• Paging file: What size to choose, how to increase and change the paging file in Windows. What is a paging file - principle of operation and position

    Good day, dear friends, acquaintances, readers and other individuals. Today, as you understand from the title, we will talk about what it is swap file . If you are looking for text about setting it up and .

    It would seem that what’s wrong with it, because everything is simple there? That’s how it is, but not always. This is a rather useful and convenient thing that lives in the operating system precisely in order to optimize work and somehow speed it up.

    Anyway, let's get to the point.

    Page file - terminology

    Swap file- this is a kind of addition to (which deals with temporary storage of data for quick delivery for processing) of your computer. Not so much an addition as its expansion or, one might say, continuation.

    The point is that when there is not enough RAM the system has nowhere to go, and, of course, no one wants to hang (and the computer is no exception), and therefore a kind of additional memory as a file. It would seem, why then have RAM if you can use it?

    The speed of work hard drive, namely reading/loading data there and searching for it there, is much lower than the speed of RAM, and therefore the page file can only be used as an aid, but cannot be a replacement for RAM due to its lower bandwidth.

    Operating principle

    The principle of the paging file itself is aimed at unloading RAM, i.e., if you simultaneously run many heavily loaded programs RAM(RAM), then one way or another, some of these programs will be inactive (minimized or simply not used in at the moment) and, as a consequence, their data will be uploaded to a less fast area, i.e. to the swap file, and the data of currently active programs (say current game) will be located directly in RAM.

    When you access an inactive program (i.e., for example, expand it), the data from it will go directly into RAM in order to speed up work. In general terms it all looks something like this.

    If there is an acute shortage of memory in the system, the paging file is used directly and data is also unloaded into it active programs. If the file is missing/too small (of course, taking into account the lack of RAM), a lot of problems can begin in the system, from complaints about the lack of memory to program/system failures.

    Where should the swap file be located?

    In itself, this is a delicate thing and it is possible to distribute it out of the blue, but it is pointless, because by properly configuring it you can significantly speed up the speed of work.

    We remind you that we have a detailed article on sizes. Here are the basic principles for placing it on disk:

    • If you have several physical(i.e. not one broken into parts, but several devices in general) hard drives, then locate the swap file;
    • If you have one hard drive divided into partitions, then place the page file on the disk C:/ or where the system is installed. If you partitioned the disk, then on any partition other than the system one;
    • After you have set the size or position, you actually need reboot(however, the system will warn you about this Windows and by itself);
    • How to see it position? Either using the task manager, or directly on the disk, but the page file itself can be hidden (it can be seen by turning on the display of hidden files and folders on systems) and is called pagefile.sys(so as not to be deleted inadvertently).

    That's all, we can move on to the afterword.

    Instructions

    File swap can be increased through utility applications operating system Windows. Go to the system folder “My Computer”, click on any empty space right mouse button and select in context menu"Properties" item. The “System” window will open in front of you. In its left menu, click on the link “ Additional options systems."

    The screen will appear utility program for settings Windows properties. In the Performance section, click the Settings button. A new Performance Options window will open. In it, move to the “Advanced” tab. Here you will find the “Virtual Memory” section and a description file swap, as well as its volume. To set a new volume, click the “Change...” button.

    In the next service window “Virtual memory”, check the switch next to the line “Specify size", if another switch is installed - "Size according to system choice" or "Without file swap».

    If you still want to limit the size of the file, then the minimum size can be specified as one and a half times the amount of RAM, and the maximum can be the amount of RAM on the computer multiplied by three.

    After setting the temporary storage settings, click the "Set" button to apply the changes, and be sure to restart the computer.

    Video on the topic

    Please note

    Disabling swap can give a performance boost to computers that have a large amount of RAM (2GB and above). But some programs and games do not work without a page file, so disabling it does not make much sense. Also, do not place multiple swaps on different hard drive partitions.

    The paging file serves as an addition to the computer's RAM and allows you to use more of it than is physically installed in it. Part of the memory is located on the hard drive, allowing you to run applications that do not have enough physical RAM.

    You will need

    • A computer with Windows XP, 7 or Vista installed.

    Instructions

    To optimize a file swap On a computer with Windows 7 or Vista installed, open Control Panel and go to the System and Security category. On the page that opens, go to the “System” section. Click on the “Advanced system settings” item, which is located in the left side window. In the “System Properties” window that appears, go to the “Advanced” tab, on which click the “Options” button located in the “Performance” section. The “Performance Options” window will appear on the screen, in which click the “Change” button located on the “Advanced” tab.

