How to get rid of Windows "Low Disk Space" pop-up?

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dbaldus

Gawd
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Jul 12, 2005
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So I have a 2Gb partition on my hard drive that I am using as Windows page file/swap file. I keep it completely empty but am using all but something like 5 or 10 MB of space on there (Windows requires this).

My problem is now every time I boot into Windows an icon comes up in the system tray with a pop-up that says "Low Disk Space"... its very annoying and will always say that if I continue to use the swap space/paging file for performance (which I plan to). Does anyone know how to get rid of this message, other than not making my page file take up the whole partition?

Thanks in advance...
 
You might want to check out the various threads and stickies on the subject, but you may actually be hurting your overall performance that way. If the pop-ups get annoying, I'd just set a static page file on my C drive and be done with the annoyances. Nothing will be lost in terms of performance.
 
I've got a similar issue. I want to back up an image file to an external USB HDD that is 9gb in size. The external HDD has plenty of free space on it but XP keeps telling me there is not enough free space on the HDD so I can't copy the file over. Is this because the file is over 2gb in size or what?
 
djnes said:
You might want to check out the various threads and stickies on the subject, but you may actually be hurting your overall performance that way. If the pop-ups get annoying, I'd just set a static page file on my C drive and be done with the annoyances. Nothing will be lost in terms of performance.
Click to expand...

Do you mean that I may be hurting my overall performance by getting rid of the pop-up message or by creating a 2Gb partition and using that whole thing as my paging file?

This is my situation:

80Gb Seagate drive, SATA II 7200.9, with OS and games
120Gb Seagate drive, SATA I 7200.7, with 2 Gb partition for paging file and other 118Gb for storage.

Where should I have my paging file set for maximum performance? The faster Sata II drive or as a partition on the slower Sata I drive?
 
I'd say leave the pagefile alone on the primary drive (assuming that 80GB SATA II drive is your primary). You can add a second pagefile of 2GB to that second hard drive that may help performance at certain times; meaning if Windows is busy accessing the primary drive and needs to swap, it can use the pagefile space on the second drive simultaneously instead of wasting twice the effort to access the primary drive while that drive is already in operation.

Hope that makes sense. After all the years, all the threads, all the forums, all the myths, all the bullshit, the end result of all the pagefile performance hype comes down to one simple answer:

Leave it alone, seriously. Windows knows what it's doing. You can add a pagefile on a second physical drive (not a second partition on the same drive) or even more than one as long as they're all on individual physical drives that don't share controllers - SATA is perfect for this, and SCSI rules with this, but ATA/IDE drives just choke because of it.

There is some merit to the concept of a static pagefile as long as you never go over that; if you do, then fragmentation happens, but you'd need to set the static one large enough so that never happens. Also, the 1.5x RAM thing is just stupid nowadays. In the old days it meant something, but with 2GB of RAM coming standard on a lot of hardware these days, people don't need 3GB pagefiles, even if they've got a terabyte of space to play with.

Hope this helps...
 
bbz_Ghost said:
I'd say leave the pagefile alone on the primary drive (assuming that 80GB SATA II drive is your primary). You can add a second pagefile of 2GB to that second hard drive that may help performance at certain times; meaning if Windows is busy accessing the primary drive and needs to swap, it can use the pagefile space on the second drive simultaneously instead of wasting twice the effort to access the primary drive while that drive is already in operation.

Hope that makes sense. After all the years, all the threads, all the forums, all the myths, all the bullshit, the end result of all the pagefile performance hype comes down to one simple answer:

Leave it alone, seriously. Windows knows what it's doing. You can add a pagefile on a second physical drive (not a second partition on the same drive) or even more than one as long as they're all on individual physical drives that don't share controllers - SATA is perfect for this, and SCSI rules with this, but ATA/IDE drives just choke because of it.

There is some merit to the concept of a static pagefile as long as you never go over that; if you do, then fragmentation happens, but you'd need to set the static one large enough so that never happens. Also, the 1.5x RAM thing is just stupid nowadays. In the old days it meant something, but with 2GB of RAM coming standard on a lot of hardware these days, people don't need 3GB pagefiles, even if they've got a terabyte of space to play with.

Hope this helps...
Click to expand...

Alright, well I have 1Gb of RAM and set my pagefile to be 2Gb, does that sound like a good size?

Also, is it important to have my pagefile be in an empty partition or does that not make a difference?

And, just to be sure I understand you correctly, you are saying that I should just set up a pagefile on my primary (Sata II) drive and then another one on my secondary (Sata I) drive in case it ever needs it? Should either one of these be in a separate, empty partition?
 
dbaldus said:
Alright, well I have 1Gb of RAM and set my pagefile to be 2Gb, does that sound like a good size?

Also, is it important to have my pagefile be in an empty partition or does that not make a difference?

And, just to be sure I understand you correctly, you are saying that I should just set up a pagefile on my primary (Sata II) drive and then another one on my secondary (Sata I) drive in case it ever needs it? Should either one of these be in a separate, empty partition?
Click to expand...
There really isn't much of a performance tweak no matter what you do. The only rational step is to ready the stickies and judge for yourself how big of a pagefile you need. There isn't a hard and fast rule based on your system RAM anymore. As I mentioned above, if you set it as a static size, you won't be contributing to the fragmentation of your drive.

I would set one at a static size on your C partition and that's it. I never really understood the point of creating a dedicated partition, when you can leave it on the primary with a static size.
 
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