creating swap partition

[vmyap]

for windows xp

I know the basic stuff in creating a swap partition.

My question is, should I have it on the first partiton on my second drive or is it ok to have it at the last? One reason I ask is that I have a second drive that has files on it, now I would be creating a new partition using PM 8, and that would place thee swap partition on the last part.

Also I have a 2 GB of ram and i would be creating a 4.5 GB of swap partition, is this still ok?

my second drive is a Seagate SATA II w/ 16 mb cache .10 model.


thank you

 

[vmyap]

anyone?

 

[corkyg]

I put my system page files on a partition of my main drive (D:\). I also use that for Temp Internet files. It reduces primary causes of fragmentation for me. And I set that partition at about 20 GB.

 

[Nothinman]

I know the basic stuff in creating a swap partition.

Ah, so you already know not to do it then.

 

[dclive]

^^ Bingo. Best not to. If you must, ensure you have a small swapfile (200-300MB or so) on C: (or %Systemdrive%) and tell the box to do kernel memory dumps - this way you can get a dumpfile if the box ever has a problem. Then put the additional 'real' swapfile on your fastest drive.

Don't set up a partition - that's silly. Just set up the swapfile so its' size doesn't change, and then you don't need to worry about fragmentation.

 

[dclive]

A much smarter idea, rather than messing around with this, is to simply buy $40 worth of RAM.

 

[Nothinman]

Just set up the swapfile so its' size doesn't change, and then you don't need to worry about fragmentation.

Don't even do that, let the system manage it and go about your work. All you accomplish by limiting the size of the pagefile is lowering the bar for when you'll start getting into OOM situations.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Just set up the swapfile so its' size doesn't change, and then you don't need to worry about fragmentation.

Don't even do that, let the system manage it and go about your work. All you accomplish by limiting the size of the pagefile is lowering the bar for when you'll start getting into OOM situations.

As long as you max it out (2g max/min) this isn't an issue.

I'm agreeing with you it's silly, but some people can't seem to get this silliness out of their system, so, if one must do it...

 

[Nothinman]

As long as you max it out (2g max/min) this isn't an issue.

Which is retarded because you're wasting 2G of space for no reason because if you have a reasonable amount of memory you'll never hit the pagefile at all let alone require 2G of it.

 

[dclive]

I agree! The issue is some people think that having the page file available will increase fragmentation on that drive, hence wanting a separate partition. This does away with their entire concern.

And in the age of 500GB for $100, that's about 40 pennies worth of disk space, so....

 

[nerp]

Why are people still worried about fragmentation and page files? It's 2007 people. All the fiddling in the world ain't gonna amount to jack. Just use the computer and forget about it.

 

[Nothinman]

Why are people still worried about fragmentation and page files? It's 2007 people. All the fiddling in the world ain't gonna amount to jack. Just use the computer and forget about it.

Well it's not a cut and dry issue, there are some workloads that are affected by fragmentation but the built-in defragger is good enough for most people's use. And those people that do need extremely low latency I/O for things like A/V capture and editing should be using a dedicated drive anyway.