Have pages out, but still have free memory...

[kjs862]

Any idea... ?

 

[IJ Reilly]

Yes, don't worry about Page Outs, especially if you're not experiencing any performance issues, and if you are, reboot the Mac.

 

[MisterEd]

Yeah I have a whole load of page outs, plus a whole load of free memory. As Reilly said above, unless you're seeing significant performance issues - heavy beachballing, etc. then don't worry about it

Ed

 

[Insulin Junkie]

Forgive my ignorance... but what's a 'page out'?

 

[aristobrat]

Page out is when the OS takes a page of memory from the RAM and stores it on the hard drive. When the OS needs that memory back, it pages it back in. The paging process takes time because while RAM is very fast, comparatively, the hard drive is very very very slow. Ideally, everyone would have enough RAM so that the OS never had to page.

It usually does this when there isn't enough RAM, but per this thread, sometimes it does this when there is still availabe RAM.

 

[Insulin Junkie]

Page out is when the OS takes a page of memory from the RAM and stores it on the hard drive. When the OS needs that memory back, it pages it back in. The paging process takes time because while RAM is very fast, comparatively, the hard drive is very very very slow. Ideally, everyone would have enough RAM so that the OS never had to page.

It usually does this when there isn't enough RAM, but per this thread, sometimes it does this when there is still availabe RAM.

I see, thanks for bringing it nearer to me