Managing pagefile in windows servers

The Windows page file is the extra RAM you get from your Hard disk. Yes, Windows uses a page file to store data that can’t be held by your computer’s random-access memory when it fills up. A pagefile is a reserved portion of a hard disk that is used as an extension of random access memory (RAM).

page file

How To Determine Size Of Pagefile:

As per Microsoft, there is no such rule of thumb for page file sizing. It depends on the system to system and many other factors like Crash dump settings, Peak system commit charge, amount of RAM you have, etc. But you don’t need to worry about that. You have the option to let Windows manage the page file itself. You can also read in detail about all those factors here if you want to manage it yourself.

The following table provides guidelines for the size of the paging file:

RAM sizePaging file should be no smaller than
256 MB–1,373 MB1.5 times the RAM size
1,374 MB or greater32-bit system: 2 GB plus 16 MB
64-bit system: size of the RAM plus 128 MB

How To Move Pagefile To Another Drive:

There are circumstances where you need to move this pagefile.sys file to another drive. For example, if you are running out of space in C drive and you want to create some space. By moving page file we mean configuring it on other drives so that we can reclaim the space on C drive. Here is the procedure to do that:

  • Go to Control Panel and Open System
system settings
  • Click on Advanced System Settings and Select Advanced
Advanced system settings
  • Under Performance, click on Settings and then select Advanced tab.
Advanced Performance Settings
  • Under Virtual Memory, Click on Change. A Virtual Memory dialogue box will appear:
virtual memory dialogue box

As you can see, the default is to have the system manage your paging file size for you, and in my case it’s placed the entire file on my C: drive.

To change that:

  • uncheck the “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives” setting (Win 7).
  • click on the drive you want to move pagefile.sys to
  • click on System Managed Size
  • click Set
  • click on the drive currently holding pagefile.sys (probably C:)
  • click on No paging file
  • click Set
  • click on OK

Here is mine after the change:

page file after the change

Note: You need to Restart your system for configurations to complete and Changes to reflect in the system.

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