November 7, 2011
Dear Forum,

    Three questions about Windows 7 swap file.

1.  What size is best on a 1TB Hitachi (A 512 not an AFD), i5-2500K with 8 Gigs of DDR3?

2.  Where is the best location on a multi-partitioned HDD?  C:? D:? E:?

3.  If the answer is C:, what version of Ghost definitely does NOT copy

    it to the images it makes?

Big Al

Anybody???

I go by the old rule of thumb from XP to set the pagefile to 1.5 x RAM. However, some will say "let Windows manage it" but I personally will continue ignoring that advice.

If all partitions are on the same HDD, the pagefile should be on the first partition which is the fastest.

If you're concerned that it will get included in an image, move it to the second partition.

Best is to move it to the first partition of a different HDD.

The above may be regarded as a history lesson from the "good old days" when HDD:s were slower. Today the HDDs are fast enough to make it a "non-issue".

Ghost 2003 does not copy the pagefile but for some reason, when it calculates required space, it doesn't exclude it. The result is that when low on space, you may get told that there is not enough space but in reality, there is. I don't know how other versions of Ghost manage the pagefile since I only ever use Ghost 2003 from DOS. Let's hope for input from other users.

@ Christer

You mentioned fast HDs. Do you think having the Win7 pagefile on a second HD would have any performance advantages over a pagefile in the Win7 partition? Or not? I can't find an authoritative answer in Google.

Ghost 9 onwards doesn't copy the pagefile into the image. It creates a placeholder but it doesn't take up any space.

Ghost 2003 is too Old School to use on Win-7.
Ghost 11.5 is the oldest (DOS) version that will backup and restore an image file of Win-7 without problems of any kind.
I use it all the time.  It also works great on Win-8/DP.

Before I backup my C: drive using Ghost, I run a series of batch files, on my DOS boot disk,  that delete the Pagefile, Restore Points and all the Garbage files off of C: to lessen the size of the Backup Image File by over 4 gigabytes.
So whether Ghost backs up the Pagefile or not is immaterial.

As for where to put it....leave it alone and windows will manage it very well, without your assistance.  It has for about 16 years now.

Happy Holidays Everyone!
8-)

Brian wrote on Dec 11^th, 2011 at 12:35pm:

@ Christer You mentioned fast HDs. Do you think having the Win7 pagefile on a second HD would have any performance advantages over a pagefile in the Win7 partition? Or not? I can't find an authoritative answer in Google.

I have never had a system running two HDD:s which means that I have no personal experience of moving the pagefile to a different HDD than the one on which the OS is installed. My conclusion from reading articles and discussions on the web is what I posted.

In the early years of the personal computer, with the early hardware performance, the benefit from moving it was more significant than today. The basic rule, to move it to a different HDD is still valid. In the early years, people testified that there was a difference but the question is if you notice a difference today?

When it comes to SSD, maybe they are fast enough to move the pagefile to a partition on the same HDD with no loss in performance. (The cause of the loss in performance on "classic rotational" HDD:s being the lower transfer rates closer to the center of the disk.)


Quote:

Ghost 9 onwards doesn't copy the pagefile into the image. It creates a placeholder but it doesn't take up any space.

Just like Ghost 2003, a 0 bytes placeholder but does Ghost 9 exclude the pagefile when calculationg the space requirements?

OldCasper wrote on Dec 11^th, 2011 at 3:28pm:

Ghost 2003 is too Old School to use on Win-7. Ghost 11.5 is the oldest (DOS) version that will backup and restore an image file of Win-7 without problems of any kind. I use it all the time.  It also works great on Win-8/DP.

I use Ghost 2003 on XP and W7 without any problems. I always run it booted from a floppy and that probably makes me "Old School" but as long as the motherboard has a connector for a FDD ... 8-) ... there will be one in my box.


Quote:

Before I backup my C: drive using Ghost, I run a series of batch files, on my DOS boot disk,  that delete the Pagefile, Restore Points and all the Garbage files off of C: to lessen the size of the Backup Image File by over 4 gigabytes. So whether Ghost backs up the Pagefile or not is immaterial.

Well, your "modus operandi" is resulting in whether Ghost backing up the Pagefile or not being immaterial, not the version of Ghost, right?


