Huge pagefile.sys

[Alpha Gamer]

I have just upgraded from 8Gb RAM to 16Gb RAM and now my pagefile.sys is crazy big and takes almost all the free space I had left on my C drive. Is it ok if I just resize it to my previous 8Gb RAM standards?
Like this

 

[cliffordcooley]

Yes you can make the pagefile smaller without side effects. When I was using a pagefile I would set mine to 512MB or 1GB. And then if the system ever needed more memory, it would automatically resize the file.

Some people don't like the idea but I have turned off my pagefile. They will post several reasons why its not a good idea. Reasons that make no sense to me. But I'm not gonna bash them for those reasons, but I have ran without a pagefile way for a few years on 8GB and no issues. Without a pagefile the system would simply not load applications and possibly crash other application in memory, if it ever did run low.

Long story short, I think we all can agree making the pagefile smaller is acceptable. With 16GB memory, I'd probably set the pagefile to 2GB. That is if I was going to use one.

 

[Alpha Gamer]

Yes you can make the pagefile smaller without side effects. When I was using a pagefile I would set mine to 512MB or 1GB. And then if the system ever needed more memory, it would automatically resize the file.

Some people don't like the idea but I have turned off my pagefile. They will post several reasons why its not a good idea. Reasons that make no sense to me. But I'm not gonna bash them for those reasons, but I have ran without a pagefile way for a few years on 8GB and no issues. Without a pagefile the system would simply not load applications and possibly crash other application in memory, if it ever did run low.

Long story short, I think we all can agree making the pagefile smaller is acceptable. With 16GB memory, I'd probably set the pagefile to 2GB. That is if I was going to use one.

Thanks for the reply. I'll keep using my system as it is and see If run into anything weird. I'm also considering decreasing it even further to 2Gb levels.

 

[DelJo63]

The standard choice for the pagefile is 2, 2.5 or 3x the installed ram. Making the Initial = Max will avoid pagefile expansion, which is clearly what happened to you.

There are different approaches to managing the pagefile, some like a size of zero, allow MS to manage it, or something like my recommendation. REGARDLESS, the boot drive will have a pagefile for all sizes > 0.

 

[SNGX1275]

To expand on what cliff said, I'd take it further and just stop the pagefile completely.