Moving page file - should i keep "some" on the primary drive?

You should keep at least some small amount of page file on your system for a crash dump. How much depends on the setting for your system but chances are you as a home user it is set to "small" in which case it does not need to be a large page file at all.

From How to determine the appropriate page file size for 64-bit versions of Windows

System crash dump setting  | Minimum page file size requirement
Small memory dump (256 KB) | 1 MB
Kernel memory dump         | Depends on kernel virtual memory usage
Complete memory dump       | 1 x RAM plus 257 MB*
Automatic memory dump      | Depends on kernel virtual memory usage. For details, see Automatic memory dump.

Whether it is worth moving depends on the types of SSD. There would be little benefit in moving from an NVME SSD to a SATA SSD, due to SATA being slower, but the other direction could be worthwhile.

If they are both the same type then the benefit is going to be marginal and depend on how heavily one drive is used and the type of work you do. Large video editing with page file on the same drive might result in some bus contention in low memory situations, so you'd want the page file on to the other drive from that work.

Other than that there is little benefit to moving it. SSDs are much less prone to the problems of seek times that make hard drives painful to use when they are paging data in and out.

Mokubai

Posted 2019-12-18T07:34:13.920

Reputation: 64 434

Yes my page file is on an SSD. I wanted to know if it would be wise to move it to a different SSD. The answer I got so far is No - keep it as it is, on the primary C drive. – dandan – 2019-12-18T10:19:47.820

Moving to another SSD would possibly be a marginal benefit at best, and there are some tradeoffs either way. Are both SSDs SATA or NVME or is there a mix? Sorry, I misread and thought you were putting it on a hard drive. – Mokubai – 2019-12-18T10:28:09.633

Both are SSDs connected to SATA6 bus. I currently have 16GB RAM and I am thinking of upgrading to 32GB. I usually notice that the pagefile is 16-17GB. – dandan – 2019-12-18T10:37:40.797

@dandan it mostly depends on your use case then. Benefits are going to be marginal and depend on your workload and which drive is used at the time. I have edited. – Mokubai – 2019-12-18T10:54:06.650

My page file is always allocated to 16384, even right after reboot. Is this normal? I read that it should not always occupy a size equivalent to my RAM, If I upgrade to 32GB it will occupy 32GB! – dandan – 2019-12-18T17:12:29.083

@dandan I have 32GB and my page-file is set to automatic. My page file is currently 4864MB so slightly shy of 5GB. You might want to clear it by setting it to a small size (or off), rebooting, then setting it back to "automatic". It won't reset size after every reboot unless you tell windows to delete it every time, which would be a waste of SSD writes as it has to refill every boot. It will grow to a maximum needed.

– Mokubai – 2019-12-18T20:25:17.700

I set the size to 3000MB, restarted, reset to automatic, restarted and it went back to 16384MB. It does however shows, on the Virtual Memory settings, under system properties: Min allowed: 16MB, Recommended 2934, Currently allocated 16384. So why is it using so much? is this normal? – dandan – 2019-12-18T21:20:49.607

@dandan Doesn't sound normal. What setting do you have under the "Startup and recovery" settings as shown here: https://i.stack.imgur.com/koKJb.png I believe that "Complete memory dump" instead of "automatic", "small" or any of the others might cause what you are seeing. For me it is automatic and results in a smaller page file.

– Mokubai – 2019-12-18T21:36:28.983

Yes that is what i was using and i changed it now to automatic – dandan – 2019-12-20T06:29:39.873

I did the same think you suggested before after setting this to small memory dump (256k). Set to "no page file", restarted, reset to automatic, restarted. Page file was reduced by only 3GB to 13312. Anything else i can check/set to make it (normally) smaller? – dandan – 2019-12-20T06:59:34.437

Setting the debug information to automatic, instead of small did not make any change - it is still 13312 – dandan – 2019-12-20T07:08:11.107

I don't see a benefit with SSDs. With HDDs I could see why you'd do that but with an SSD you're not running into the same issues. Where did you read about that split? What was the argument for it? – Seth – 2019-12-18T07:47:23.003

Imagine that you move pagefile to non-system drive, and it is not available during boot by some reason. How do you think, does OS will boot? – Akina – 2019-12-18T08:00:36.787

@Seth I read it in various places,. The argument was that R/W operation will not be done on the same drive which can improve performance. Do you think I should not move it? – dandan – 2019-12-18T08:10:45.033

@Akina by using RAM. Unless you have a very restricted system (which is not the case with 16 GB) you shouldn't need the pagefile during boot. – Seth – 2019-12-18T08:59:10.013

@dandan it depends on what you do. You can move it if you want to. The argument you've brought up is right for moving it in the first place but not for the split between system and non system drive. The R/W is much more of a problem for mechanical discs. With SSDs this shouldn't be an issue with regular use. In the end what you actually do with your system is a major matter for that decision. – Seth – 2019-12-18T09:01:11.123

Moving page file - should i keep "some" on the primary drive?

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