    To optimize a file swap On computers with Windows XP installed, open Control Panel and go to the Performance and Maintenance category. On the category page that opens, click on the “System” icon. The “System Properties” window will appear on the screen, in which go to the “Advanced” tab and click the “Options” button in the “Performance” section. In the window that opens, go to the “Advanced” tab and click the “Change” button.

    The “Virtual Memory” window will appear on the screen. This window allows you to set file parameters that are more optimal for your work. swap than the default settings that the operating system uses.

    File swap located on a hard computer disk, the reading speed of which decreases from its beginning to its end. Therefore, to get maximum speed file work swap, place it, if possible, on the very first partition of the hard drive. To do this, select all other sections from the list located in the upper half of the window, check the “Without file” checkbox for them swap" and click the "Set" button.

    You can also change the file size swap, making it more optimal. By default, the Windows operating system itself chooses the file size swap. First, it sets its size to the smallest possible size in order to save as much free space on your hard drive as possible. As soon as the size specified by the operating system becomes small, it automatically increases it. At this point, the computer may freeze for several seconds. If the size increases often enough, working with the computer becomes uncomfortable.

    You can disable automatic change file size swap, immediately setting for him suitable size. To do this, select in the list the partition on which the file is located swap and check the “Specify size” checkbox. Specify the minimum file size in megabytes swap, which will not require its frequent increase while working in the “Original size” field. Also specify the maximum size that the system can allocate for the file swap in the "Maximum size" field. It should be large enough to cover all your RAM needs.

    If your computer is running an operating system Windows systems XP and has enough to work with physical memory, you can significantly increase its performance by completely disabling the file swap. To do this, select one by one all partitions from the list on which the file can be placed swap and check the box next to “Without file” for each of them swap" For Windows 7 and Vista operating systems, disabling a file swap may, on the contrary, reduce the performance of the computer, so for these operating systems it is not advisable to completely disable it.

    Once you are done changing the file settings swap in the “Virtual Memory” window, click the OK button in it and the “Apply” button in the “Performance Options” window. Then close everything open windows And running programs and restart your computer. After the reboot, all the settings you have made will take effect.

    Please note

    Complete shutdown The page file can cause a serious operating system crash if the physical RAM becomes full. This can lead to programs crashing and loss of unsaved data. Therefore, if the amount of physical RAM is not enough to perform all your operations on the computer, do not disable the page file.

    Significant acceleration of the operating system can be achieved by changing the settings of the paging file. This file is standard means OS to provide stable work several at the same time running applications for which there is not enough RAM.

    Instructions

    Set the paging file to a fixed size, reducing disk fragmentation and allowing disk space to be freely reallocated. To do this, open the “Control Panel” and go to the “System” section. Open the "Performance" tab and in the virtual memory settings set same value for the “Minimum” and “Maximum” parameters.

    A figure 2-4 times the size of RAM will be quite sufficient. For example, if you have 1024 MB of RAM, enter 2048–4096 MB as the paging file size. In the same dialog box, you can select the disk on which the paging file will be located.

    If you have two operating systems installed on your computer, such as Win 9x and Win NT, you can assign just one page file to them to save space on your computer. local disk. Find the System.ini file in the Windows 9x directory, and in its section add the parameter PagingFile=paging file name. For example, PagingFile=D:\Pagefile.sys if Windows file NT is located on drive D and is called Pagefile.sys. After this, the old Win386.swp swap file should be deleted.

    The PagingDrive parameter is responsible for creating a disk for the paging file, and it is its size that changes when you change the values ​​for the Minimum and Maximum parameters from the Control Panel. However, PagingFile takes precedence over it, and having PagingFile installed overrides the need to use PagingDrive.

    In addition, you can do it differently - “force” the OS, if it is Windows 2000 or XP, to access the swap file of another, more early version systems. To do this, you need to change the PagingFiles key in the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management.

    This key contains the paging file sizes at different logical drives. For example, if on Windows computer 98 is installed on drive C, and Windows 2000 or XP is installed on drive D, change the file name D:\Pagefile.Sys to C:\Win386.swp.

    What's happened Virtual memory? Virtual memory is a combination of RAM memory and temporary hard drive storage. RAM is memory physically installed on motherboard and temporary storage is hidden file on your hard drive pagefile.sys, which is the swap file.

