Memory Upgrade Problems on Windows 7

Posted Sat Dec 03 @ 02:06:21 PM PDT 2011

I recently upgraded the RAM on my computer from 8 gigs, to 16 gigs (which I'll admit, was frivolous, because I don't even come close to using 8 gigs). After I installed the memory, I noticed that nearly all the free space on my hard drive disappeared (I have a 120 gig SSD).

After snooping around my hard drive without finding any suspicious files, I changed my folder options to show hidden operating system files. I immediately noticed to huge files:

both were approximately 16 gigabytes in size.

pagefile.sys

According to Microsoft, it is safe to reduce the size of your pagefile.sys if you have plenty of RAM (the article mentions 64 MB, but I think that is a bit dated):

if you have enough surplus RAM to support the operating system and application memory requirements, the need for a large paging file is lessened. If you have, for example, 64 MB of RAM, you may be able to safely reduce your paging file to a very small size.

You can shrink your pagefile by going to Control Panel > Search for "advanced" > "View advanced system settings" > Advanced > Settings (under the Performance group) > Advanced > Change...

I changed mine to have an initial size of 16, and a Maximum size of 1024. Make sure you click the "Set" button before hitting OK.

hiberfil.sys

This file keeps a copy of your RAM when the computer goes into hibernate. The only way to get rid of this file is to disable hibernation (which you shouldn't do on a laptop, since it saves power).

If you bring up cmd (make sure you run it as an administrator), simply type:

powercfg -h off

to turn off hibernation.

Those tricks reclaimed most of the hard drive space I lost when I upgraded my RAM.

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