Virtual memory is an essential component of most operating systems. Its main task is to expand the capabilities of the computer without increasing its price. Our readers are already familiar with the principles of caching. And now we have to consider one of the most common uses for this important technology. No matter how large the amount of RAM (RAM, RAM) is, there can always be a situation where it is not enough to place all the programs running and the files they open.
Why do I need a paging file?
How it works and what is the RAM, we already know. And again, for an example of a story, let us turn to history: a little more than a decade ago, an ordinary computer had only 32 or 64 megabytes of RAM. This is incredibly small by today's standards. Nowadays, computer memory is measured in gigabytes. But the demands have increased.
So, imagine an old computer with 32 megabytes of RAM. Usually, on such a machine, it was required to simultaneously open an email program, a web browser and a text editor. Memory is not enough. And if virtual memory did not come to the rescue, the computer would have told its user something like: “Sorry, but you can no longer open any applications. Please close any application to download the new one. ”More precisely, the operating system would say, and not the computer itself. But virtual memory is not asleep and is looking for areas in RAM that are not currently being used to move them to the hard disk. This allows you to free up space in RAM for the next necessary program user.
Copying is done automatically and you do not even know that the computer is doing some important work. To the user, this looks like an almost unlimited RAM, despite the modest 32 MB of physical RAM. Since hard disks are much cheaper than RAM modules (per unit of stored information), this leads to significant savings.
As in each "technological honey barrel", there is also a "fly in the ointment". The speed of reading and writing hard disk is significantly inferior to RAM. In addition, hard drives do not allow access to small data segments. What does this mean for the average user? If the computer tightly uses virtual memory, it will feel a significant decrease in device performance. The only way out of this difficult situation is to increase the amount of physical RAM to such a level that, under normal load, all the necessary things fit there. In this case, the slowdown will be felt only when the load exceeds the conditions for the normal use of this machine.
If the RAM is not enough, the operating system will constantly move information between the RAM and the hard disk. What will the user feel? The so-called "slip", the computer will work incredibly slowly.
The area of the hard disk where the memory image is stored is called a paging file. In English "page file" ("page file"). It is possible that you may come across his other colloquial names: “swap file” or “swap file” (“swap file”). This file stores pages from RAM. The operating system moves data between the paging file and RAM in both directions.
And a little more "tehnololinguistics." In English, the process of using a hard disk to store data from RAM is often referred to as “paging”.
Configuring virtual memory in Windows 8
Nowadays, of course, it’s not easy to find a computer with 32 MB RAM. But many users today also have relatively low-powered machines with up to 4 gigabytes of RAM. Such systems may need to set the maximum paging file size. Of course, only experienced users, who understand what they are doing and are fully aware that the changes they make affect the operation of the computer, can independently configure the system. If you are not sure that the settings will turn back into place, then it is better not to do anything.
To do this, you need to make a number of simple settings:
- Right-click on the "Computer" icon of the operating system desktop.
- Open the options dialog in the advanced system settings
- In the tab that allows you to set advanced options, select the performance settings
- From performance settings, select advanced.
- To display the virtual memory dialog box, in the advanced performance settings, select the implementation of changes.
- In the virtual memory settings, you will find the current settings for its configuration. The total size of the paging file indicates the recommended amount of virtual "RAM" for this system. It also displays the amount of virtual memory currently installed.
- By default, Windows 8 controls the size of the paging file for all disks. If you want to manually configure the virtual memory, remove the "birdie" of automatic control of the file size for all disks
- Then select the option to specify an arbitrary size and set two parameters: the initial and maximum sizes of the paging file.
- After changing these parameters, the system will offer to reboot. Click "OK" is possible only if you are sure that you want to make the changes
Based on computer.howstuffworks.com, trainingtech.net
The article is based on materials .
Comments
Post a Comment