Quote:

As for where to put it....leave it alone and windows will manage it very well, without your assistance.  It has for about 16 years now.

I predicted your comment but I humbly disagree. My experience is to make its initial size larger than it ever will need to be, this to make sure that it never gets resized (by Windows). Maybe that's how Windows manages the pagefile on W7 but it certainly was not on XP. On XP (my old system with 512 MB RAM), I tried a Windows managed pagefile. Running Photoshop and PowerPoint in parallel was always too much, resulting in performance hits and upsizing/downsizing of the pagefile ... ;) ... until I went back to a Christer managed pagefile. I take no chances on W7 ... :o ... and it works fine.


Quote:

Happy Holidays Everyone!

The same to you ... :) ... !

Christer wrote on Dec 11^th, 2011 at 4:31pm:

but does Ghost 9 exclude the pagefile when calculationg the space requirements?

Sorry, I'm not sure what "space requirements" means.

Brian wrote on Dec 11^th, 2011 at 5:19pm:

Christer wrote on Dec 11th, 2011 at 4:31pm: but does Ghost 9 exclude the pagefile when calculationg the space requirements?  Sorry, I'm not sure what "space requirements" means.

If you find it difficult to follow ... ;D ... just wait until I have explained!

When Ghost is preparing the image creation, if there is not enough space on the target partition, you get notified and image creation does not proceed. Ghost 2003 calculates the "required space", including the pagefile but the pagefile does not get included in the image. An example:

Used space (correctly calculated/estimated without compression) is 24 GB, including the pagefile which is 6 GB.

Free space on the target partition i 21 GB. Ghost 2003 doesn't proceed.

A different target partition which has enough free space is selected and Ghost 2003 proceeds. The resulting image is 18 GB.

Christer wrote on Dec 11^th, 2011 at 5:46pm:

just wait until I have explained!

Good explanation. I understand but I can't answer the question as I've always had lots of space on the destination partition.

Christer,

I just did this test as it was easy to do. A 3.9 GB WinXP partition. I increased the pagefile size to 2 GB so there was 3.2 GB of used space in the partition. The destination partition was 1 GB in size. IFW (and later IFD) created a 700 MB image in this partition. No questions asked.

@ Big_Al


Quote:

1.  What size is best on a 1TB Hitachi (A 512 not an AFD), i5-2500K with 8 Gigs of DDR3?

Unless you want to read a lot of technical *stuff*--and attempt to understand it so you can filter out the *bad advice* (outdated/obsolete!--folks are still recommending advice on the swap file based on Win 3.1 and Win95 or Win98 as being appropriate for Win7!), your best bet is to *let Win7 handle it* for you!

Here's some *lite* reading if you want to pursue it:  Understanding the Windows Pagefile and Why You Shouldn’t Disable It

Here's some *heavy* reading:  Mark Russinovich's *Pushing the Limits of Windows: Virtual Memory*


Quote:

2.  Where is the best location on a multi-partitioned HDD?  C:? D:? E:?

If you have only one HDD--leave it on *C*--which is where the OS should also be installed!

Here's a report on attempts to optimize the swap file's functionality:  How to optimise your Windows swap file


Quote:

3.  If the answer is C:, what version of Ghost definitely does NOT copy it to the images it makes?

All of the DOS based versions of Ghost do not include the *swap file* data in the image file--I can not speak towards the hot imaging versions of Ghost--aka Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15!

Ghost 2003--See page # 69:  Hibernation and swap files of the Ghost 2003 User Guide  (if your browser does not support opening to that specific pdf file page number automatically, then you will have to navigate to that page number *manually*).


Ghost 8.0--See page 283: Hibernation and swap files , of the Ghost 8.0 Implementation Guide  (if your browser does not support opening to that specific pdf file page number automatically, then you will have to navigate to that page number *manually*).


Ghost Solution Suite 2.5 (aka Ghost 11.5)--See page #321:  Hibernation and swap files of the Ghost Solution Suite v2.5 Implementation Guide  (if your browser does not support opening to that specific pdf file page number automatically, then you will have to navigate to that page number *manually*).

So, it looks like DOS Ghost from Ghost 2003, Corporate Ghost v8.0, and now Corporate Ghost 11.5 have all been the same--the *swap file* is not included in the Ghost image file--maybe there is a *place holder* if it is a NTFS file system--but the actual data is *skipped* in the image file.

