Pagefile not imaged... but only if on C:??

I see that it is a "new feature" of ATI tht it will not waste space in its image backups by including pagefile.sys or hiberfile.sys; certainly an intelligent feature.

But how intelligent is it really? I have two drives, and have always put my pagefile on the non-system one (D, having been taught from an early age that I could get some performance benefit by paging to another spindle than the one my programs are loaded from.

So... I have been imaging D: for some days now (archive/incremental) and just this morning had occasion to restore something from it. That worked quite well BTW and I enjoyed having a set of incrementals to choose from; however I noticed there among the files my pagefile.sys. So I plugged the image, turned off "Hide protected OS files" in the explorer, and there it was: 1.5GB of wasted space in my disk image.

So assuming pagefile.sys is ever omitted from an image backup, I conclude it is omitted only only if it is on the boot partition.

 

I do as you do and have my page files on a secondary drive. However I have them in separate partitions on that drive so I can exclude them easily from any backups.

I use two page files, one for Windows and the other for Photoshop. This has definite running advantages and also reduces the need for defrags of my main drive.

Xpilot

 

O.T.: Placing your paging file on a separate physical disc only benefits you if that disc is not in use for any other purpose. Windows is constantly accessing the paging file for logging activity, even if it doesn't need it for "paging" activity.
So what you're really doing is taking performance out of one pocket and putting it in the other.
If you really want better performance, get more RAM. If you set the paging file at equal initial and max sizes, it does not affect fragmentation.

 

It could be that it is safe to omit it when backing up the boot partition but it may not necessarily be the XP pagefile if it is located in a different area and the user may expect it to be backed up. Admittedly, I don't think I would normally call a file pagefile.sys but who knows what could happen.

 

I do not think the pagefile you see in the image of your D: is taking up any space. It should just be reserving the space the page file would need on a restored partition. I am sure that is how it works with a pagefile on the C:.

You could prove it by moving the pagefile to the C: and creating another image of the D:. Comparing the size of the two images should let you know if the pagefile was actually taking up any space.

 

Yes, that would be a good experiment, if reboot-intensive

I tried restoring pagefile.sys to another location, using the Recovery Wizard, "Restore specific files and folders." The operation took about a minute and when it was done I had a 1.5 GB file in the specified location.

I also tried plugging the image and dragging pagefile.sys to another location, with the same result.

 

Hello MKairys,

I've done the experiment for you. You do not need to be concerned here. The pagefile on your D: is not taking up any space. Or to be more precise, it is taking up only 1 KB of space.

mustang

 

From https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=44252&highlight=%22page+file%22