People always wish to put their system clean without allotting memory for some kind of junk and unnecessary files. Everyone wants to run their system in a smooth way by cleaning it using some software tools. You may not have complete knowledge about some files in your computer that are occupying more space of your hard drive. There is a file you might come across when you look around the root of your C drive which is pretty large in size. The file is namely pagefile.sys which is very big in terms of size. You can’t view this file as it is a hidden file.
The size occupied by this file totally depends on the amount of physical memory (RAM) present in your system as the file is automatically generated by Windows Operating system. Suppose, if you use a hard drive with large capacity for the partitioning the drivers on your computer, it won’t be a big problem. But, if you are using a smaller hard drive or an SSD (Solid-State Drive), then it drives you into a major problem as this file dissipate several Gigabytes by occupying huge percentage of available space.
What is pagefile.sys? Is it safe and secure to delete this file from your Windows device? So, in this article, you can find detailed information about pagefile.sys file and a step-by-step process for making changes to the file on your computer. This tutorial guides you how to delete, move or reduce the size of pagefile.sys.
The Page File (Pagefile.Sys)
Pagefile.sys is automatically created storage file on your Windows hard drive which is also regarded as a virtual memory swap file. It provides a larger virtual memory space and stores all your temporary data which can then be swapped in and out of physical memory (RAM). When you’re running some applications which require more RAM than you actually have, then Windows will start shambling files and uses your computer’s hard disk as virtual memory. Pagefile.Sys takes more space of your hard disk but it is not recommended to completely disable it from your system as many programs like offloading memory, cached files and memory dumps need it on your device.
If you have more than one drive installed on your computer and if your Windows Operating system often uses virtual memory, then it is helpful to place paging file on some other drive which can eventually boost the system’s perfomance. By doing this, it can free up space on C drive and also minimizes hard disk contention caused by heavy use of C: There is a possibility of moving pagefile.sys from one drive to other drive quite easily which is nothing but offloading some of the activity to other drive.
Few Conditions (Warnings)
- You need to make sure of some things on your system before heading to move pagefile.sys to a different drive. Here are few conditions or caveats you must need to check:
- The drive where you are moving the pagefile needs to be a different physical drive. If you move the paging file to a different partition on the same drive, it will probably slow down things because the partition on which the file is kept need to move further as they access information from the original drive and the new location of the paging file.
- The drive should not be on a USB (or Firewire) external drive. These interfaces are too slow to show positive impact on performance. Just pulling the cable accidentally can lead to crash your computer.
- It should not be a flash drive. Flash memory wears out quickly and heavy swap file usage can exhaust flash memory exceptionally.
- If you have a second, internal drive, then moving pagefile.sys is pretty much easy.
Steps to Move the Page File to Another Drive
Step 1: Performance Settings
- Initially, Right click on “My Computer” or the “Computer” in your start menu and just click on Properties.
- In the next window, click on the Advanced system settings link.
- Now, Click on the Advanced tab.
- In the Advanced tab, click on the Settings button under Performance label.
- Performance options window displays wherein you need to Click on the Advanced tab.
- Under Virtual Memory section, it displays the amount of memory being used for the page file. Now, click on Change.
Step 2: Virtual Memory Settings
- Virtual Memory Window displays, wherein you need to untick the box that shows “Automatically manage paging file size for all drives”
- Make sure that C: is highlighted and then select “No paging file”, just click on Set.
- Now, select the drive you want to move the pagefile.sys to, click on System managed size and again click on Set.
- Then click OK. The file has been moved to the selected drive.
- Now, you need to reboot for the changes to get applied. After making above changes and rebooting your system, pagefile.sys will be moved from C: to D: drive.
How to Disable Virtual Memory & Delete Pagefile.Sys
We have already stated that, it is not recommended to completely delete the page file, but for any reason if you wish to disable, it is very easy and moreover it can be done from the same Virtual Memory Window. Just follow the below steps:
- On the Virtual Memory window, click on any drives that have a paging file set.
- Select No paging file and then click the Set button. Before clicking on set button, make sure all drives have None in the Paging File size column.
- Click OK and the changes will take effect after a reboot.
Note: If your system have very low RAM, say below 1GB, then disabling virtual memory could be a disaster. Multi-tasking couldnot be done easily and running more programs simultaneously could make your system very slow.
This is the process of moving pagefile.sys from one drive to other and completely deleting it from your computer. Read all the above mentioned conditions or warnings before moving or deleting the file from your system. Hope this tutorial helps you to move, delete or disable pagefile.sys from your Windows 7/8 Operating system.
