All Microsoft Windows operating systems including Windows Vista has what is called a Paging File that is located on the hard drive. The paging file in Windows acts like additional RAM. If your computer runs out of RAM Windows Vista uses it’s paging file as an alternative to the RAM.Since a computer’s hard drive controller can read and write from more than one hard drive at one time moving the paging file to a separate hard drive than Windows Vista is installed on(Normally Vista installed on C drive) improves your computers performance.Instead of reading and writing system, program files, and your paging file on one hard drive you can move your paging file to a separate hard drive. With your paging file on a second hard drive the load is split between reading and writing system and program files and reading and writing the paging file.
If you have more than one physical drive in your computer, this guide is for you. The page file can take a considerable toll on your system drive; by moving the page file to a separate drive, you can increase overall performance.
Steps to move the Windows Vista page file to another drive.
- Press Windows Vista Start, right click on Computer, and select Properties
- In the left-hand pane, select Advanced System Settings
- Click the Advanced tab and under Performance, select Settings…
- Click the Advanced tab and under Virtual Memory, select Change...
- Uncheck “Automatically Manage Paging File Size for All Drives“
- Select the different physical drive that you want your paging file to now be stored on (e.g. D) and select System managed size and press Set. (make sure this is the first partition on the second drive)
- Select the drive that contains your paging file (usually C), select the Custom Size option, set the original and maximum size, and press Set Your page file will now need to rebuild on the new drive – this may temporarily slow performance.
Note: The reason for keeping around 1GB on the OS drive is because Windows Vista needs still some pagefile space there.
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Curious if this will work with a USB flash drive.. and if so, does it have to have to be setup as a Vista ReadyBoost drive … thanks for your help!