to use your card, benchmark it first, make sure it's fast enough otherwise you'll just slow things down. As for pagefiles, just one is fine, put it on your fastest drive. I'm betting the RAID0 is your fastest, so use that. Also, readyboost takes time to really start working, don't dismiss it until the system has had time to try and figure out the best use of the cache. I'm currently running 16GB of readyboost on a 4GB system, mostly because I had the drives. There is a slight improvement in application load time and the HDD is paging a little less, it's not a huge boost, but it's not zero. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hdood Posted February 9, 2010 Share Posted February 9, 2010 Yeah, another vote for a single page file on your fastest drive. That would provide the best theoretical performance. The page file is barely used normally, and so only serves as a backup in case you run something really memory-hungry. If your system regularly pages on any meaningful level, you should consider a memory upgrade. The only exception to this rule would be if you were trying to diagnose crashes (BSODs), in which case Windows does need a page file on the boot volume in order to be able to save memory dumps. Normally this isn't something to worry about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fsdfgdsafasdfda Posted February 10, 2010 Author Share Posted February 10, 2010 It sounds like the page file isn't all that big of an issue for me then. I will set it to a static size, on the first RAID0 partition, and call it a day. Thanks for the responses, BB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soldier1st Posted February 10, 2010 Share Posted February 10, 2010 with your specs Readyboost would not be worth it for the little it may bring but if your curious about it test it and see for yourself if it helps but in my experience it does not unless your very low on ram and letting windows manage your pagefile would be best as i've seen no evidence that altering the pagefile settings would yield any performance difference but if your system was very old and slow then i could see altering your pagefile settings would do some good, windows is alot smarter than it used to be and setting your pagefile to static used to be a good idea in the olden days but limiting windows ability to manage the pagefile is futile as what if you were to load something very large and it wanted a large pagefile and if you limit it then windows cannot expand it thus you may get an error or a crash but if you set a dynamic pagefile(let windows manage it the default) then windows can adjust the pagefile as needed so it can accomidate your workload so until we are in an era that has say 100GB of ram and the pagefile is not even used it is best to let windows handle it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brandon Live Veteran Posted February 10, 2010 Veteran Share Posted February 10, 2010 Just leave the page file settings alone... Windows won't dynamically resize it unless you're using it a lot, which you won't be anyway. Your default minimum size is already going to be much larger than you'll ever use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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