Change the volume the windows page file is on

Question

I have a setup where I'm booting to a vhd in windows 7. My drive has 2 main partitions that I use. For whatever reason, inside the VHD, the page file was put to my "secondary" partition. I'm wanting to change the drive letter of this partition inside my VHD, but it won't let me because the page file is on there. How can I move the page file for this VHD setup to a different drive?

Answer 1

In Windows 7, you can have one page file on each drive, and manually configure them per drive through the interface. So you can totally disable the page file on the drive you wish.

Windows sets the initial minimum size of the paging file equal to the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed on your computer plus 300 megabytes (MB), and the maximum size equal to three times the amount of RAM installed on your computer.

To manually configure the virtual memory:

• Open Control Panel\System and Security\System

• In the left pane, click Advanced system settings. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

• On the Advanced tab, under Performance, click Settings.

• Click the Advanced tab, and then, under Virtual memory, click Change.

• Clear the Automatically manage paging file size for all drives check box.

• Under Drive [Volume Label], click the drive that contains the paging file you want to change.

• To turn it off, click No paging file, or Click Custom size, type a new size in megabytes in the Initial size (MB) or Maximum size (MB) box, click Set, and then click OK.

Note:
Increases in size usually don't require a restart for the changes to take effect, but if you decrease the size, you'll need to restart your computer. It's recommended that you don't disable or delete the paging file.