Member Avatar for jai614

I installed a second hard-drive mainly for games and photos. The default drive c:\ has the windows and programs folder and the page file

I do a lot of photo editing and play a lot of games
I have 768 ram and I usually need around 2048 GB page file
But should I leave the page-file there on drive c: or relocate it to the new drive d:\?
Or should I split it up 1 GB each?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by MartyMcFly

Dani AI

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Short answer: move the paging file to a different physical disk only if that second drive is a separate, faster spindle or controller. is right that speed matters; is also right that if the new drive is clearly faster, putting the OS (and its pagefile) there will give the best overall result — but rebuilding the OS is optional, not required.

Why it helps: paging I/O competes with other reads/writes. If the pagefile sits on the same physical platter as the OS/program files, seeks collide and performance drops. On a truly separate drive (or on its own SATA channel) the OS can read program data while Windows services the pagefile on the other disk. If both drives share one IDE channel or are two partitions on the same disk, there’s no benefit.

Practical recommendations:

  • If moving the pagefile, keep a small pagefile on the system/boot volume so Windows can write crash dumps. Make the primary (larger) pagefile on the faster physical disk.
  • Set the pagefile to a fixed size (set Initial = Maximum) to avoid fragmentation; pick a size based on workload (common rules: ~1–1.5x RAM for heavy editing/paging on older Windows).
  • Splitting the pagefile across multiple physical disks can help under heavy paging, but only when they are separate spindles and not sharing the same channel.
  • Avoid placing the pagefile on removable or network drives.

How to change it (Windows XP/2000 style):
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory -> Change. Select drive, choose Custom size (or System managed), click Set, then OK and reboot.

If paging is frequent, adding RAM will improve performance more than tinkering with the pagefile.

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Member Avatar for MartyMcFly

Leave it on C:\ in my opinion.

Member Avatar for gemini4

The page file needs to be on the fastest hard drive. If your second hard drive is faster put it there.

Member Avatar for MartyMcFly

Well if that isn't C:\ I would personally rebuild the OS onto it.

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