Do you recommend moving win7 page file from system to another partition?

Discussion in 'Windows 7' started by komputer, Dec 24, 2009.

  1. komputer

    komputer MDL Junior Member

    Dec 5, 2009
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    I want to make a fat32 partition at the begining of my hard disk(outher track), with the the only purpose for page files. followed by the OS partition and the DATA/Storage partition
     
  2. tcntad

    tcntad MDL Guru

    Oct 26, 2009
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    Sure you can move the pagefile to another partition but it wont give u any real performanceboost, you would only keep windows smaller.
     
  3. heliosys

    heliosys MDL Novice

    Jul 12, 2009
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    performance wise have not tried, no comment on that, I understand where you are coming from, at outer track, the circumference is the biggest, per rotation more sectors are being read, however the reading arm is still it's bottle neck, is it going to make any difference, it's anyone's game.
     
  4. dcskyline

    dcskyline MDL Novice

    Oct 23, 2009
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  5. sml156

    sml156 MDL Member

    Sep 8, 2009
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    I dont really see how you could get a noticeable boost by makeing a new partition - the only way I can see getting it would be to put it on a seperate drive
     
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  6. petrossa

    petrossa MDL Novice

    Jan 3, 2009
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    Haven't had a pagefile since i installed 8gb under xp pro x64, Vista x64, W7 x64.
    Never had an out of mem issue and not because i don't load progs.

    I guess for the few percent of heavy duty image processing power users it still serves a purpose.
     
  7. Dolorous Edd

    Dolorous Edd MDL Expert

    Aug 31, 2009
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    #7 Dolorous Edd, Dec 25, 2009
    Last edited: Dec 25, 2009
    If you move it to another partition on the same physical disk it may acctually slow the system down some. If you place it on a separate drive with commonly used programes (games) it may slow performance (access to swap file while loading game content). If however you place it on a completely separate drive, on the primary partition and that drive is just used for storage (no large, common apps or games) then it theoretically will boost your performance (swap file access will be limited to a drive that is not currently being used by other apps). If you are transfering gigabytes of data from one drive to another or worse, from one partition to another on the same drive while windows is using the swap file you will have poor performance.

    Bottom line, if you have a drive that gets very little access to it then place the swap file on the primary partition of that drive. BTW, I just said f**k it and left my swap file on C:, it isn't that big of a deal.

    This is why I never install my primary OS to a drive with multiple partitions, I prefer to have my OS on a relatively small drive. I just hope that 160 GB drives are available for a long time.


    EDIT: The reason people recommend moving the swap file is to avoid simultaneous access to the drive that has the OS and programs by the swap file.
     
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  8. roirraW "edor" ehT

    roirraW "edor" ehT MDL Addicted

    Sep 1, 2007
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    I have my multiple Windows and one Data partition on a RAID 0+1 setup, with my pagefile, temporary internet files and temporary folders redirected to a separate RAID 0 setup that I otherwise only use for backup images and for decompressing large archives.
     
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  9. SLICuser

    SLICuser MDL Novice

    Dec 26, 2009
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    No no no.

    Never put your page file on a fat32 partition under Win 5 ,6 ,6.1(7). The fat32 translators suck and you will notice a slowdown.

    Also if you have a lot of stuff or a large game (WOW) the increased seek time will be noticeable. Especially if your unit is a laptop.

    (graphic of data O=os data = p page file, g = game data)

    organized (partitioned)

    PPPPOOOOOOOOOGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
    Large seek between game and page file.

    Windows managed

    OOOOOOOPPOPOGPGGGGGGPGGPGGGGGPGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG

    Smaller seek between game and page file.

    Mechanical drives are around 3MS track to track 40ms full stroke. Partitioning makes seek go towards fullstroke. (add 30% for 5Ks, 40% for 4K 100% for 3K and remove 25% for 10K and 35% for 15K)

    Only reason I see doing something like this is for data recovery, swap files make it very hard when you have to do a sector by sector data recovery.

    Most people don't / can't do the level of recovery so I don't see the benefit for normal users.

    If you have a desktop, add a second drive and set your swap to:
    C: (boot drive) 20MB
    D: (second drive) Windows managed.

    You will see a very good improvement.
     
  10. komputer

    komputer MDL Junior Member

    Dec 5, 2009
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    i have a laptop, and like petrossa says, yes, i am using mainly for image/video editing