Page file exist on two drives

[sonyzz]

So I was casually looking at task manager the other day and randomly noticed that windows have pagefile on my C drive (nvme ssd where OS is written to) and D drive which is a hard drive from secondary storage devices. Why would windows have a page file on two devices and is it safe to disable that on Disk D which is a 7200rpm WD Ultrastar hard drive?

[Alex Atkin UK]

23 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

So I was casually looking at task manager the other day and randomly noticed that windows have pagefile on my C drive (nvme ssd where OS is written to) and D drive which is a hard drive from secondary storage devices. Why would windows have a page file on two devices and is it safe to disable that on Disk D which is a 7200rpm WD Ultrastar hard drive?

Was Windows previously installed on D drive at any point so an old pagefile might have been detected a reused?

 

It should be safe to disable the one on the HDD anyway.

[sonyzz]

6 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Was Windows previously installed on D drive at any point so an old pagefile might have been detected a reused?

 

It should be safe to disable the one on the HDD anyway.

No, I cloned windows from previous 1TB 970 Evo ssd to 1TB 990 Pro ssd and remember setting up recycle bin to disk D at some point but, never installed windows on it

[Eigenvektor]

Open system properties, Advanced tab. Click on Settings... below performance. Go to Advanced again and click on Change... below Virtual Memory.

 

You should see your drives and the page file settings. Simply set D to no pagefile. If it's already disabled, you should be able to simply delete the existing file.

[HanZie82]

In Windows setttings you can select to have Page files on more then 1 drive...

[sonyzz]

7 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Open system properties, Advanced tab. Click on Settings... below performance. Go to Advanced again and click on Change... below Virtual Memory.

 

You should see your drives and the page file settings. Simply set D to no pagefile. If it's already disabled, you should be able to simply delete the existing file.

I set it to none, then restarted windows, so far no complaints

[sonyzz]

6 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

In Windows setttings you can select to have Page files on more then 1 drive...

But, certainly not a hard drive, from little research done this morning I found out from some reddit and other forum posts that page file should be on your fastest drive, which in case is my samsung 990 pro nvme ssd but, there was no mention of having two page files so, I was unsure if I can safely disable the one on hard drive

[HanZie82]

3 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

But, certainly not a hard drive, from little research done this morning I found out from some reddit and other forum posts that page file should be on your fastest drive, which in case is my samsung 990 pro nvme ssd but, there was no mention of having two page files so, I was unsure if I can safely disable the one on hard drive

Yes only really need the 1, as long as its bigger then RAM + swapfile size.
And you dont really have to put it on your fastest drive. It will however dictate boot times, so good to keep in mind.
I put mine on my 2nd drive a SATA SSD to save space on my (faster) NVME which isnt to big. (The 16GB pagefile on NVME drive was just for showing).

[sonyzz]

8 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Yes only really need the 1, as long as its bigger then RAM + swapfile size.
And you dont really have to put it on your fastest drive. It will however dictate boot times, so good to keep in mind.
I put mine on my 2nd drive a SATA SSD to save space on my (faster) NVME which isnt to big. (The 16GB pagefile on NVME drive was just for showing).

I let windows to manage the size of it

Edited October 9, 2023 by sonyzz

[HanZie82]

2 minutes ago, sonyzz said:

I let windows to manage the size of it

Yup that works too.
Just note it doesnt only manage the size but also the location and amount.

[sonyzz]

3 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Yup that works too.
Just note it doesnt only manage the size but also the location and amount.

It will certainly do a better job than I would but, thanks guys for replies. Really appreciate the help

[Mark Kaine]

assuming D isnt your os drive.... yeah, you don't need the page file there. 

[Eigenvektor]

4 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

Yes only really need the 1, as long as its bigger then RAM + swapfile size.

Just note that having two page files can potentially improve performance, because Windows can access them simultaneously. It's also usually a good idea to put it on a separate drive from the OS.

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/ff382717(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

Quote

If you have more than one physical disk, moving the page file to a fast drive that doesn’t contain your Windows system files is a good idea. Using multiple page files split over two or more physical disks is an even better idea, because your disk controller can process multiple requests to read or write data concurrently.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

48 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Just note that having two page files can potentially improve performance, because Windows can access them simultaneously. It's also usually a good idea to put it on a separate drive from the OS.

 

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/technet-magazine/ff382717(v=msdn.10)?redirectedfrom=MSDN

 

That information  pre-dates screaming fast NVME drives, I would not assume Windows 10/11 behaves the same  as 7, given that page does seem to be talking about HDDs. 

 

I know Linux distros have changed how they use swap files over that time period preferring to swap to compressed memory first and only use storage when absolutely necessary.  I only created a swapfile on my server so it could prioritise RAM for cache.

 

5 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

Yes only really need the 1, as long as its bigger then RAM + swapfile size.
And you dont really have to put it on your fastest drive. It will however dictate boot times, so good to keep in mind.
I put mine on my 2nd drive a SATA SSD to save space on my (faster) NVME which isnt to big. (The 16GB pagefile on NVME drive was just for showing).

You are doing yourself a disservice, half the reason for having a fast boot drive is for the pagefile.  The faster the drive its on, the less stutters/hitches you will get when its paging something out or reading it back into RAM.

[Eigenvektor]

Quote

That information  pre-dates screaming fast NVME drives, I would not assume Windows 10/11 behaves the same  as 7, given that page does seem to be talking about HDDs.

True, NVMe is a lot faster. I guess this information is a bit more up to date: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-client/performance/how-to-determine-the-appropriate-page-file-size-for-64-bit-versions-of-windows#multiple-page-files-and-disk-considerations

 

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I know Linux distros have changed how they use swap files over that time period preferring to swap to compressed memory first and only use storage when absolutely necessary.  I only created a swapfile on my server so it could prioritise RAM for cache.

In other words, they prefer to use compressed memory despite storage becoming a lot faster.