Windows 2000, by default, will place the paging file on the boot partition where the operating system is installed. However, placing the paging file on the boot partition does not optimize performance, because Windows NT and Windows 2000 have to perform disk I/O on both the system directory and the paging file.

Therefore, the following steps can be taken to optimize paging file performance:

• Place the paging file on a different partition than the operating system files.
• Place the paging file on a different physical hard disk than the operating system files.
• Spread the paging file across multiple hard disks.