RAM usage before and after disabling pagefile

[warmon6]

the only thing i can say for all this stuff is let him do it. he confendent it works so just let him him be. alough if your ram is being used more, that means that ram strip will wear out faster just by all the heavier usage.

 

[Fumz]

Fumz, the same Vista Inside out book says this:
"The adage is: ‘Free RAM is wasted RAM’. Programs that purport to ‘manage’ or ‘free up’ RAM are pandering to a delusion that only such ‘Free’ RAM is available for fresh uses. That is not true, and these programs often result in reduced performance and may result in run-away growth of the page file."

With paging turned on for over one year my computer statistics show that there was MORE free RAM i.e. wasted RAM compared to when there was no paging. (33% to 48% RAM usage with paging. 35% to 70% RAM usage without paging)

I fail to see how the book contradicts itself?

The significant point quoted isn't that, "free RAM is wasted RAM", it's that there exists, "a delusion that only such free RAM is available for fresh use"; thus, the authors recommend avoiding tools that claim to free your resources.

Programs don't run from the disk, they run in RAM; thus, AVAST cannot be running "from" your page file. Nice theory, but flawed.

If you're cool running the way you're running, that's certainly fine by me; I was under the impression that you wanted opinions though? Imo, since Windows was not designed to run without a page file, you shouldn't.

 

[the.lost.one]

No no no. I am not saying the book contradicts itself. I am an accountant; I am not even qualified to make a comment like that about the book. I dont know how to put it. I was trying to say the same thing as the book was suggesting. I was saying that I was uncomfortable about that fact that paging was resulting is less RAM usage. I want my RAM to be used; I like Vista's superfetch.

Okay. I was under the impression that programs that are in pagefile are run from there. So even when paging is being used the programs and stuff that are in pagefile are sent to RAM again (if they are not there already) when they are being used?

I am looking for opinion and which is why I would try paging again since most of the experts are not in favour of disabling it.

 

[OldBloke]

So even when paging is being used the programs and stuff that are in pagefile are sent to RAM again (if they are not there already) when they are being used?

Yes

I am looking for opinion and which is why I would try paging again since most of the experts are not in favour of disabling it.

I thought your messages were OK, expressing your own ideas as well as asking for opinions.

If you have experimented thoroughly and discovered that no paging file, or a very small one, or the normal recommended size, or whatever, works best for your particular way of using the PC and how much ram you have -- you could ignore the experts and do what works for you.

Personally, I think there's not much point spending time trying to fine tune virtual memory, for the tiny difference it might make to performance. I just use the recommended page file size of a bit more than my ram size (but on a separate hard disk) and then "don't worry, be happy"

 

[rustamb]

Hi all, just registered, new but not newbie.
I've read last 2 pages, very interesting discussion. I want to point out that it is not only important whether you gain any improvement in performance or not. Battery life is also very important. For me, and the reason why I googled and found out this forum is that I want to minimize HDD IO. I use netbook, and I want to save every single mW of it's 3 cell battery . On the other hand I have 2GB of RAM, and with my daily tasks I use 600-750MB of RAM. I thought that in my case it is ok to turn off paging and reduce HDD IO. Even if I don't gain any performance I will surely reduce HDD IO. Am I right? Any comments, please?

Even though this thread is 185 days, I think subject is still actual and interesting.

Thank you!

 

[fieseler]

Thats about right. Unless you do any gaming, 3d work (ie 3ds max or maya) or heavy adobe photoshop stuff (ie textures for models etc) then you probably wont need the paging file & will save some battery on ur laptop.

The only thing i will warn about is that some drivers might rely on the paging file. I had a lot of trouble last year with my x-fi sound card driver not allowing my pc to sleep at random intervals because it needed the paging file. So if you get any trouble, just enable it again & see if that trouble goes away.

 

[rustamb]

I've disabled pagefile. Didn't run into any problems, just RAM usage pumped up to 1GB from 700MB. I didn't notice performance increase, but I didn't expect one. On the other hand HDD started to do strange things. Indexing is turned off and there is no background services running that I'm not aware of, but HDD went creasy doing lots of random IO (hdd blinking very fast). I'm not sure, maybe it tried to rebuild prefetch folder, maybe something else, maybe it was happening with pagefile enabled also, but I don't remember exactly. I need to run more tests to tell for sure if turning pagefile off helped to reduce disk IO. Maybe I should wait after turning off pagefile, and let hdd dance for a while and then it will calm down While I've been typing this post disk went creasy a few more times. Playing with pagefile somehow affected the system, but I don't know how. But it's clear that it's working hard to rebuild something, maybe prefetch folder?