According to IT Home, October 24, 2023, tech media Windows Latest published a blog post on October 23, 2023, discussing the topic of whether 32GB RAM laptops still need a paging file. Based on Microsoft's related support documents, the blog post states that the size of the paging file should be determined by the actual workload and crash dump requirements, and cannot be solely determined by the amount of memory.
IT Home cited the blog post as saying that the paging file is a hidden system file placed on a hard drive or SSD by Windows, typically called pagefile.sys. It can be considered as a backup space for memory.
When programs run, they need to put the data being processed into memory. Windows manages these data in units called 'pages.' The name 'paging file' comes from this. The system can write infrequently accessed and modified memory pages to the paging file, and then retrieve them from physical memory when needed again.
