M.i.S. Nemesis
09-26-2001, 10:28 PM
Caching the Page file can get rid of a lot of disk access and speed up your systems 25-50%. How? Here is an article from the developer.
"For users that have 64 MB - 128 MB of main memory on their systems here's an excellent idea for speeding up paging operations. It works on every system. If you have more memory it works even better. On servers it works best of all. On Advanced Server and Datacenter systems, multiple page files may be cached using extended memory.
For W2K users - do the following:
Create an NTFS partition on a disk other than the physical disk that the boot partition is on. If you only have one physical disk, create a separate NTFS partition on the hard drive. The reason you select NTFS, is that it reduces page file fragmentation. If you have an extra drive, it will allow the system partition and the page file partition to perform writes simultaneously.
Install and license SuperCache 2000. Select the partition that you just formatted NTFS as the target partition for caching using the configuration utility for SuperCache 2000. Make sure your target partition does NOT have a Lazy Write Cache enabled in the hardware, check with the controller manufacturer for details. Enable SuperCache on the target device, and MAKE SURE YOU ENABLE LAZY WRITE MODE in SuperCache 2000. Lazy write mode will speed up all writes to the partition, since Windows 2000 thinks it's writing to disk, when it's really writing to memory. Now select the Tune tab and set the Cache Size to say 25, to start with, you can increase it later on. Also enable the cache monitor for the target partition, by clicking on the box to the left of the target drive. Then click on OK.
Shutdown and reboot your system to enable SuperCache 2000 to start up on the selected partition. The selected cached partition looks just like a regular partition with a normal drive letter, except that it's really fast - about 90% of the speed of SuperSpeed 2000.
Now you have to move the page file from where it is currently to the cached partition. We recommend that the page file be between 2 and 3 times the size of physical memory. To change the page file's location and configuration, open the System applet in the Control Panel. Select the Advanced Tab. Select Performance Options. In the middle of the screen it shows the Virtual Memory box. Select the Change button in the box, and it will bring up the Virtual Memory configuration screen.
Let's say that the page file is currently on the C: partition, and you want to move it to the D: partition, which is now cached with SuperCache 2000. You select the C: partition in the box at the top with a left mouse click. The partition is highlighted in blue. Then in the Paging File Size enter 0 (ZERO) for the Initial Size and 0 (ZERO) for the Maximum Size. Now left click on Set button. This will disable the page file on the C: partition (after the next reboot).
Select the D: partition in the top box with a left mouse click. Set the Minimum Page File size, Initial Size, to twice physical memory in MB, and set the Maximum Size to 3 times physical memory size in MB. Then, left click on Set and left click on OK. Now, left click on OK at the bottom of the screen. The system will inform you that you need to reboot to have the changes take effect.
Shutdown and reboot, and you'll be all set. On the next reboot you'll be lazy write caching your page file! You should look at the cache monitor after you reboot to see what's going on. You should also examine the effect of increasing the size of cache on cache performance.
Every time you would normally perform a page file write operation, you'll be writing to SuperCache's lazy write mechanism, which is 100-1000 times faster than writing to disk. If the system crashes and you don't have a UPS, it doesn't matter, because W2K rebuilds the page file each time it boots. When you read from the page file, you'll very likely be reading from main memory instead of disk, which is 100-1000 times faster.
We have a PDF in the White Papers Section that explains the same for Windows NT, a special offer for October 2001, and a 30-day eval copy you can use to test this scenario over at this page:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=092701-CachePageFile
"For users that have 64 MB - 128 MB of main memory on their systems here's an excellent idea for speeding up paging operations. It works on every system. If you have more memory it works even better. On servers it works best of all. On Advanced Server and Datacenter systems, multiple page files may be cached using extended memory.
For W2K users - do the following:
Create an NTFS partition on a disk other than the physical disk that the boot partition is on. If you only have one physical disk, create a separate NTFS partition on the hard drive. The reason you select NTFS, is that it reduces page file fragmentation. If you have an extra drive, it will allow the system partition and the page file partition to perform writes simultaneously.
Install and license SuperCache 2000. Select the partition that you just formatted NTFS as the target partition for caching using the configuration utility for SuperCache 2000. Make sure your target partition does NOT have a Lazy Write Cache enabled in the hardware, check with the controller manufacturer for details. Enable SuperCache on the target device, and MAKE SURE YOU ENABLE LAZY WRITE MODE in SuperCache 2000. Lazy write mode will speed up all writes to the partition, since Windows 2000 thinks it's writing to disk, when it's really writing to memory. Now select the Tune tab and set the Cache Size to say 25, to start with, you can increase it later on. Also enable the cache monitor for the target partition, by clicking on the box to the left of the target drive. Then click on OK.
Shutdown and reboot your system to enable SuperCache 2000 to start up on the selected partition. The selected cached partition looks just like a regular partition with a normal drive letter, except that it's really fast - about 90% of the speed of SuperSpeed 2000.
Now you have to move the page file from where it is currently to the cached partition. We recommend that the page file be between 2 and 3 times the size of physical memory. To change the page file's location and configuration, open the System applet in the Control Panel. Select the Advanced Tab. Select Performance Options. In the middle of the screen it shows the Virtual Memory box. Select the Change button in the box, and it will bring up the Virtual Memory configuration screen.
Let's say that the page file is currently on the C: partition, and you want to move it to the D: partition, which is now cached with SuperCache 2000. You select the C: partition in the box at the top with a left mouse click. The partition is highlighted in blue. Then in the Paging File Size enter 0 (ZERO) for the Initial Size and 0 (ZERO) for the Maximum Size. Now left click on Set button. This will disable the page file on the C: partition (after the next reboot).
Select the D: partition in the top box with a left mouse click. Set the Minimum Page File size, Initial Size, to twice physical memory in MB, and set the Maximum Size to 3 times physical memory size in MB. Then, left click on Set and left click on OK. Now, left click on OK at the bottom of the screen. The system will inform you that you need to reboot to have the changes take effect.
Shutdown and reboot, and you'll be all set. On the next reboot you'll be lazy write caching your page file! You should look at the cache monitor after you reboot to see what's going on. You should also examine the effect of increasing the size of cache on cache performance.
Every time you would normally perform a page file write operation, you'll be writing to SuperCache's lazy write mechanism, which is 100-1000 times faster than writing to disk. If the system crashes and you don't have a UPS, it doesn't matter, because W2K rebuilds the page file each time it boots. When you read from the page file, you'll very likely be reading from main memory instead of disk, which is 100-1000 times faster.
We have a PDF in the White Papers Section that explains the same for Windows NT, a special offer for October 2001, and a 30-day eval copy you can use to test this scenario over at this page:
http://www.w2knews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=092701-CachePageFile