Windows swap drive

This will boot the system into Windows Welcome mode at the next start-up and initiate a plug-and-play hardware scan. Note that after Sysprep. The system will reboot and enter Welcome mode, which looks like a fresh Windows installation starting up for the first time. All you need to do is log out of the new username created here and back to your original once the configuration process is complete. Once initial customization is finished expect a delay while Windows adjusts itself to the new hardware environment before delivering you to the desktop.

From here, setup is a snap. Install any drivers or other updates required for new hardware from the folder prepared earlier, and your new rig is ready to roll, with all your old software and customizations intact. Pretty slick.

While Sysprep is super handy, there are a few drawbacks and limitations. Fortunately, there is a workaround that involves a simple registry edit. There seem to be many tools available but also a problem in finding which ones are genuine and not including malware. So the tools that I used in order to do this were from recognised open source projects:. The concept is to boot into the Linux distribution clonezilla and use the functionality included here to copy the current internal drive to the future internal drive to be mounted as an external hard drive.

I overcame this by using the --rescue option easily accessible via clonezilla options. But all in all I was very happy with how this worked and how easy it was to then be able to boot onto a hard drive which acted precisely the same as the broken hard drive. You can even use it to clone the old drive over following Cloning a disk - Macrium.

Windows has built-in imaging but it doesn't play well with new hard drives and requires recovering to the exact same partition position on the disk. With Macrium you drag the partitons to where you want them and it resizes them automatically to fit or to where you slide the borders, handles drive letters and boot issues automatically and always flawlessly.

But if your hard drive has failed enough it may not produce a readable image so be prepared to settle for having the best install of Windows 10 one can possibly have by following the steps here to Clean Install Windows Now an Independent Advisor. I do not quit for those who are polite and cooperative. Threats include any threat of suicide, violence, or harm to another. Any content of an adult theme or inappropriate to a community web site.

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Any link to or advocacy of virus, spyware, malware, or phishing sites. Any other inappropriate content or behavior as defined by the Terms of Use or Code of Conduct. Apr 14, 1, 0 19, 0. Mar 28, 0 18, 0. How about if the OP just disabled the pagefile?

In my own experience, I have never seen the memory get maxed out and I have 2 gig. But then again, I still had the pagefile enabled.

So my question is, could the OP get away with disabling the pagefile and it not affect performance? If you have enough RAM, yes, you can disable the pagefile, but I don't recommend it. If the committed memory size begins to get near your RAM size and there is no pagefile available, Windows can start doing very strange things, and in all likelihood, crash. I always like to have the pagefile enabled even if the machine has a lot of RAM. Apr 18, 0 18, 1. Apr 18, 7 0 18, 0.

I agree that disabling the swap file in Windows is a bad idea. If your memory gets maxed out you can guarantee it will crash or behave badly. Your best bet is to change the size to match the registry size i. Windows will actually complain if you set the max size lower than the registry size. Beware that the C: drive will want to have at least 2 meg of swap space on it another stupid Windows wish. Should have been more specific. Don't buy a drive just for swap.

If you're using swapping at all you should invest in more memory Taken in the context of setting up a RAID 0 array just for swap, my comment is quite funny. Definate DOH! WizardOZ Distinguished. Sep 23, 0 18, 0. A swap or page file is a file used by multi-tasking OSs to temporarily store data in RAM that is not being used when another application needs the RAM, and there is not enough physical RAM availble to hold the new and perevious job.

The "overflow" is written to a file on the hard drive. Windows uses a dynamicly sized file by default, and the default location is in the root directory of the first boot drive. The Windows swap file will use as much free space as is available on the hard drive for its swap file.

Linux also uses a swap file, but it has the wit to create a seperate partition for the swap file. Automatically and sized to match the RAM in your system. Windows uses a complicated algorithm to determine which applications to swap out to the hard disk. Generally speaking, the app that has been idle for the longest time is the first one swapped. But not always. Disabling the Windows swap file is a very bad idea.

Windows starts to act up pretty fast if you do that. What you should do is create a fixed size swap file that then becomes permanent. You really want to do this because it will effectively prevent the swap file from fragmenting your hard disk. A seperate drive is a waste for the swap file.

What you should do is create a seperate partition for the file on the same drive where Windows is installed and tell Windows to put it there. As for the size of the file, the general rule is to make the file 2 to 3 times as big as the total amount of RAM in your system, unless you have as much RAM installed as the OS can use.

All Windows versions have an upper limit of RAM they can actually use, and some will not work if there is more RAM installed in the system than they were designed to handle. If the amount of RAM in your system is maxed for the version of the OS you are using, the swap file should be no larger than the total amount installed, and a better choice is to make the swap file around half the amount in your system.