    If there is not enough RAM memory, and when the entire volume is full, data from RAM is placed in the paging file. The larger the amount of RAM, the faster programs run, since reading data from memory is much faster than from the hard drive. By Windows default stores the paging file in the boot partition of drive C, where the operating system is installed

    Windows 7 automatically sets the initial minimum paging file size to the amount of installed RAM plus 300 megabytes (MB), and the maximum paging file size to three times the amount of RAM on the computer. If warnings appear when using these recommended values, you will need to manually resize the page file.

    Settings

    To adjust the paging file size, do the following.

    Opening Control Panel - System. Let's move on Advanced System Settings. In the tab Additionally find the section Performance and press the button Options.

    In the tab select Additionally. Finding the section Virtual memory and press the button Change.

    The figure shows that " Automatically select paging file size". Uncheck the box, select drive C, set Specify size and register Original And Maximum The sizes are the same, in my case it is 6108 MB. Click Set And OK

    Note Typically, a reboot is not required after increasing the size. However, if you reduce the page file size, you must restart your computer for the changes to take effect. Microsoft recommends don't turn off And do not delete swap file.

    Transferring the paging file to another hard drive

    To improve system performance, the page file should be moved to another partition on another hard drive.

    What does moving the paging file to another hard drive do?

    • The operating system processes multiple I/O requests faster. When the page file is located on the boot partition, Windows routes disk read and disk write requests to both system folder, and to the swap file. Once the page file is moved to another partition, the contention between write and read requests is reduced.
    • The page file is not broken into pieces (if the page file is located on the main hard drive, it can be broken into pieces when it is enlarged to increase the size of virtual memory)
    • One-piece ( Defragmented) a swap file means faster access to virtual memory and increases the chances of writing a crash memory file without significant errors

    Disadvantages of moving the swap file to another hard drive.

    After removing the swap file from boot partition Windows cannot create a crash file ( Memory.dmp) to record debugging information if a fatal kernel mode error occurs. The Memory.dmp file is necessary to debug the error that has occurred

    To transfer the page file to another hard drive, in my case it is a disk D (Archive), we do the following:


    When the system asks you to reboot, click OK and restart the computer

    After the reboot, check the location of the swap file. Open the settings window Virtual memory. If everything is done correctly, it should look like in the picture.

    Proper optimization of a computer allows it to quickly cope with assigned tasks, even with not the most powerful hardware. One of the most important moments Optimization for a small amount of RAM is to configure the paging file. Most users leave it up to Windows to decide what page file size to use to keep their computer running perfectly. This approach is fundamentally wrong, and self-configuration paging file will increase system performance.

    What is the Windows paging file and why is it needed?

    Every computer has RAM installed, the purpose of which is to temporarily store data for quick access by the processor. Hard drive can also act as storage for quick access to data, but its speed is significantly lower than that of RAM. The paging file is an area of ​​the hard drive allocated for temporary storage of information. When free RAM runs out, the computer will write information to the paging file, and then can read it from there.

    If we consider the operation of the paging file as an example, we can note the following scenario. When running several applications that actively consume RAM, some of them will be inactive (minimized). In such a situation, there is no point in storing them in RAM, thereby loading free space, and the Windows operating system will move inactive programs to the page file. Active programs will be in RAM in order to be processed faster. When the user accesses a previously inactive program, its data will be moved from the page file to RAM, and some information from RAM will be sent to the page file.

    When your computer does not have enough RAM to store data and the page file is not enabled or configured incorrectly, applications may crash or blue screens of death may appear when you try to run a productive program.

    How to choose the right page file size

    As noted above, the paging file is free space on the hard drive that is used to store data for quick access. Large capacity hard drives are inexpensive, and it may seem that if you install large size swap file on fast HDD or SSD storage, then you can minimize the amount of RAM installed in your computer, but this is not the case.

    As practice shows, the Windows operating system large file paging and small constantly busy RAM will be accessed more often hard drive. This will lead to the following consequences:

    Accordingly, on each computer assembly you must select correct size swap file. By default, Windows is set to let the operating system independently choose how much memory to allocate to the paging file. This optimization method is not ideal, and better for the user configure the amount of allocated memory yourself.

    On right choice The size of the paging file is influenced by many factors: the number of applications simultaneously used on the computer, the resource intensity of the tasks being performed, the number of programs running in the background, and much more. But first of all, you should focus on the amount of RAM installed in the computer, based on the following postulate: the less RAM in the computer, the larger the paging file should be.

