Upgraded RAM in a server and now disk space has fallen dramatically!

[adhutton]

I have just upgraded the RAM in one of our Dell R510 servers from 8gb to 32gb. No problems.

 

However, when I reboot the server all of a sudden one of the hard drives is virtually full!

 

Before the RAM upgrade the HDD was only 60% full.

 

I think this may be something to do with the PageFile, but not sure?

 

Anyone experienced this problem before????

 

Cheers - Andrew

[Theblacksheep]

pagefile will have gone from 12Gb to 48Gb

[Gaz]

I'd put money on it being the page file too. Its easy to check, just enable hidden system files and folder and check in the root of C:\

 

With so much ram you could probably reduce the size of the page file unless you are likely to exceed 32gB's of ram.

[psydii]

as TBS said....it's the page file. As an aside, it is best to keep twice the amount of RAM free on the boot partition so that you can collect full crash dumps (i.e. the entire contents of memory) and still have room for a new page file (at least of the installed RAM) at the next boot.

 

Therefore it is best practice to have a page file that is at least equal to the size of physical memory +1MB.

 

That said I have only once needed a full crash dump for analysis in 15 years, and by default W2k8+ only create minidumps by default, so you can probably get away with a smaller page file than that.

[DanielBeckett]

As afore mentioned, the pagefile mirrors the physical memory, just move it to another partition, or manually shrink it,

 

In the Start Menu search box, type "Advanced System Settings" and choose the Control Panel applet that should show up, "View advanced system settings"

Under "Advanced" tab, "Performance" section, click "Settings..."

Under "Advanced" tab, "Virtual Memory" section, click "Change..."

These are the actual settings. Uncheck "Automatically manage paging file size for all drives" and you can change these settings. Highlight the drive you want it on, and select either a fixed size or system managed size, and then click "Set". YOU HAVE TO CLICK THE SET BUTTON. Do the same to remove it from the drive you don't want it on. ("No paging file".)

 

You'll then need to reboot and the pagefile will relocate.

 

I found this issue on ours, it has 24gb ram, so used the same for pagefile!

[winng]

Hi, I've got this issue on a virtual server. Is it still okay to relocate the pagefile to the D drive to free up much needed space on the C drive?

[3s-gtech]

Not just okay, but recommended. The pagefile typically speeds up fragmentation of the partition it's on, so is better away from your OS to a less busy area. You can even give it its own partition if you have room. Not so necessary with SSDs though.