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I have 64 GB of memory. I have been told that this is way more than I need, and that I don't need Virtual Memory.

Despite that advice, I do have a 40 Gig SSD that is dedicated to VM and scratch files for Photoshop etc. The VM Applet suggests 9047 MB but I have initial size 16000 MB and Maximum 37000 MB (this is the maximum space available on the drive rounded down)

On occasion I will look at my drive status and the SSD will be red and report that it is full.

Is this a problem or does the system keep swapping pages despite the drive being full?

I am running windows 10 pro.

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  • You do need virtual memory and anyone who says otherwise has no idea how modern operating systems actually use memory. You might get away with disabling the page file, but that will prevent the virtual memory system from working correctly and you will get weird "out of memory" errors when you have "plenty" free.
    – Mokubai ♦
    Commented Oct 4, 2021 at 19:03
  • You can't disable virtual memory as exe, dll, and font files are all swap files for code (this is why virtual memory increases when opening a program). The pagefile can be disabled, this will prevent program data from being paged out. So Windows can only page out code.
    – user1292580
    Commented Oct 4, 2021 at 20:08
  • It's not a problem that your drive is full if you are only using it as a swap file.
    – user1292580
    Commented Oct 4, 2021 at 20:17
  • so, a pagefile is often large but empty. the file doesn't grow or shrink when you swap memory pages in and out of RAM under most circumstances. think of it like a honeycomb, where each cell may be full of honey, or may be empty, but the overall size of the comb remains the same. it has slots for data in it, but those slots may or may not be being utilized at any given time.
    – Frank Thomas
    Commented Oct 4, 2021 at 20:22

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