Brian wrote on Dec 11^th, 2011 at 6:30pm:

Christer, I just did this test as it was easy to do. A 3.9 GB WinXP partition. I increased the pagefile size to 2 GB so there was 3.2 GB of used space in the partition. The destination partition was 1 GB in size. IFW (and later IFD) created a 700 MB image in this partition. No questions asked.

Now it's I who don't understand ... :-[ ... :

What is IFW and IFD?

If I assume 1.2 GB used space, excluding the pagefile, a 700 MB image indicates "high compression", right?

I rarely use compression but when I get the notification of "not enough space", I can choose to let Ghost compress the image. It does not always make it fit, though.

NightOwl,


Quote:

Unless you want to read a lot of technical *stuff*--and attempt to understand it so you can filter out the *bad advice* (outdated/obsolete!--folks are still recommending advice on the swap file based on Win 3.1 and Win95 or Win98 as being appropriate for Win7!), your best bet is to *let Win7 handle it* for you!

My system has 2 x 2 GB = 4 GB RAM. I dual boot XP (installed on C:) and W7-64 (installed on D:). I checked the properties of the two pagefiles.

XP set by me to 6144 MB (1.5 x RAM) to 12288 MB (3 x RAM).
Windows recommends 4987 MB (~1.2 x RAM).
When I change to Windows managed, it gets set to 3325 MB.

(On XP, with 512 MB => 1024 MB RAM, I recall the recommendation to be ~1.5 x RAM. So, with more RAM, the pagefile doesn't need to be as large. Hence the lower pagefile/RAM ratio with more RAM.)

W7-64 set by me to 6144 MB (1.5 x RAM) to 12288 MB (3 x RAM).
Windows recommends 6139 MB (~1.5 x RAM).
When I change to Windows managed, it gets set to 4093 MB.

My conclusion is that W7-64 needs more memory than XP. In neither case does Windows follow its own recommendation and the obvious question is why?

Now I ponder the size limit set to 3 x RAM? If set too low, that might result in blue screening but avoided with a Windows managed (unlimited, I guess) pagefile.

The bottom line is that I found one single reason to let Windows manage the pagefile, if it is unlimited, but I don't know for sure. If Windows also followed its own size recommendation ... :-/ ... I just might.

With a Windows managed pagefile, if it for some reason gets increased in size, does anyone know if the new size is set for keeps or if it gets downsized to the previous, apparently too small, size?

Christer wrote on Dec 12^th, 2011 at 3:55am:

What is IFW and IFD?

My test computer was already set up with Image for Windows and Image for DOS. Neither take any notice of the pagefile size in calculating whether an image will fit into a small partition.

Quote:

Image for Windows and Image for DOS

Thanks ... :-[ ... I'm not familiar with "Ghost 9 lingo".

@ Christer


Quote:

I'm not familiar with "Ghost 9 lingo"

Actually, Brian is talking about a Symantec imaging product competitor--by TeraByte:  TeraByte's group of Image for Windows, DOS, and Linux

Quote:

Actually, Brian is talking about a Symantec imaging product competitor--by TeraByte:

Okey, he only mentioned Ghost 9 in this thread.

@ Christer


Quote:

he only mentioned Ghost 9 in this thread

Yup, I noticed that *change of focus* -- thought it might be confusing!  It was  ;) !

A Knight's Move thought process without schizophrenia.

... :-X ...

@ Christer


Christer wrote on Dec 14^th, 2011 at 2:25am:

... :-X ...

My initial reaction too!  But.....


Brian wrote on Dec 13^th, 2011 at 10:20pm:

A Knight's Move thought process without schizophrenia.

Google is your friend:  A Knight's Move thought process without schizophrenia

See:  Knight's Move thinking


@ Brian

Interesting reference!  Made me work for that one!  Dare we ask why this is something you have ready at hand to share?!

@ NightOwl

I trained as an Internal Medicine specialist. But not in psychiatry, although there is an overlap of terminology.

Why settle for 1 Pagefile?

With multiple HDDs, you can create a Pagefile of any size, up to 4GB.
2 4GB Pagefiles don't make my 14 year old Packard Bell any faster but, does reduce crashes.