“What is the Windows 10 paging file and why is it a good idea to regularly delete it?”

For most people, it’s NOT a good idea to delete the pagefile.

A pagefile (or swapfile) is a temporary scratchpad area on the hard drive that an operating system (e.g. Windows) uses to store code and data when the operating system is juggling more stuff than will fit into RAM. A pagefile lets Windows act as if it has more RAM than it really does.

The alternative is for the system to crash or hang when it runs out of RAM. And that’s exactly what used to happen, in the bad old days, before swapfiles came into common use!

Today, if you set up your system try to run with no swapfile, you’ll encounter those same errors when your system’s real RAM maxes out, just like the old days.

But some people recommend deleting the swapfile at the end of every computing session, for security reasons: It’s possible, for someone who has access to your PC, to forensically examine the swapfile for fragments of data left over from previous operations.

But this is a long, hit-or-miss process, and usually requires actual, physical access to your PC. It’s not something a casual snoop would do.

But, if you’re using a shared PC for some kind of top secret work that nefarious persons want to steal, then sure, delete the pagefile as the last step in all the other physical and electronic security measures you take, such encrypting everything, and placing the air-gapped PC in a physically and electronically secure room.

But for most users in normal circumstances, it’s just not worth it: If you do delete the pagefile, the system will rebuild it the next time you start up; and that takes extra time. All you’ve really done is make things slower for yourself!

Leave the swapfile alone; you, and your PC, will be happier for it.

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