Page Filing

I have been trying to get my HDD space freed up on my Win 7 OS drive for some time now. I currently have 50 GB allocated, but have always been at only 1 GB free. I only have a few minor programs (Firefox, Word, etc) installed and all of my data and games are on a separate drive, so I never knew what the issue was. I figured out about System Restore Points a while ago, but just found out about Page Filing tonight. I have 12 GBs of RAM, so the default Windows setting puts me at just over 12 GBs used for my HDD. Freeing up this 12 GB on my OS drive would be amazing.

I have read a few tweaking guides and seem to be getting conflicting information (go figure). The most consistent opinion I came across was that you should just keep it at the Windows Controlled setting which typically runs the amount of RAM you have plus an extra 300 MB, BUT you can run the main page file on a separate drive (not partition!). You should still have about 300 MB set up on the OS drive, but the main page filing will go through another hard drive that is set to the default setting (in my case around 12 GB). This is the option I have went with.

However, I did see on other guides that the page filing system should be LESS than the amount of RAM you have and the more RAM you have the less Page Filing you need. Also, if you are switching the page filing to another drive that is slower than your OS drive it is pointless. The case for me is switching from my OS drive (SSD) to a standard 7200 RPM drive.

My questions is:

- Will my current setup be OK? (main page file going through a larger, yet slower hard drive)

- And should I manually set the page file limit or keep it to the Windows default?

Thanks for any help.

With 12 gigs of RAM, just set it to 1024 on your main drive.

Windowswill make good use of it.

Edit: You can also turn off hibernation and store temporary files on your secondary drive.

I've also heard people often say you should keep the pagefile, but IMO it's not practical, especially on a smaller SSD drive and with a large amount of RAM. The first thing I did after installing the OS was disable hibarnation, system restore, and pagefile. It easily freed up 10+ GB. I've been running fine ever since and I do utilize much of my RAM, but it's still stable. Any arguements attempting to justify the use of the pagefile in conjunction with 8+gb RAM is negligible.

How big is your hard drive?

Sounds like you should just buy another one.

I have a SSD hard drive with about 120 GB. I have allocated 50 GB to one partition for Windows and the rest is allocated to another partition for games. I also have a separate 320 GB and 1.5 TB hard drive as data/game storage. I would rather not get rid of the partition on my SSD drive and reinstall Windows.

Limiting the page file and system restore point freed up 25+ GB worth of free space total, so 50 GB normally should be plenty for just the OS. I have no idea why Windows would have a system use up so much space. I am so grateful I came across the tweak guide last night about page filing because I had no idea it was currently using up 12 GB of space. Freeing that up and only using 2 GBs of space should be more than enough. Now I have around 10 GBs of free space which is more than enough to work with.

I have a SSD hard drive with about 120 GB. I have allocated 50 GB to one partition for Windows and the rest is allocated to another partition for games. I also have a separate 320 GB and 1.5 TB hard drive as data/game storage. I would rather not get rid of the partition on my SSD drive and reinstall Windows.

Limiting the page file and system restore point freed up 25+ GB worth of free space total, so 50 GB normally should be plenty for just the OS. I have no idea why Windows would have a system use up so much space. I am so grateful I came across the tweak guide last night about page filing because I had no idea it was currently using up 12 GB of space. Freeing that up and only using 2 GBs of space should be more than enough. Now I have around 10 GBs of free space which is more than enough to work with.

Amigro

The page file, system restore and hibernation are the main offenders.

Pagefile is equal to your RAM when handled automatically. In that vicinity anyway ;)

System restore can get very large when not maintained.

Hibernation is around 75% of your RAM.

I believe a Fresh W7 leaves my 60 Gb Corsair Force 3 with 40 or so Gigs.

I basically go by the rule that anything, which is loads upon boot goes to the SSD, that means all drivers, antivirus, Chrome, etc.

Only programs of significant size is Visual Studio 11 and Civilization V - Gods and Kings.

That leaves me with about 21 gigs.