Writing All Pages Into Ram Only (Not Onto the Hard Drive)
-
A Former User last edited by
When I open pages, the Task Manager shows a considerable Disk usage when a page is loading for a few seconds. It seems that the browser is writing pages on the hard drive for temporary storage. Since I open a lot of pages, the hard drive can wear out. How can the browser be made to read web pages into RAM only, not writing anything onto the hard drive?
-
-
nvmjustagirl last edited by nvmjustagirl
@berndstrauss if ya gots lottsa of ram then ya could go to virtual memory setting and click the no page file.. computer reboot required..
-
A Former User last edited by
@nvmjustagirl said in Writing All Pages Into Ram Only (Not Onto the Hard Drive):
click the no page file.
Can you explain where this setting can be found?
-
-
nvmjustagirl last edited by nvmjustagirl
@berndstrauss umm.. are you a novice computer user ? !
its not an opera setting but is a window setting..The page file, also known as the swap file, pagefile, or paging file, is a file on your hard drive. It’s located at C:\pagefile.sys by default.
Your computer stores files, programs, and other data you’re using in your RAM (random access memory) because it’s much faster to read from RAM than it is to read from a hard drive. For example, when you open Firefox, Firefox’s program files are read from your hard drive and placed into your RAM. The computer uses the copies in RAM rather than repeatedly reading the same files from your hard drive.
Programs store the data they’re working with here. When you view a web page, the web page is downloaded and stored in your RAM. When you watch a YouTube video, the video is held in your RAM.
When your RAM becomes full, Windows moves some of the data from your RAM back to your hard drive, placing it in the page file. This file is a form of virtual memory. While writing this data to your hard disk and reading it back later is much slower than using RAM, it’s back-up memory – rather than throwing potentially important data away or having programs crash, the data is stored on your hard drive.
Windows will try to move data you aren’t using to the page file. For example, if you’ve had a program minimized for a long time and it isn’t doing anything, its data may be moved to RAM. If you maximize the program later and notice that it takes a while to come back instead of instantly snapping to life, it’s being swapped back in from your page file. You’ll see your computer’s hard disk light blinking as this happens.
With enough RAM in modern computers, the average user’s computer shouldn’t normally use the page file in normal computer use. If you do see your hard drive start to grind away and programs start to slow down when you have a large amount open, that’s an indication that your computer is using the page file – you can speed things up by adding more RAM. You can also try freeing up memory — for example, by getting rid of useless programs running in the background.
Warning - n e programs you run will be straight aceess to whatever memory you have.. ummm.. you could run yourself outta memory depends on how many progs, windows, ect..ya have open with the no page file !.. Which could lead to a new set of problems and troubles...
i would advice ya to google no page file and check it out 1st !..**Good Luck with your decision..
-
nvmjustagirl last edited by nvmjustagirl
Myth: Disabling the Page File Improves Performance
Some people will tell you that you should disable the page file to speed up your computer. The thinking goes like this: the page file is slower than RAM, and if you have enough RAM, Windows will use the page file when it should be using RAM, slowing down your computer.This isn’t really true. People have tested this theory and found that, while Windows can run without a page file if you have a large amount of RAM, there’s no performance benefit to disabling the page file.
However, disabling the page file can result in some bad things. If programs start to use up all your available memory, they’ll start crashing instead of being swapped out of the RAM into your page file. This can also cause problems when running software that requires a large amount of memory, such as virtual machines. Some programs may even refuse to run.
In summary, there’s no good reason to disable the page file – you’ll get some hard drive space back, but the potential system instability won’t be worth it.
i've ran b\4 with no page file and everything was indeed fast... just do not deplete all your memory... but like me over time you will end up Going back to having page file for various reasons !.. lol
-
donq last edited by
@nvmjustagirl said in Writing All Pages Into Ram Only (Not Onto the Hard Drive):
Myth: Disabling the Page File Improves Performance
This isn’t really true. People have tested this theory and found that, while Windows can run without a page file if you have a large amount of RAM, there’s no performance benefit to disabling the page file.Yes and no - depends very much on particular hardware (disk speed, latency and driver quality), software in use and of course on RAM amount.
