Would like to note that this section here
Should the file be left on Drive C:?
The slowest aspect of getting at a file on a hard disk is in head movement (‘seeking’). If you have only one physical drive then the file is best left where the heads are most likely to be, so where most activity is going on — on drive C:. If you have a second physical drive, it is in principle better to put the file there, because it is then less likely that the heads will have moved away from it. If, though, you have a modern large size of RAM, actual traffic on the file is likely to be low, even if programs are rolled out to it, inactive, so the point becomes an academic one. If you do put the file elsewhere, you should leave a small amount on C: — an initial size of 2MB with a Maximum of 50 is suitable — so it can be used in emergency. Without this, the system is inclined to ignore the settings and either have no page file at all (and complain) or make a very large one indeed on C:
Is not entirely correct and to keep in mind the instruction above (referring to Doughs post).. it appears the owner of this page could have used the same instruction.
The pagefile should be kept at the start, or the front, of the drive. By default, that will be drive C:. The reasoning behind this is that when you boot, you want the pagefile to be the first thing read. Thus speeding up the boot process and over-all performance. This goes back to partitioning your drive(s). As a general rule, its best (depending upon which OS your going to install) to install your OS on another drive other than the default, C:. The first thing read IS C: and if you will partition your drive to leave the default drive C: alone to store your pagefile, and nothing else, you will increase your performance of your machine. Another reason, I personally prefer, is that there are alot of virus/worms/malware that are wrote to specifically hunt/find C:\Windows and drop itself randomly through-out that path…obviously if windows is on drive D:..it has no were to go.
Anyhow, back to the point at hand, 2.5 x the amount of ram USED to be a rule of thumb. However, that has since changed. WIth systems today running an average of 512mb upwards to 4gb, 2.5 x is just to much. You can use the 2.5 x rule up to 1gb. Anything over that is wasteful and will work exactly opposite of the way intended. If you have a gig of ram.. then set it 1500mb… a pagefile over that will slow down and hamper performance. Reason..? because the larger your pagefile is, the longer it takes to read the instructions. In all honesty, if you have a gig of ram or more, you dont even need a pagefile. Anyway, just set your initial at 2mb and your max at 1.5 x total amount of ram and you will be fine. You may receive that very same warning once.. even twice more after that. If thats the case, simply reboot so the instructions are re-wrote. If you recieve that warning more than 3 times after changing it, then you mistakenly forgot to apply or "set" the new setting.
