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How big should i make my swap file and should it go on it's own partition?

M

mikef208

Banned
I normally just let windows manage it, but I have heard that windows does a poor job, I have also heard it is better to put it on it's own partition. Is this correct, if so how big should I make the part. I am running a duron 650 with 192MB RAM.
 
windows does indeed do a poor job. putting your swap file on a seperate partition can be a good thing in order to prevent the swap file becoming defragmented. the normal recommendation if I recall correctly is 2x ram though I set mine at 300Mb, having 256 Mb of ram.
I should mention that norton utilities include a utility to put the swap file at the start of the drive ie the fastest part!
 
yes! use the norton optimisation wizard & it will put the norton optimised swapfile at the start of your drive! 🙂
 
For the best perfomance, you should not put the swap file on another patition. You should put it on another drive. By putting it on another partiion, you make the drive move its read heads to the other portion of the drive where the other partition is. This will not improve, and may actually degrade performance.

Norton actually puts the swap on the outer edge of the drive. This is faster because the of the higher angular velocity of the platter relative to the read head.

Here is a good site for tweaking system memory.
 
Okay, kinda conflicting opinions. Can anyone else help. The only drives I have are a 30.7GB Westerm Digital ATA66 5400RPM, and a 7.5GB Quantum out of an old compaq, not sure how fast it is, but I haven't put that in this computer yet, should I. Or what other suggestions do you have.
 
Others have already covered most of the main points. Set max and min for the swap file the same to prevent fragmentation; the rule used to be 2.5x RAM but nowadays with many people having 256Meg or 512Meg that rule is not so good anymore -- I chose 1.5x for both of my present systems. If you have two drives, Norton will ask you if you want to put the swap file on the fastest drive and that is a good thing to do. I have an older Seagate 7200RPM drive that I use mainly for archiving -- except for the outer part where the fixed size swap file is located. That way the heads on the main drive will never be thrashing back and forth if the swap file is being exercised.

Peabody
Click on "symbols" at the bottom of the reply box. The first line labeled URL gives very clear instructions on how to link and label the link
 
Norton will put it on the outer part of the hard drive, correct? Back to my earlier question though. Right now I have a 30.7 GB hard drive, should I not worry about partitions and just let norton put it where it wants, also i have my 7.5 GB out of my compaq, which is prolly the same RPM as my WD, but may only be ATA 33,not sure. Should I put it on that?
 
yeah, speed disk (when set to optimize the swap) will defrag the swap file and put it at the beginning (fastest) part of whatever partition it is in.

my swap file is 1GB ;-) it doesn't budge ;-)

i have it in C, at the beginning of the drive like i like it. that's why i don't have it at a different partition.

if you don't FIX your swap file, it will grow and shrink. AND win98 allows the swap file to get defragmented (separate parts), which is not a good thing. I've had my swap file at 1GB for quite a while, even when i had 192 MB of RAM. i have 448 now. i had problems with my swap file at 128 MB... lol i moved it up to 512 after that... and now, 1 GB. no problems as far as i know.

anyway...

blah, blah, blah,...

the swap file should go in your fastest partition\drive and the fastest part of that partition\drive... of course this is not necessarily your OS partition. but what idiot puts their OS in a slow drive?
 
peabody, when you want to link something. After you click reply there are a bunch of buttons above the text window the 4th button over says http and has a chain link beside it. Click on that then in the box that pops up type in, or copy and paste the link. The hit okay or whatever it says, then in the next box type in what text you want to appear. For example, if you want to link to a website like www.hotmail.com. You would type www.hotmail.com in the box then hit okay. Then you type the text you want the link to appears as. If you type www.hotmail.com then that is what the people will see as the link. Or you could type email, and that is what the people will see. Hope this helps. Thanks fo ryour help also.
 
My question is if I have a C: D: and E: with each one being slower than the next (C: is fastest) then is it still beneficial to stick the swap on a drive besides C:?
 
Funny, about.com had this to say:



<< Normally, Windows creates the swap file on the same drive as the one on which Windows is installed, and it manages its size automatically, from a minimum of 0 bytes to a maximum size that uses all available space on your hard disk. If you use Windows 98 or Windows Me, these are the correct settings. Don't be fooled by bogus Windows tips recommending that you create a permanent swap file of a certain size! That advice applies only to older systems running Windows 3.1 or Windows 95. In newer Windows versions, Windows is tuned to manage the swap file efficiently. You may actually harm performance by changing the swap file settings. >>



Seems contradictory to what others are saying here.

Rob
 
Funny how that About.com writer can make statements like that and not provide anything to back it up. I trust Adrian and his testing and analysis over the generalized statement made at about.com. He should prove it wrong, rather than deny it. Don't just say it is wrong. Show me. Until then.....
 
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