Move the Vista paging file for better performance

The page file is an area of hard disk space reserved by Windows for use as additional memory. By default, Windows manages and resizes this file dynamically to suit its needs. Vista does a very good job of optimizing the page file on its own, but there is one tweak you may be able to make which will considerably increase its performance. If you have more than one physical hard disk drive installed in your computer, you can move the page file onto the physical drive that does NOT have Windows Vista installed on it. Since most page file hits are related to Windows system operations, this will considerably reduce disk access on your OS drive, speeding everything up.

To move the Windows Vista Page file:

Click on the 'start' menu and right click on 'computer'. Choose 'properties'.

In the left-hand pane, choose 'advanced system settings'.

Click the 'advanced' tab, then under the 'performance' heading choose 'settings...'

Choose the 'advanced' tab again, then under the 'virtual memory' heading click 'change...'

Uncheck the 'automatically manage paging file size for all drives' checkbox.

In the window that shows the list of partitions (C:, D:, etc.) choose a partition that resides on the physical hard drive that does not have Windows installed and highlight it. Select the 'system managed size' option then click the 'set' button. This will create a paging file on the hard disk in question.

You will notice that the 'paging file size' for the highlighted drive now reads 'system managed'

Now highlight your C: partition (assuming that this is where Windows Vista is installed). Select the 'no paging file' option and click 'set'.

Your paging file has now been offloaded.