Sometimes, the forum Reply editing screen can develop a mind of its own, and things get cattywompus. Happens to all of us.

With a 32-bit OS, you will only be using ~ 4GB of RAM, out of your 8GB installed.

I would look at statically managing your Page File (Windows Virtual Memory). The dynamic management (allowing Windows to increase/decrease the size of the Page File, as is needed, or anticipated) is good for general computing, where Page File usage is rather limited, and where calls for it come in rather slowly. With some programs, Photoshop and Premier for two), much RAM is used, and in a hurry. Then, the program signals the OS that it needs more, and the OS goes about creating that, then allocating that. It takes CPU cycles to do the dynamic management, and as the pipline to create (or decrease) that Page File size is rather slow (and you have the slower HDD Page File, which is slower still), the program's request can time out, or at least slow things down. The program might go into Not Responding, while it waits. Dynamic Page File management is useful, where one has limited HDD real estate, but on an editing rig, that should not be an issue, as one would have plenty of HDD space.

When I install my OS, before the programs (outside of the OS) are installed, and while my disks are clean, I will test where to locate my Page File, and have it statically managed. On my workstation with 5x internal HDD's, I found that the best location(s) were my C:\, and my D:\. On my laptop, it was slightly faster to locate the Page File on E:\. That was my setup. As my internal HDD's were empty (other than the OS on C:\), when I located my Page File on other than C:\, and as it was statically managed (created to my chosen size at bootup, before anything else is written to the HDD), the Page File was located at the inside of the platters, where access is slightly faster, than out at the edges of the platters (where it could be, if there were many files already written). This location is alwasy used, and fragementation is limited. Just some little benefits to that process.

With a 32-bit OS, and with programs that can use large Page Files, I like to go with ~ 2.5x the installed RAM for the Page File size. In my case, with 4GB RAM (max readily usable by the OS and the programs), I chose 10GB for the size of my Page File. With your 8GB RAM, and unless you have special management software, that can use addresses beyond the 4GB level, I would choose ~ 10GB RAM too. If your C:\ is fast, and not overly full (it will be partialy full now, with your programs installed), that would be a good place to locate it. If, for instance, your D:\ is also fast, and mostly empty, that should work well too. Same for your E:\. Do NOT locate it on an external.

Now, here is another consideration: your Photoshop Scratch Disks are like the Page File, but is only used by PS, when RAM is exceeded for operations. The Page File will only be used by the OS and then allocated to the programs, directly. While it is "virtual memory," used differently, than Scratch Disks. The idea behind having more than one internal HDD, is to spread the I/O load, so that the computer is not waiting for reads and writes to complete, before it gets the next batch of reads and writes. You might want to allocate your PS Scratch Disks on drives, separate from the Scratch Disks, which will be used by PS. With that in mind, you might be best to locate your Page File on D:\, and then your PS Scratch Disks on E:\ and F:\ (assuming that those are equally fast internal HDD's. This will help spread the I/O load over three physical HDD's. Note the word "physical" there. That assumes that your Volumes ARE separate physical HDD's, and not logical partitions of physical HDD's. Partition are to be avoided with Image, or Video editing programs.

After one has made a change to their Page File, a reboot will be necessary to implement the change. Test.

With Page Files, there are seldom hard and fast rules. Much will depend on what programs one has, and has in use at the same time. With the Page File on the boot drive, things are not bad, as the OS uses that HDD for getting itself up and running, then just a bit, afterwards. It then calls on a program to launch, so some reads and writes take place. When that is done, the boot drive is not used that much, so requests for reads and writes for the Page File, are seldom interrupted by other things. Keeping the Page File on a separate HDD, than the PS Scratch Disks, which WILL receive a lot of read and write requests, is a good thing.

Lot to think about initially, but after one gets the general concepts down, it's not that difficult to implement.

One more thing to consider is that defragmentation on an HDD can slow things down. Defragmenting on a regular basis is good. Some defragmentation programs WILL move system files, like the Page File, to the beginning of the HDD's platters, ahead of regular files. That might be something to consider, when picking a defragmentation program, especially if you have already partially filled it with other files.

Good luck,

Hunt