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I have noticed that the free space on my C: drive 256GB SSD NVMe is shrinking.
Found Pagefile.sys to be 28GB. My PC has 16GB of RAM and RAM usage was 87%.
Can’t find out if the pagefile has any data or is empty but just allocated by the system that won’t let go even after a restart.
Thinking of moving pagefile from c: drive to d: 1TB HDD.
Wonder if I’ll notice any degrading in performance.
What’s the “Recommended size” shown under Virtual Memory?
Run SystemPropertiesPerformance from cmd/powershell prompt.
Select the Advanced tab.
Click the Change button under the Virtual memory section.
If it’s less than 28GB (which I suspect it will be) set a Custom size = to either the “Recommended” size or to your total system RAM, reboot, then reset it back to “System managed size“.
Note: in the above screen shot from my own PC, I “Customized” the size to equal my total system memory of 32GB instead of the recommend 4.9GB because my system drive is 500GB and had more than enough room to support it.
Also, as Susan pointed out, while it is “possible” to move it to another drive, doing so can have unexpected consequences.
Thinking of moving pagefile from c: drive to d: 1TB HDD.
Wonder if I’ll notice any degrading in performance.
I would think if your D drive is a spinner you probably would notice degradation. I used to tweak page file but over the years kind of got away from it although I will occasionally set a custom size depending on machine and use.
I have been running a custom pagefile in a dedicated partition on a separate drive since before Windows XP.
The pagefile has always been 4GB. The partition size has always been ~6GB (so File Explorer won’t complain that it’s almost full) and formatted FAT32.
In twenty plus years I have not had one single problem with the pagefile—no BSOD, no frozen UI, no performance degradation, nothing. I started with 4GB when I had only 4GB of RAM, and though I have 16GB RAM on this machine, I still have only a 4GB pagefile. My DIY NAS has 32GB RAM, and the same pagefile setup of 4GB on a FAT32 dedicated partition.
Why doesn’t Windows released storage in pagefile after a restart where RAM usage in only 25% ? Will cold boot change allocated pagefile size ?
Cold boot doesn’t change the size.
In fact, you’ll notice that, even though you set a custom size of 8GB, it’s current only using 2.9GB. That’ll “slowly” increase until it hits your 8GB limit but, once it increases in size, it never shrinks unless you “manually” reset it again.
Back in the WinXP days there use to be a program available that “shrank” the page file back down to what was actually in use at each reboot, but it’s no longer available (probably because, like a lot of other older utilities, it just didn’t work on newer version of Windows)
As to why Windows doesn’t release the “unused” part of the page file and shrink the size back down after a restart? That’s something only Microsoft could answer.
I have 16GB of RAM and pagefile reached 28GB (currently 24.5GB).
Update : set manually to max 8GB.
There are very many misconceptions and old wives tales about the page file that are simply not true. When Windows is loading from a cold start, as it gets fully loaded it is going to page some stuff out of RAM that won’t be needed until shutdown. Putting your page file on a dedicated partition on your HDD will handle the startup paging without you being able to notice it, because the writes are waiting for available free time; they aren’t being immediately written to disk. A dedicated partition keeps the page file from fragmenting. FAT32 has less file system overhead than NTFS.
With 16GB of RAM and a fixed-size page file, you will have very little paging going on in addition to that initial paging. As shown in 2452300, my system doesn’t use the full 4GB to which I have it restricted. Taking the page file away from system management puts control of the page file and its size into the hands of a different algorithm set, and page file usage shrinks considerably.
Paging on an SSD is not a good thing, since it wears it out
Not true, SSDs do not wear out at anywhere near the rate rumours and speculation suggest. Leave the page file on your SSD for maximum performance.
https://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-two-freaking-petabytes/
cheers, Paul
A dedicated partition keeps the page file from fragmenting
Use an SSD to eliminate fragmentation performance loss and get zero seek time and much greater I/O into the bargain.
cheers, Paul
Use an SSD to eliminate fragmentation performance loss and get zero seek time and much greater I/O into the bargain.
