What exactly does changing the disk space size for the temporary files do?

Question

I haven't noticed any major change when I change its varible largely. Say if I have it at max 1024, then change it to the lowest 8, I don't see much difference in performance. Can anyone tell what exactly it does.?? I know curiousity killed the cat. But also, to learn is to educate the mind.

Answer 1

If it is set lower then less resources are used on your computer for temporary files to take up space. We set ours at the university to the minimum. We also set it to delete temporary internet files when the browser is closed.

Answer 2

Fred Langa wrote a series on that article. It explains much better than I can. Basically move the Swap or Page File to a Drive or Partition with 0 data files on it, increase the size of it and you will notice an increase in performance and stability.

http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-11-09.htm
2) Does Your Page/Swap File Deserve Its Own Drive?

Dear Fred, What about giving the paging [aka "swap"] file its own dedicated drive? I've done this on several machines with no problems (although I did *once* receive a "Windows is running out of Virtual Memory" message while running CorelDraw, which I suspect is not good about releasing memory). In any case, a useful utility is Mark Russinovich's System File Defragmenter ( http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/pagedefrag.html ), which defrags not only the paging file but also the Registry on bootup. I suspect you mentioned this at one time or another; I get most of my most useful utilities from your newsletter. ---Jim Allen

Turning over a second drive, or a partition on a second drive, for the exclusive use of your page file can theoretically boost performance--- especially if the separate drive is on its own controller. But the performance boost might well be so slight that you won't notice the difference in real-life operations.

The reasons for the theoretical boost are that 1) you can create a temporary paging file that won't fragment because no other files will be written to the disk; and 2) the dedicated can devote all its movement to the paging file without having to take time out to read and write other files. It's also possible to format the page file's drive as FAT32, which is marginally faster than NTFS, adding another small increment of speed.

Readers who would like to try this can read this Microsoft Knowledge Base article for instructions on how to move your paging file in Windows XP.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307886

(BTW: In some forms of backup where the software isn't smart enough not to copy the page file, getting your page file off your main drive or partition will greatly reduce the size of your main drive's backup files. So, there's more to moving the page file than speed alone...)
Microsoft even has a link for it. Hope that helps.