Enlarging disk partition

[Streetcred]

I run a 3rd party computer maintenance program 'Advanced System Care' by Iobit. During boot up it gives me a message to the effect that the computer has high systems resource usage which is affecting the speed of the computer. On investigation it indicates that (partition) disk I/O is +100% utilised. Can the partition be safely expanded to allow faster swapping? How is best to do this?

Thanks in anticipation 😉

[PS I think that this is a 64-bit W10 version OS]

[jorkki]

I am not familiar with the particular application in question, so you would have to be more specific with your description.

It is important to understand whether the message is referring to high data  rates of disk requests going out to the disk, the disk being filled up or the virtual memory space being close to filling up.

Most of the time it is a question of high rate disk I/O rate. A lot of the time that can be things like the Windows Update, Antivirus,  files indexing etc. It can also be if you have too little RAM for that tasks you are performing and the system has to use the virtual memory a lot.

If you Google for Advanced System Care disk usage 100% you can even find complaints that the issue started after installing the program so it may do it's own share of disk I/O

I don't know your system configuration, but for Windows 10 I would say that a smoothly running baseline configuration for a new system today should have a SSD system disk and 8GB of RAM and go up from there depending on what the computer is used for.

Ignore the following for SSD disks:

If you don't enough resources  and the computer is feeling sluggish you may gain some by  defragmenting your disk. Windows is normally set to do this automatically at times but you can run it manually as well.

The Windows tools do not optimize the pagefile, maybe because the benefit is considered to be small or the operation too risky. You can do it even without 3rd party tools if you know what you are doing but I'm in now way urging you to mess up your system.

The principle is that you temporarily disable the paging file or move it on another disk then defragment the original volume consolidating the free space and then move the paging file back (usually setting a large enough fixed size to prevent further fragmentation).

[mdklassen · Accepted solution]

> Can the partition be safely expanded to allow faster swapping? How is best to do this?

It is not a "partition" (unlike in Linux); it is just some "dedicated" disk-space.

Open "My Computer".

Open "System Properties".

Click the "Advanced" tab.

In "Performance Options", click the "Advanced" tab.

Click the "Change" button, to change the size of the "paging file".

Tell us how it goes.

[mdklassen]

From: HP Pavilion All-in-One - 24-b017a (Touch) (ENERGY STAR) PC Product Specifications

Memory

• Amount: 16 GB
• Speed: PC4-17000 MB/s
• Type: DDR4-2133

Memory upgrade information
• Dual channel memory architecture
• Two DDR4 SODIMM (260-pin) sockets
• Supports up to PC4-17000 (DDR4-2133)
• Supports 2 GB, 4 GB, and 8 GB DDR4 SODIMMs
• Supports up to 4 GB on 32-bit systems
• Supports up to 16 GB (unbuffered) on 64-bit systems

Your computer has 16 GB of RAM -- most Windows 10 systems require 4 GB, and work very well with 8 GB.

Start the Windows Task Manager, and switch to its "Performance" tab, to see how much RAM that your computer is using -- probably less than 50% of your 16 GB.

[Streetcred]

Thank you for taking the time to answer my query. I'm asking a specific question about increasing the size of the Disk I/O so that system resources are not choked by the limited virtual disk size. I have 16Mb of Ram which is hardly topuched in the boot phase ... Disk I/O is used to swap information in and out during the boot process ... logically, if the Disk is over utilised, it chokes boot speed.

[Streetcred]

Thanks for the helpful response, I'll do that. Back in the day of IBM PS2 Model 30 we partitioned the HDD to seperate the OS from programs and data ... if you were lucky enough to have a HDD 😉

[Streetcred]

😉 if RAM was the issue I'd be thankful for the 16 Mb's. The RAM gets used by my applications ... well used 😉

[jorkki]

Back in the day disk optimizing was really an art, I know. Databases were organized on the disk often by hand to optimize the searches etc.

The systems are getting out of control in complexity these days. No one really knows what is happening and  why. Seems the computers are filled with much junk that slows things down and the programming is inefficient etc.

There is a nice read about using the Event Viewer to peek into the slowness of the boot process here:

https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/use-windows-7-event-viewer-to-track-down-issues...

And of course a very nice tool to see what all is being started and where here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns

But do be very careful with what you change if any. It is too easy to mess up the system. At the very minimum make sure you have recovery points and rather have up to date volume backup to be sure.

[mdklassen]

> I'm asking a specific question about increasing the size of the Disk I/O

> so that system resources are not choked by the limited virtual disk size.

I do not understand what you mean by the "size" of disk I/O.

I showed you how to change the upper limit of the size of the "swap" file.

If you install a secondary disk-drive, you can change the location of the "swap" file, to use it, rather than your primary disk-drive.

> I have 16Mb of Ram which is hardly touched in the boot phase ...

Correct. Microsoft says that 2GB of RAM is the minimum for 64-bit Windows 10.

> Disk I/O is used to swap information in and out during the boot process ...

Swapping is done on a "demand" basis, not on a "predictive" basis.

So, during a boot of Windows, there is much "reading" from the 'C:\Windows' folder.

There will be a small amount of "writing" to the 'C:' drive, mostly to write events that the Windows Event Viewer can later extract.

Of course, as programs "call home" (anti-virus, Windows Update, Adobe updater, et cetera), there will some writing to the 'C:' drive, while updates are being downloaded.

But, my point is that Windows will write to the "swap" file only when necessary.

> logically, if the Disk is over utilised, it chokes boot speed.

It chokes the entire Windows system.

So, install a SSD device, and boot Windows from it, and keep your current disk-drive as "secondary" disk-drive, to contain all your Personal Files, if your goal is the fastest-possible boot-up time.

[Streetcred]

Thanks, Jorkki ... that's what I'm afraid of, messing the system.