Why Optimize The Paging File?

Unless your computer is truly loaded with RAM, it will almost always use the paging file. As such, its performance affects the performance of the whole computer.

Now, using a paging file may sound like a really cheap way to run memory intensive programs without the expense of buying more RAM. However, even the fastest hard disk is more than an order of magnitude slower than the slowest RAM.

Even the fastest hard disk is currently over 70X slower than the dual-channel PC2700 DDR memory common in many computers. Let's not even start comparing the hard disk with faster RAM solutions like PC3200 DDR memory or PC2-4200 DDR2 memory.

So, paging file is only a stopgap solution for the lack of sufficient RAM. As long as you use the paging file, there will always be performance degradation. The ideal solution for insufficient RAM is always more RAM, not more Virtual Memory. But since we can't afford all the RAM we want, a paging file is necessary for us to run today's memory guzzling programs.

As you can tell, more isn't better for the paging file because more paging file space will only give you the ability to run more memory intensive programs at once. It will not speed up your system. But what we can do is to optimize the paging file so that the performance degradation when using it is minimized.

So How Do We Optimize The Paging File?

There have been many theories on how to optimize the paging file. The most important ones are listed below :-

• Making the paging file contiguous.
• Moving the paging file to the outer tracks of the hard disk.
• Creating a huge paging file.
• Moving the paging file to a different partition in the same hard disk.
• Moving the paging file to a different hard disk.
• Creating multiple paging files
• Using an optimal cluster size
• Moving the paging file to a RAID array
• Moving the paging file to a RAM drive
• Reducing reliance on virtual memory

We will examine those methods and see what will work and what won't.