There are very many misconceptions and old wives tales about the page file that are simply not true. When Windows is loading from a cold start, as it gets fully loaded it is going to page some stuff out of RAM that won’t be needed until shutdown. Putting your page file on a dedicated partition on your HDD will handle the startup paging without you being able to notice it, because the writes are waiting for available free time; they aren’t being immediately written to disk. A dedicated partition keeps the page file from fragmenting. FAT32 has less file system overhead than NTFS.
Interesting.
I’m stating:
There are very many misconceptions and old wives tales about the page file that are simply not true. When Windows is loading from a cold start, as it gets fully loaded it is going to page some stuff out of RAM that won’t be needed until shutdown. Putting your page file on a dedicated partition on your HDD will handle the startup paging without you being able to notice it, because the writes are waiting for available free time; they aren’t being immediately written to disk.
Keeping the page file on an SSD for a system with 16GB RAM is a waste of space on the SSD; the difference will not be noticeable in the least. Additionally, a system-managed page file size is an allocated size, not the actual size of the file. The system predicts the possible paging need of a program when that program is loaded, and allocates that additional size to pagefile.sys. That is simply file system overhead; that much space is allocated to pagefile.sys and unavailable, but no actual writing is taking place until actual paging occurs, but with 16GB RAM, that is unlikely.
The paging that occurs with a 16GB RAM system is primarily Windows startup/shutdown system files that won’t be needed again until shutdown.
I don’t really see the relevance.
Indeed.
Gentlemen we’re getting a bit personal here. Let’s keep this civil. One can agree to disagree.
I do remember one byproduct of setting a zero page file size.
Years ago one of the “keep your system free from attackers” said to remove the ability for the computer to set a page file. When the system shut down it needed to save that info to the drive. This takes time. If you are waiting for a plane to take off, you can’t shut down the computer in time to get on board the plane.
That might be some of the issues I remember from years past.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
Due to the general nature of this discussion and for ease of others finding this thread in the future, may I suggest to the Sysop that it be moved to “Questions: Windows 10” subforum.
Zig
Since changing pagefile size manually, 3 days ago, allocated size hasn’t changed even by 1k.
I have 16 GB RAM on Windows 10. I set my paging file manually to min/max 2.935 GB (2,935 MB, what my system allocates when I allow it to auto select size for virtual memory paging file).
No issues here.
Windows 10 Pro 22H2
bbearren wrote: Alex5723 wrote: First time problem since pagefile change. Tried to open a new tab in Chrome. Got ‘not enough memory..’ If you haven’t already, from an elevated Command Prompt I would first run dism/ online /cleanup-image /restorehealth and then sfc /scannow
Why would this fix what seems to be (probably) memory leak ?
It’s only a suggestion. It’s a troubleshooting step. Takes a few minutes. You can follow it, or ignore it.
Memory leaks can be caused by corrupted system files.
What does Resource Monitor look like?
Have you tried
dism /online /cleanup-image /startcomponentcleanup /resetbase
Alex, On a tangent here, after moving your pagefile to a secondary drive, have you deleted the pagefile.sys from the primary drive?
Explorer> File Menu.> Folder Options> View Tab>
UNTICK Hide protected operating system files (recommended)
then [APPLY]
Navigate to the root of C: and delete pagefile.sys
Once done, a reversal is required,
TICK the ‘Hide protected operating system files (recommended)’
that’ll be a big chunk of NVMe storage space regained.
Edit: After seeing your screenshots, you’re still using C: for pagefile – foget the above, although worth bearing in mind should you change the location.
I need the page file for recovering from sleep.
Here’s another video: You’re Doing it Wrong: Rebooting! Find out why! “Sleep” does not use the page file, it uses RAM and the hibernation file. Are you using Fast Startup?
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