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).
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 size | Paging file should be no smaller than |
|---|---|
| 256 MB–1,373 MB | 1.5 times the RAM size |
| 1,374 MB or greater | 32-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
- Click on Advanced System Settings and Select Advanced
- Under Performance, click on Settings and then select Advanced tab.
- Under Virtual Memory, Click on Change. A Virtual Memory dialogue box will appear:
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:
