Comments for What are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys? (And how do I remove them?)

Comment from ron on 2009-10-13

2009-10-14T05:35:07Z

I've found that it's almost, if not totally, impossible to run without any virtual memory allocated.

One other tweak I like to do is to change the virtual memory max and min values to be the same. 10, 20 years ago Hard Drives were measured in 10's and 100's of Mega, not Giga bytes. Back then it made economic sense to minimize use of relatively expensive disk space. So Windows was allowed to expand and shrink the swap file within the range specified. These days with common HD in laptops measuring 100's GB assigning 1-4GB to swap file is not as significant.

By setting definition of swap file to a constant size Windows creates it once and leaves it. After you have run an competent Defrag tool in a boot time defrag a couple of times it will eventually consolidate the swap file into a single contiguous file (or at most a few large fragments). No longer will growth and shrinkage of swap file contribute to fragmentation of data files or application files during new app installs.

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A comment on: What are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys? (And how do I remove them?)

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Comment from Scott on 2009-10-13

2009-10-14T01:25:39Z

I, and most Power Users, strongly reccommend against no virtual memory. First, It will cause your RAM use to jump to nearly full when running, say, 3 IEs with 3 windows open each. Then, if an application needs more memory, it may overwrite its assigned memory with the results being anything form an application crash to the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) . Of course, if you have lots of RAM installed it may never happen. However, if (as sometimes happens) microsoft puts out an update that is buggy, it may use all you memory before you computer is done stating up, with the results being your system unable to load. (This actually happened to my friend, we had to boot into the WRC, ugh..... =)). So, the bottom line is : don't do it. You are inviting trouble.

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A comment on: What are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys? (And how do I remove them?)

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Comment from Pookey on 2009-10-13

2009-10-13T23:48:51Z

Actually, if you have an IDE HDD, you get worse performance sticking it on a separate drive to windows, unless that drive is on a separate IDE controller, as the IDE controller only accepts data from one device at a time. If both HDD's are on the same controller then when the windows drive will ask for something from the pagefile, it has to wait for the pagefile drive to finish before it can continue its work.

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A comment on: What are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys? (And how do I remove them?)

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Comment from Irving Waldorf on 2009-10-13

2009-10-13T23:20:18Z

Why in the world would anyone want to remove hiberfil.sys or pagefile.sys? Seems to me they are asking for trouble somewhere down the road.

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A comment on: What are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys? (And how do I remove them?)

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Comment from Michael Horowitz on 2009-10-08

2009-10-08T19:59:15Z

Just to clarify a point. When Leo refers to another "drive" he means a second physical internal hard drive. He does not simply mean another drive letter.

I say this because drive letters can be separate partitions on a single hard disk and there are recommendations online about putting the paging/swap file in its own partition. I don't think this is a good idea as it just increases the distance the r/w heads have to move.

Windows on hard disk 1 and the page/swap file on hard disk 2 should give you the best possible performance. Needless to say, laptop users need not apply.

Thanks for that catch: yes, if you want to move your paging file for performance it should be movd to a separate physical drive. Moving it to a separate partition on the same physical drive won't help matters.

09-Oct-2009

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A comment on: What are hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys? (And how do I remove them?)

Tech Questions? Get Answers! - Ask Leo! ... by Leo Notenboom
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