on a system with 8GB+ paging shouldn't be needed. it is a leftover from previous OSs and rigs that never had the ability to access alot of RAM (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paging). (EG: win98se with 1gb of ram)
i have 16GB on my main rig and have disabled paging for these reason:
- paging increases fragmentation (the pagefile is not a static area on you local disk, even though it looks like it)
- seek times impede performance
- loading data from a place on a local drive to another place on the storage system, only to read it again, is a waste of system resources. (3 reads, instead of one)
- a pagefile on a RAID'd BOOT disk is a bad idea (asking for trouble), and therefore the pagefile would be arguably better on a seperate dedicated drive. but, this then has its downfalls too.
- i use an x64 OS, so memory allocations are not a problem for me
if a person is still using winXP 32-bit (or worse), AND then have 4gb or less of RAM..... pagefiles are a must.
if, like me, you run an x64 bit OS AND you have 8gb+ of RAM, and a RAID'd boot and storage system, then a pagefile hinder performance.
also see here:
http://www.tweakhound.com/2011/10/10/the-windows-7-pagefile-and-running-without-one/