Paging Tweak

If you have two or more hard disks, move your pagefile.

There is no point in moving your pagefile if you have a single disk, even if the disk has multiple partitions, so this tweak requires at least two hard disks. It relies on the assumption that your second or subsequent hard disk is used much less than your system disk (the disk that your operating system and applications are installed on) so there is less disk activity on it, which means the pagefile can be accessed much more quickly on that drive. In addition, Input/Output (I/O) to and from the second disk is performed in parallel to any I/O on the first disk, which means Windows is not trying to batter the heads across the hard disk as it tries to load files at the same time it is accessing the pagefile.

If you have a single disk with partitions then there is no benefit to be gained from this tweak because the pagefile will still be on the same disk, and the disk heads will still have to move across the same hard disk to get to the pagefile. By moving the pagefile to a different disk you can obtain significant performance gains if your machine constantly page faults.


This pagefile tweak will perform best if the second or subsequent drive is empty to start with. Failing that, a disk defragment should be performed before applying this tweak to help ensure a contiguous (unbroken) span of space is available for the pagefile.

To Perform This Tweak:

• Open the Control Panel and select the System applet
  • Alternatively, right-click "My Computer" on the desktop and select Properties
• On the Advanced tab, select Settings under the Performance group:

On the Performance Options dialog box, click Change, which is under the Virtual Memory group:

Click on the hard disk that currently contains the pagefile (1.) then click No paging file (2.), then click Set:

Click on the hard disk that you want to contain the pagefile (1.), then click Custom size (2.) and enter the same value as shown in the Recommended field (3.). Finally, click Set then OK:

You do not have to use a fixed-size pagefile if you do not want to, however if you elect to allow the system to choose the pagefile, the pagefile will need to grow at a later date, and your system will slow down during the pagefile growth stage. It is suggested that you use a fixed size pagefile of the recommended size.

You must reboot to make this change take effect.