"People have tested" and found out, that disabling paging makes some audio work possible ON THEIR computer - with page file enabled occasinal disk activity made signal latency unpredictable.
"People have tested" (I did actually) and found out, that switching between memory-hungry programs (like visual studio and olde opera) ON THEIR (my) computer may take much more time if paging is enabled and windows is not very responsible at this time - apparently this was some problem with WinXP/HDD combo in my case at least; not seen (not noticed) with W10/SSD currently.
In theory yes, paging should not make performance worse. In practice you should try it yourself - every computer is different.
What about Opera disk usage - I have not investigated, but I think most of disk access consists of cache access, not paging. I can be mistaken of course.
-
nvmjustagirl last edited by nvmjustagirl
@donq said in Writing All Pages Into Ram Only (Not Onto the Hard Drive):
@nvmjustagirl said in Writing All Pages Into Ram Only (Not Onto the Hard Drive):
Myth: Disabling the Page File Improves Performance
This isn’t really true. People have tested this theory and found that, while Windows can run without a page file if you have a large amount of RAM, there’s no performance benefit to disabling the page file.In theory yes, paging should not make performance worse. In practice you should try it yourself - every computer is different.
i already said above that i've ran b\4 with no page file and everything was indeed fast... just do not deplete all your memory... but like me over time you will end up Going back to having page file for various reasons !.. lol
i know peeps that talk about XP days and said they ran xp hard everday with no page file with no problems.. i think tho they or sum used a lil program probally to clean ttheir ram from time to time..*lol
n e ways we getting off track here.. its up to berndstrauss the one who opened thread !.. lol
-
A Former User last edited by A Former User
@nvmjustagirl said in Writing All Pages Into Ram Only (Not Onto the Hard Drive):
are you a novice computer user ? !
its not an opera setting but is a window setting..I have been using computers for a long time but I was not aware of the setting which makes programs use the RAM only. I can see now that the page file should not be disabled. Perhaps the reason why the disk usage is shown in the Task Manager is because the browser writes into the disk the link of the page to mark it as recently visited. But disk activity is too long (several seconds), which may mean that the browser writes a lot of data. Does the browser store the current page on the hard drive? I have 8GB of memory.
-
leocg Moderator Volunteer last edited by
@berndstrauss There is no setting to make a program to use RAM only, all programs will write on the disk and store data there.
Opera (as well as other browsers) read/write several data from/to the disk like cache, history, cookies, databases, scripts, synchronization and so on.
-
nvmjustagirl last edited by
@berndstrauss
The Question You Asked - Does the browser store the current page on the hard drive?the answer is in my 2nd post.. Part of the answer is above the picture ..the rest is below the picture.
-
burnout426 Volunteer last edited by
You could do a standalone installation of Opera to a RAM drive and load that Opera, so as much of Opera's operations as possible stick to the RAM drive.
Whenever the RAM drive needs to be shut down though, you'd want to close Opera and have a method to save the ram drive to disk and load it back up into RAM when ready so your settings are all saved and you don't have to do a new installation of Opera each time you have to start up the RAM drive again (like after a restart of the OS). For Opera specifically, you could just close Opera and move its standalone installation folder from the RAM drive to your hard disk before shutting down the RAM drive and then move it back into RAM after your start the RAM drive back up. You could do this part with a batch file for example. Instead of "move", you could do "copy" so if something happens, you have a backup on disk at all times.
For a standalone installation, click "options" in the installer, set "install path" to a folder on the RAM drive, set "install for" to "standalone installation" and install.
-
A Former User last edited by
Thank you for the information. I can see now that it is normal for the browser to generate disk usage as shown in Task Manager.
-
