What is a page file or paging file ?
What does it do ?
How does it help our computers to run better ?
Find out these questions and how to customize your paging file to get the most performance from your computer.
Every computer has physical temporary storage memory called ram, generally today the average computer currently has around 2gb of RAM, but what happens if you have more computer or files open that require more than 2gb of RAM or however much you have?
Of course we could always upgrade and add extra RAM, but what if you find you need extra RAM while in the middle of something? Or upgrading may not be possible.
It used to be a case of the computer running out of RAM and giving an out of memory error, but today Windows comes with something called the Pagefile , the Paging File allows the computer to use hard drive space as RAM, meaning that if your computer has 2gb of physical RAM and your computer needs to have 3gb it will firstly use the 2gb of physical RAM and then anything else will be used from the hard drives Pagefile which is called virtual memory.
Now you may ask why don’t computers only run using the Paging File and virtual memory instead of physical RAM?
This is due to virtual memory being slower than physical RAM.
You may notice that the more applications or files you have open the slower your computer seems to be; this is due to the computer using the paging file .
How can I make my computer faster?
The paging file is designed to allow your computer to open files and applications that it would otherwise not be able to open, it’s never going to be as fast as physical RAM.
Hard Drive Upgrading
Upgrading your hard drive to a faster model will help to increase the speed of the paging file virtual memory .
RAM
The easiest way to increase the speed is to increase the amount of physical RAM in your computer, remember though Windows 32bit operating systems will only recognize 3.5gb or RAM, if you increase your computers RAM amount beyond this the extra will not be recognized.
By increasing the RAM it then means that your computer will not have to use as much virtual memory.
Static/Custom Pagefile
If you allow Windows to manage the size of your pagefile it changes the size as and when needed, but if you setup a custom pagefile as a fixed size then the size is fixed.
Generally Windows is estimated to create a pagefile at around 1.5 x the current amount of physical RAM so use this as a guide when setting up a custom paging file
Another tip when modifying a page file is to change its location to another drive or partition if possible.
computer adviser page file article