The Page File, SuperFetch, and ReadyBoost

The Page File

 

1.   The average user is best served by LEAVING THE PAGE FILE ALONE. Vista does an excellent job of managing the page file settings for most people.

2.      For 99.999% of the configurations on the planet you need a page file. Vista itself wants one and a number of programs out there do too. If you think you can run your machine optimally without a page file you do not understand how Vista (or any NT based OS works).

      (Please don’t email me to argue this, I won’t respond. Find a forum to argue about it.)

3.      The recommendations below are not designed to give you the highest scores on a synthetic benchmark but to give you the best overall performance for your system (including stability). The size of hard drives today are huge and making the page file a little larger than it "needs" to be hurts nothing and you’re covered if you’re ever doing something that requires more.

One hard drive:

If you only have one hard drive or your other drives are significantly slower than your OS drive.

1 - Leave it alone. (recommended)

2 - Make it static. Vista has the ability to resize the page file on the fly if need be (usually it isn't). If the page file is resized and then later returned to normal your disk may become fragmented. (please note I said "disk" not "page file" and "may" not "will") If you have the disk space and you're anal about such things you can adjust the minimum and max to the same setting. The size (min and max) should be whatever the recomended size is in the Virtual Memory window.

Two hard drives:

The second drive should be near as fast or faster than the OS drive or there is no reason to do this.

Make 2 page files, one on the OS drive, one on the first partition of the second drive. The sizes should be at least the size of the amount of memory you have. For example, if you have 2 GB of RAM then 2 page files of 2048 MB. This allows for plenty of space and Vista can choose the drive that is least busy when it needs to access the page file.

 

To adjust the settings:

Press the Windows + Pause Break keys > in the left pane click on Advanced system settings > click on the Advanced tab > in the Performance section click the Settings... button > click on the Advanced tab . click on the Change... button. Highlight the drive you wish to work with.

 

 

SuperFetch (description)

My recommendation: Don't mess with it, period.

I only even list the option in this guide because so many places on the web talk about adjusting on even stopping it. SuperFetch is a highly improved version of XP's prefetch:

 

"SuperFetch keeps track of which applications you use most and loads this information in RAM so that programs load faster than they would if the hard disk had to be accessed every time. Windows SuperFetch prioritizes the programs you're currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often and pre-loading these into memory. With SuperFetch, background tasks still run when the computer is idle. However, when the background task is finished, SuperFetch repopulates system memory with the data you were working with before the background task ran. Now, when you return to your desk, your programs will continue to run as efficiently as they did before you left. It is even smart enough to know what day it is in the event you use different applications more often on certain days." Windows Vista - SuperFetch & ReadyBoost

 

How is this not a good thing???

 

 

ReadyBoost

ReadyBoost has been called a "gimmick" by many because they misunderstand what it's supposed to do (see links below). I'll tell you here and now you can increase the responsiveness of Vista by taking advantage of it, I've seen it and felt it first hand. I use it on my desktop but I do not use it on my laptop because it is impractical ( I wonder if anyone will come out with an internal option for laptops?).

ReadyBoost is not:

- a replacement for an adequate amount of system memory

- a replacement for the page file (it works in tandem with it)

 

How Do You Use It?

Open up Computer > right-click on the drive that you want to use and choose Properties > click the ReadyBoost tab > click Use this device > optionally choose how much of the device to use.

tip - Use a USB port in the back of your computer. Yep, I broke a drive sticking out of the front when I bumped into it (dooh!)

 

ReadyBoost Spec's & FAQ (mostly from here)

 

Type of drive - USB 2.0 flash drive (often called a thumb drive) or SD card. See: Grant Gibson's ReadyBoost Compatibility List

 

Space needed - min. 256 MB, max 4 GB (because ReadyBoost can compact this data this can yield up to 512 MB and 8 GB respectively)

                         recommended, ratio 1:1 to 2.5:1 (2 GB RAM would be 2 GB - 4 GB of flash drive)

 

How many drives can I use? - One (man, I would love to see someone come up with a way to RAID a couple of drives for this!)

 

Security risk? - No, the data is encrypted.

Disk management in Vista(hacks)

Miscellaneous Hacks

Next up are a few hacks I've come across in my travels. The first is for systems that have an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) with a reliable battery attached. If your system is equipped with a serial-ATA (SATA) hard drive, go to Device Manager (the quickest way to do that is to click Start and punch in "Device Manager" and hit Enter). Expand the Disk Drives entry. Right-click on your SATA hard drive and click Properties. Click the Policies tab, and click Enable Advanced Performance. This option enables extremely aggressive write caching, which can speed up drive access but also cause you to lose data if the power goes out suddenly.

Enable Advanced Performance on your SATA hard drives for speedier access.

A couple of tweaks require you to hack the registry. To do this, click the Start button, type regedit and hit Enter.
Note: You should make a backup of the registry before you alter it. Click File, click Export, and in the resulting window, make sure All is selected at the bottom. Give the file a name and click Save. This will create a full backup of your Windows registry; if you accidentally hose something, you can go into Windows Safe Mode and restore it. Alternately, you can create a Restore Point before you alter the registry; go to Control Panel, then System and Maintenance, and then System. Click System Protection in the Tasks list. Click the Create... button, and follow the prompts.
I recommend two registry hacks for minor performance gains. First, turn off the low disk space checks:

1. Using the left side of the Registry Editor, navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies
2. Right-click in the right pane and select New Key.
3. Name the new key Explorer.
4. In the Explorer key, right-click in the right pane and click New DWORD (32-bit) Vaue.
5. Name the DWORD NoLowDiskSpaceChecks.
6. Right-click the new DWORD and click Modify.
7. Set the Value Data to 1.
8. Click OK.

This will prevent Windows Vista from checking the space on your hard drive and popping up the notorious "Hey, you're running out of space!" warning balloon.
Next, you can probably safely disable the NTFS habit of creating 8.3 versions of filenames for backward compatibility. DOS is dead, right?
Open the Registry Editor and:

1. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
2. Find the DWORD called NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation.
3. Right-click it and click Modify.
4. Change the value to 1.
5. Click OK.

You should reboot after you alter the registry. These tweaks mildly speed up hard drive access by removing needless overhead.

Defrag Once in a While

If you've somehow gotten the impression that Windows Vista doesn't need to be defragged, think again. Vista comes with a defrag program (Microsoft's worst yet, in terms of usability) and it even comes preconfigured to defrag the hard drive once each week. Unless you keep your computer on 24 hours a day, launch Disk Defragmenter (click Start and type in "defrag" and hit Enter) and disable its scheduler. You can do this on your own, with a better defrag application which, unlike Microsoft's, still shows you a map of the drive as it defrags.