Improve Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 Pagefile Speed

Improving pagefile speed improves system speed. There are several things that you can do to speed up Windows pagefile speed. Some may seam strange, but trust me...

• Place the pagefile on the fastest hard drive you have


• Set the minimum and maximum size to the same value, forget about those that say to set 500 MB min, 800 MB max


• Even if the recommended size is 1.3 * RAM size, based on my experience 1024 MB (1 GB) is usually enough and big enough for any normal use; so set 1024 on min and max size fields


• Make sure the hard drive with the pagefile is defragmented


• Use pagedefrag to defragment your pagefile and other system-critical files

An idea to defragment your page file, that unfortunately involves several restarts is:

1. Set pagefile min and max size to minimum (2 MB) or completely move it on another partition


2. Defragment the partition that will held the pagefile (not the one you move it to) as good as you can; notice that Windows Defragmenter needs several runs to do a better job


3. Set the pagefile size back to the desired size or move it back to the initial partition.
   

Steps 1 and 3 require a restart, but this is sometimes the only way to get an unfragmented pagefile.