To prevent fragmentation of the pagefile you have to set the minimum- and maximum size to the recommended size. Furthermore it is advisable to defragment your harddisk as much as possible before modifying pagefile sizes.
On machines with more than one physical harddisk (attached to a SCSI controller) the access speed for paging can be increased by specifying a separate pagefile for each harddisk.
Windows NT/2000 saves the date and time of last access for every folder and file. In most cases it isn't necessary to log this information, partly because backup applications sometimes modify this time stamp. To disable this NTFS feature, you have to add the following setting to the registry:
location: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
setting: NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate
type: DWORD
value: 00000001
Did you know that defragmentation software is installed by default on you Windows 2000 system? You can find it under My Computer / Manage / Storage / Disk Defragmenter.
It is advisable to periodically (two weekly or monthly, for instance) run the defragger during your lunch or coffee break.
There are two other tools in this area that can contribute to keeping your system running efficiently: sysInternals
PageDefrag and
Contig.