FAT 32 vs NTFS Page File

Fat32 may be a little more efficient, but it matters also little; what matters more is having a page file on a separate partition.

The file itself is neither FAT32 or NTFS... that is a characteristic of the partition on which the file will exist.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to create a whole new partition for only your pagefile.

What are you gaining in performance by putting your pagefile on a separate partition? Probably not much, especially on a VM.

I would just move the pagefile to the C Drive (assuming it's NTFS) and delete your D Drive.

@aadih, a pagefile on a separate DISK makes sense for a performance issue with a physical machine. What is gained by putting a pagefile on a separate partition in a VM?

NTFS is generally faster and supports larger file sizes, so unless you need to access the files from DOS mode or still use Win 9x, there is no reason to use Fat32

Here is a good write up of the pros and cons of each:

http://cquirke.mvps.org/ntfs.htm

Yes, it matters not much in any real sense.  The answer was only in relation to minute differences between Fat32 and NTFS.  If talking of minute differences, one needs mention separate partition (drive) location (for the sake of completeness).  :-)

[V]e3ofa, Thank you for the information.

@Ve3ofa Thanks for your response, have you ever come across terminal servers that have a FAT32 page file instead of NTFS?

NEVER found it in my experience and I'd NEVER set it up that way.

 it's not that difficult to convert to ntfs without losing any data.. and also remove the 8.3 names (performance gain) (in group policy)

Brian Maddens fine tuning a terminal server whitepapper suggests you get better performance on FAT


Making the Page File Faster
Even after applying TScale or Expedian page file optimizations, your page file will still be
used in a Terminal Server environment. Because of this, you need to ensure that your page
file is as accessible as possible.
A heavily-used page file will overly tax the disk I/O. Therefore, refer to the “Disk Usage”
section of this document for information about how to determine whether your hard disk
I/O capacities are causing bottlenecks in your environment. If you determine that your page
file is your bottleneck and you’d like to make it faster, there are a few things that you can do:
· Put the page file on its own drive on its own SCSI channel.
· Make sure the partition supporting the page file is FAT, since it’s faster than NTFS.
· Buy one of those Flash RAM hard drives. (These look like regular hard drives except
that they are solid state. They have Flash RAM instead of disks and spindles. They’re
very fast, except they’re also very expensive, costing several thousand dollars for a few
gigabytes.)
None of these solutions will make a dramatic difference, and you shouldn’t even attempt
them until after

http://www.planet-europe.fr/docs/support/Performances-Serveur/Terminal_Server_Performance_Tuning.pdf

Based on this excerpt and without even looking at Madden's full document, I can tell you that this information is old and outdated.

It also is developed for physical hosts, not virtual machines.

I'd suggest looking for a more up to date document on tuning on virtual servers.

A lot has changed since 2003!

They have Flash RAM instead of disks and spindles. They’re
very fast, except they’re also very expensive, costing several thousand dollars for a few
gigabytes.)  Around a dollar a gig these days.