Azure move pagefile and change drive letter for D drive

In Azure on windows VMs, D:\ drive is reserved for pagefile and any data you store on this drive will be deleted. But there are few apps or you have jobs on your on-prem that have been hard coded to use the D drive as data disk. Rather changing the drive path in your jobs it is easy to change the pagefile drive to a different drive.



So How do we move the pagefile to a different drive and rename the D drive to a drive.

Temporarily move pagefile.sys to C drive

1. Connect to the virtual machine.
2. Right-click the Start menu and select System.
3. In the left-hand menu, select Advanced system settings.
4. In the Performance section, select Settings.
5. Select the Advanced tab.
6. In the Virtual memory section, select Change.
7. Select the C drive and then click System managed size and then click Set.
8. Select the D drive and then click No paging file and then click Set.
9. Click Apply. You will get a warning that the computer needs to be restarted for the changes to take affect.
10. Restart the virtual machine.

Change the drive letters

1. Once the VM restarts, log back on to the VM.
2. Click the Start menu and type diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter. Disk Management will start.
3. Right-click on D, the Temporary Storage drive, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
4. Under Drive letter, select a new drive such as T and then click OK.
5. Right-click on the data disk, and select Change Drive Letter and Paths.
6. Under Drive letter, select drive D and then click OK.

Move pagefile.sys back to the temporary storage drive

1. Right-click the Start menu and select System
2. In the left-hand menu, select Advanced system settings.
3. In the Performance section, select Settings.
4. Select the Advanced tab.
5. In the Virtual memory section, select Change.
6. Select the OS drive C and click No paging file and then click Set.
7. Select the temporary storage drive T and then click System managed size and then click Set.
8. Click Apply. You will get a warning that the computer needs to be restarted for the changes to take affect.
9. Restart the virtual machine.