    If we take the average figures for the paging file size for computers, we can name the following values:

    • 1 GB of RAM: paging file – 2048-2048 MB;
    • 2 GB of RAM: paging file – 1512-1512 MB;
    • 4 GB of RAM: paging file – 1024-1024 MB;
    • 8 GB of RAM or more: no swap file needed.

    Excluding when large quantities RAM swap file, you increase the speed of your computer. This is due to the fact that the operating system does not have to access the disk, and all temporary data will be stored in RAM.

    As you can see above, the size of the paging file is indicated in two numbers, for example, 1024-1024 MB. This is due to the fact that in Windows settings can be installed original size swap file and maximum. On older computers where hard drives did not exceed tens of gigabytes in size, it made sense to set the initial size of the paging file lower than the maximum. Now that disk space is not so expensive, it is better to choose identical values ​​for both columns. This is due to the following factors:

    • This reduces fragmentation hard section disk allocated for the paging file;
    • The Windows operating system does not have to constantly recalculate the size of the paging file. Due to this, the number of disk accesses from the system is reduced, which improves the overall performance of the computer.

    Important: Some applications in the Windows operating system require installed file swaps. If the computer is running without a page file, programs may simply not start. In such situations, the system will notify you of this, and you will need to make appropriate changes to your computer settings.

    How to increase or decrease the page file

    The paging file settings can be made on any version of the Windows operating system. To do this, you need to go to the virtual memory settings menu:


    Important: If you have multiple hard drives installed on your computer, it is recommended that you create the paging file on something other than system media. Exception from of this rule can only be if the system drive is a solid state drive (SSD) with high speed work, in comparison with others hard drives computer.

    To changes made the paging file size has taken effect, you will need to restart your computer.

    How to increase the page file in Windows 10, what it is and where it is located - in this article we will discuss all these issues in detail.

    If you optimize your computer correctly, it will cope with the assigned tasks quickly, even if it does not have the most powerful hardware. Create file Windows swap 10, or turning it on is one of the most important points if the amount of RAM is small. Increasing the size of the Windows 10 paging file and configuring it yourself will help and, perhaps, the computer will even work perfectly, and management will become easier.

    What is the Windows 10 page file? What is it for? What does it give?

    The purpose of RAM in every computer is to temporarily store information so that the processor can access it. quick access. The hard drive is also a kind of storage, but its speed is much lower than that of the RAM. When free RAM is exhausted, the computer writes data to the page file in order to later read it from there.

    Where can I look at an example of how the paging file works? Let's say there are several applications running on a computer or laptop, some of them are inactive (that is, minimized). In this case, it is not necessary to store them all in RAM, so Windows transfers inactive programs to the swap file. When a user accesses a program that was previously inactive, its data is transferred from it to the RAM, and some of the data from the RAM goes to the paging file.

    If your computer does not have enough RAM and this file is turned off or configured incorrectly, applications may experience malfunctions (up to blue screen). What can be done in this case?

    How to increase virtual memory size in Windows 10?

    If the page file is disabled or the RAM on your computer is low, you may periodically see warning messages like this:

    In general, Windows 10 determines the paging parameters itself, automatically, but quite often, if you change it manually, the system’s operation is optimized. Sometimes it is more advisable to disable it or, even better, do not change anything and leave auto-sizing.

    Where is the Windows 10 page file located?

    Where can I find this magical software? IN previous versions Windows Microsoft there was pagefile.sys, and in version 10 they added a new one - swapfile.sys. Its location can be seen at the root system partition disk.

    How to increase the page file in Windows 10?

    Let's talk about setting up the paging file and how to increase or decrease it.

    How to move Windows 10 page file to another drive?

    Virtual memory can be located on other drives, not only on “C” - it can be moved to wherever you think is more convenient.


    The size of pagefile.sys can be left to the discretion of the system (or configured manually). When the computer turns on after rebooting, turn on the display of system and hidden folders, go to C and delete pagefile.sys, which is no longer needed.

    Let's sum it up

    The page file in Windows 10 (swap file) is a virtual addition to the computer's RAM, and the system uses it during operation. It is located at the root of the section system disk default. If the system does not have enough of its resources (RAM), then it turns to it. But you can set your own parameters if your computer’s capabilities allow.

    So the user decides to add virtual memory in Windows 10 and install the Windows 10 page file, for example, for games that require top-notch graphics and speed so that the computer does not slow down.

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