May Windows 10 Still Benefit from Two or More Page Files?

fernando bonfim 56 Reputation points
2021-10-04T12:41:58.72+00:00

According to the book Windows 7 Inside-out, written by Ed Bott et al, and made available on the Microsoft Press website, Windows can benefit from creating multiple separate Page Files on two or more devices. The justification is that disk controller may process multiple requests to read or write data concurrently.

Does that still holds true for Windows 10? That is, could Windows 10 still benefit from it?

For instance, on a computer having two storage devices connected to it, having one page file on each of them would help performance somehow?

Windows 10
Windows 10
A Microsoft operating system that runs on personal computers and tablets.
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  1. Docs 15,141 Reputation points
    2021-10-05T04:58:55.167+00:00

    Windows 7 Inside Out was published in 2011.

    In the past 10 years more end users switched from HD to SSD, moved from 32x to 64x, and installed more RAM.

    Microsoft published a link on page files that was last updated in 2019:
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/determine-appropriate-page-file-size

    See the section: Multiple page files and disk considerations

    This is another Microsoft link on page files:
    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/introduction-page-file

    To increase computer performance consider:
    a) switching from HD to SSD
    b) installing more RAM

    https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000129805/how-random-access-memory-ram-affects-performance
    https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/tech-takes/7-ways-to-improve-computer-performance

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  1. Limitless Technology 39,356 Reputation points
    2021-10-05T18:52:01.473+00:00

    Hello @fernando bonfim

    Yes this settings also true for Windows 10 and Windows 10 can still benefit from it.

    Here is the nice article from Microsoft regarding page files.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/determine-appropriate-page-file-size#multiple-page-files-and-disk-considerations

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  2. Michael Taylor 48,486 Reputation points
    2021-10-04T15:45:37.387+00:00

    Technically yes but this applies irrelevant of whether you're talking about paging files or not. The important point though is that you must have each drive on a separate controller AND the controllers must not be on the same bus on the motherboard (e.g. SATA 5 & 6). You'd have to look at your motherboard docs to figure that out.

    But honestly needing multiple paging files is an old school of thought to me. Windows traditionally uses paging files when it needs to move stuff from memory to disk. If you are so worried about perf then using the paging file is a great way to slow things down. Upgrade the memory and you'll see a far better perf gain than adding a secondary drive for a paging file. Furthermore a HDD drive is really going to be slow so you'd want at least an SSD and constantly writing to an SSD for paging is going to have a detrimental impact over time.

    In summary, yes it will help any disk IO if the drives are on separate controllers on separate buses but honestly just upgrading your memory capacity would be a better use of your money and better long term perf benefit.