Pagefile Size and Location For Vegas 7

surferj45 wrote on 3/13/2007, 6:56 PM

I have been reading several posts about getting the best performance from pagefile sizes and locations for video editing SD in Vegas and am a bit confused about what would be best for my configuration. I would appreciate some help from those who know. My OS is Windows XP Media Center, my CPU is an Intel Core 2, I have 2GB of RAM, one SATA II hard drive for the OS and programs, one SATA II hard drive for animations, music, sound FX, etc. and 2 hard drives set up in RAID 0 for captured A/V files.
How large should the pagefile be? Where should I locate the pagefile? Do I need more than one pagefile, if so, how large and where should they be located?
Thanks for your help.

Comments

fldave wrote on 3/13/2007, 7:47 PM

Microsoft recommends that you always keep a minimal swap file on your system drive (normally C:) I keep a 256MB swap there. I tried to run XP with no swap file and I barely got it back in running condition. If you were to loose the HD with your only swap file on it, you may not be able to boot your machine.

The other swap file should be 1.5 times physical memory, so 3GB. You can set this up as a minimum of say 2GB, max 3GB. Note that XP 32bit should only be able to use ~ 3GB, but set your swap size above that anyway.

Where to put it: a separate physical drive. If your RAID 0 A/V drive is for uncompressed video, meaning tons of throughput needed, then I wouldn't put it there. Try it on that drive or your other SATA II drive. You can always move it later.

Now, I think this is becoming less of an issue with all the machines with more and more physical memory. Of course Vista will probably eat up all available resources for some time to come, so it still may be a valid exercise.

riredale wrote on 3/13/2007, 9:46 PM

I suspect that the usual rules about pagefile size need to be thrown out the window now that we all have so much ram.

As I understand it, a pagefile is a place where Windows moves ram contents when there is a need for additional ram space. If so, then a system with even just 512MB should be able to boot XP just fine and even run quite a few programs without any pagefile at all. I've tried it many times, and it works.

For real-life situations, why not try this: define a very large pagefile on any disk you want, then run a worst-case set of programs, and see just how much pagefile is really being used by looking at the Task Manager under the Performance tab. That's your worst case. Your page file can be set to any value above that and you should be fine.

I've read that it's usually a good idea to put the pagefile on a different physical disk than the C drive, so that the disk heads aren't thrashing around from the Windows/application tracks and the pagefile tracks.

johnmeyer wrote on 3/14/2007, 9:55 AM

I put 16MB on my C: drive (the absolute minimum) and then put 512MB min and 1280MB max on my E: drive (which is my second physical drive). Works great.

Since you've got big hard drives, there is no reason to try to skimp too much. Also, if Windows really needs more memory, it will give you a warning and increase the swap file size for the remainder of that Windows session. Thus, if you screw up and make the swap file too small, there isn't much penalty.

I spent a lot of time a few years back sweating over this, trying to improve performance, and in the end never really improved anything. The only reason I still even bother with the two swap files is that I partition my C: drive as small as I can so it just fits the O/S and programs, with a few GB left over for future expansion. This makes image backup a snap. By making the swap file small, I don't have to include a huge wasted file in the image backup (although I think the current release of my backup software -- Acronis Trueimage, of course -- doesn't include the swap file in the image backup, so I may not need to do this anymore).

So, bottom line, don't waste much time on the swap file optimization: It's not going to buy you much, if anything.

If you are looking for substantial performance improvements, the two biggest that I have done on dozens of client machines are:

1. Get rid of Norton Antivirus. Remove it, and then use the Norton Removal tool to make sure you have killed all vestiges of this cycle-sucking monster. Then, either fly without an anti-virus program (which I do on all my computers), or install Trend Micro's excellent anti-virus program.

2. Turn off indexing for all drives, and also make sure you set the indexing service to "disabled."

And, of course, make sure DMA is enabled for all drives, although you pretty much cannot capture video if this is screwed up (although it is amazing how many computers I have fixed over the years that were set to PIO).

MH_Stevens wrote on 3/14/2007, 11:20 AM

I have experimented with various memory handling options and I found best results letting Windows manage my pagefiles.