72GB Ram and Pagefile size for Win 7

Hi,

I recently purchased a Dell T5500, 2x X5570 Quad-Core 2.93GHz, with 72GB Ram and 1x 500GB 7.2K SATA Hard Drive. I've never owned a 64 bit PC before and only have experience of using 4GB ram.

After installing win 7, the 64bit version, I've noticed it takes up a lot of space on my hard drive, far more than it did using 4gb ram. I'm tech savvy but not a tech pro. I understand the pagefile size has influence on this size on disk and currently the page file is set to 72gb.

My question is this...do I really need a pagefile this size?, I'm a GIS analyst and use ArcGIS and various other geoprocessing software, I only ever use 3 to 4 programs at any one time, music, office, and mapping etc and the pc more than handles my daily requirements.

Can I safely reduce the size of my page file? I do have an enormous ram for home computing.

Thanks