Changing PageFile location & Size (again)

A first time post for me on this forum. Looks like a great wealth of knowledge here.

I see that there have been several threads and many posts concerning moving and resizing the PageFile (virtual memory) going back several years.
I am having problem that I did not find mentioned (but that's no proof that it hasn't already been discussed).

I have 512MB actual RAM and recently purchased an external USB 160GB drive for my laptop (which has a 20GB internal drive). I tried to move my PageFile to the new drive to improve performance. I am running XP.

I went into my Performance Options and set my slow C: hard drive for "no page file" and my USB E: drive for Min and Max of 4096 (since the drive is fast and is almost empty).

I rebooted to have the change take effect and was surprised to find that the Currently Allocated total paging size for all drives still reads: 764MB (Recommended 763MB). While the setting for C: is still "no page file" and the 4096 setting still shows on the external drive.

I went into the Registry and checked the PagingFiles key.
It reads E:\pagefile sys 4096 4096.

Looking at my Task Manager, I see the limit of my Commit Charge is still only 1245M, which is approximately the sum of my 512MB actual and 764MB virtual memories.

Why hasn't the change taken effect?

If this question has been answered before just point me to the post.

Thanks for any help,

c7

Why would you want to do that - it will slow down your PC.
A page file should be optimised at between 1.5 to 3 times the size of your actual physical memory so 764 looks good.

Curio,

Thanks for responding.
I saw earlier threads where people had set the size to 4096 (the max possible on my machine).
Fine. I'll settle for 764 if it's better and faster. But the question is: on what drive is it sitting? How can I tell?
c7