64 BG RAM, Win 7 & Pagefile size

Howdy y’all. I just built a new system with 64 GB RAM, a 180 GB SSD drive and Win 7 64. With only Windows 7 64 installed, I get the following:

Capacity: 167 GB
Used: 126 GB
Free: 41 GB

I was trying to find out how a fresh install of windows could take up so much room. Well, I found a huge (20 GB) pagefile, I guess from having 64 GB of RAM. How should I set this? I don’t think 41 GB of free space is enough to install C7/N6 with all their sounds, samples, etc.

  1. Is this normal?
  2. How should I set the pagefile setting in Win 7?
  3. Should I get a separate SSD for C7/N6 install instead?

first do not screw with pagefiles settings let windows manage. we used to fo this tweak but no longer needed.

  1. here is the BIGGEST… you need to disable HIBERNATE…

1.Click Start, and then type cmd in the Start Search box.
2.In the search results list, right-click Command Prompt, and then click Run as Administrator. <—should not have to do this if system is built right… you should alwasys be admin and have uac off)
3.When you are prompted by User Account Control, click Continue. <— again same thing)
4.At the command prompt, type powercfg.exe /hibernate off, and then press ENTER.

you can actually copy paste into CMD using mouse (not KB)
once you reboot you will notice a much smaller footprint…

lastly i dont know whats wrong? you should not be using that much just for a win install… i am only using 92G and i have a crapload of stuff installed including Adobe Master collection.

With that much ram a pagefile is not necessary. If you do want one you can switch it over to a hdd if you still have one attached . Also the recycle bin can take up space. Right click on recycle bin look at properties and see how large windows has it set for.Another one that can use space is system restore.

But keep in mind, no pagefile = no memory dump on crash, unless MS KB2716542 installed.

NEVER turn off pagefile. this is moronic

I don’t mind having a pagefile, it just can’t be so HUGE! My OS drive is 180 gigs and I have 64 gigs of memory. How should I set it then? Or leave the default? Read this here:

http://blogs.citrix.com/2011/12/23/the-pagefile-done-right/

“To optimally size your paging file you should start all the applications you run at the same time, load typical data sets, and then note the commit charge peak (or look at this value after a period of time where you know maximum load was attained). Set the paging file minimum to be that value minus the amount of RAM in your system (if the value is negative, pick a minimum size to permit the kind of crash dump you are configured for). If you want to have some breathing room for potentially large commit demands, set the maximum to double that number.”

Experiment. It fully depends on what other programs you are running. I would start with a min of 2GB and max of 4GB. Most likely your pagefile will stay around 2GB.

Like JCschild already pointed out, I would let Windows manage the pagefile.

Well, if I do this (leave settings as is), the pagefile is 20 gigs, which I think is excessive.

there is 2 ways to do this RIGHT
let windows manage or set it manually to 65536 (the amount of ram you have)
anything else is WRONG.

did you do the disable hibernate? that would have cleared a huge amount of space? (this is just ssds) although you can do it for standard drives.

Then they must be wrong at Microsoft.

does MS build systems for audio?
thats what i thought…

HAHAHAH lmao its for server 2008 let me know when you find it for win7

I plan on adding more drives of course. But for now, I only fired up the new system and installed the OS. When I ran into this problem, I wanted to tackle it first, before moving on to installing any other hardware, software, etc. I appreciate all the input. I also saw the the Microsoft recommendations when researching but I also thought to myself, “Server 2008? WTF?” It’s 2013!

JCschild: When you say to set it to 65536, do you mean set both the minimum AND max to this number? Thanks.

JCschild: When you say to set it to 65536, do you mean set both the minimum AND max to this number? Thanks.

yes.
honestly just let windows manage. this is what we do for audio for video we set min/max to the actual amount.
used to do this for audio as well but not needed anymore

again did you do the disable hibernate? guessing not as you have posted a big thank you by now…

and yes 3 drives are need if doing any samples however nothing that comes with C7 is what i consider samples.

Thanks. No, haven’t done it yet as the computer is at a friend’s house. Thought I’d let him play with it as he’s a 3D animator and he was thinking of upgrading as well. I’ll post back for sure.

Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 are both build on Windows NT 6.1.

well ive just tried your turn off the hibernate and it’s just increased the size of the windows files from 73gig to 81gig and now im running a 128gig ssd in the red ,now how do you turn the hiberate on , if i try it in the cmd it comes up with an error file saying disk not large enough , every thing was fine before and the page file was on a separate partition but now … im running in the red , could you tell me how to over come this please as your advise for decreasing the page file size increased the size of the os .

sorry ive jumped in on this and i should of left the drive well alone as now im running red :imp:

you help would be appreciated now

NO no comment on this ? uummmm well for anyone that has a 128 ssd drive for your OS make sure you have a backup or clone of your drive before you try this as i could potentially be a major PITA as ive just found out and a system restore will not cure the problem

There is no way I would ever let Windows decide the size of my pagefile, that’s far too generic! If MS really new best how to configure this they would not have provided an option to change it. Set it to 1GB and that will be more than enough, in fact Windows will hardly be using it with the amount of Ram you have installed.

you have not turned it off correctly or something… i do this daily its one of the last “tweaks” we do and i watch the size shrink. do you have UAC off?