page file question

[Losty]

Hey guys!

I put my page file on my 2nd partition because someone told me that it'll run better. I used to put my page file on my 2nd hdd, but i switched from my 2scsi to 1 ide (seems slower to me but could be psychological).

I read in a windows xp tweak site that putting the page file on a 2nd partition of the same drive isn't beneficial because the 1st partition is usually faster.

Is this right? Should i move my pagefile back to my 1st partition where the os is installed?

Thanks guys...

-Losty

 

[gozulin]

There are 3 things that will affect the page:

Speed of HD: this means RPMs (the more the better) and seek times (The lower the better. SCSI hds are famous for their low seek times but check your HD specs and make certain. A scsi hd from 5 years ago might be slower than an new IDE HD)

Free space on HD : the more the better

Health of HD: a defragged HD will be faster.

Pick the hard drive according to these criteria and you can't go wrong.

As far as I know, the number of the partition has no effect on the page file.

 

[Woodie]

CLose... Number of the partition affects where on the drive the pagefile is put. For best performance, you want the file placed at the beginning of the HD.

That said...I just switched from a 4g SCSI boot drive to an 18g SCSI (10K) and saw tremendous improvement in speed. I added an SATA drive (7200), and moved the swapfile there (because it's 3x faster in throughput) than the SCSI. WOW! Booting is much faster.

 

[Navid]

There are many factors that impact speed. There are many suggestions that you can find online, like this from Microsoft.

The problem is that there are many different systems (RAM amount, number of hard drives, hard drive speeds) and many different requirements (type of applications you run) that it is impossible to come up with one solution that fits everybody.

The best way to find out what setup is best for you is to try them and see which one is best for you.

Edit:
It is always advised to put the pagefile on a second hard drive. But, that is not a good advice if the second hard drive is a slower hard drive.

It is sometimes advised to put the pagefile on a dedicated partition, even on the same hard drive, to limit its fragmentation. But, the farther you go from the begining of a hard drive, the slower the acces time gets. So, this may not always be a very good advice.

 

[Nothinman]

I read in a windows xp tweak site that putting the page file on a 2nd partition of the same drive isn't beneficial because the 1st partition is usually faster.

Read speed isn't the issue, the pagefile never gets read in a big enough chunk to even come close to top speeds of even an IDE drive. But what kills performance is seek time and if you put the pagefile on a seperate partition all you do is make the drive do a full seek everytime it reads the pagefile, it would be a better idea to just leave it system managed on the Windows partition.

 

[bendixG15]

If anybodu still cares, this is what MS recommends for WinXP...
(exerpted from link provided by Navid up above)

The optimal solution is to create one paging file that is stored on the boot partition, and then create one paging file on another partition that is less frequently accessed on a different physical hard disk if a different physical hard disk is available. Additionally, it is optimal to create the second paging file so that it exists on its own partition, with no data or operating-system-specific files. By design, Windows uses the paging file on the less frequently accessed partition over the paging file on the more heavily accessed boot partition. An internal algorithm is used to determine which paging file to use for virtual memory management

 

[Losty]

Hey guys!

Thanks for the replies...

I wasn't sure what was true or not and I still am not. My system is having some problems (it seems so slow and i'm running an a64 2800 oc'd to 2.3 now)

I switched back my swap to the primary partition to see if it does perform better.

I think i took a noticeable hit probably because my scsi had a seek time half of what my new ide drive is (can you beleive it's like 8.9 for the seagate or something close to that??? i think my 10krpm scsi was 5.5)

I don't know if i could tell a difference but geez i think it's this sp2 thing i installed that bogged down evertyhing.

How can i test to see if the pagefile works better on a specific partitiion? any tests other than me just "feeling" it?

thanks guys

-losty

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: Losty

How can i test to see if the pagefile works better on a specific partitiion? any tests other than me just "feeling" it?

-losty

It depends on what you use the computer for.

The pagefile may slow you down only if the amount of RAM you need is more than the amount of physical RAM you have in the machine.

You may never use the pagefile under normal circumstances if you do not run applications that need lots of RAM! Then, you are not going to see a difference.

If you are into editing images and or video or music, you can open a large file and perform a function on it (like encoding an audio file, or compressing a large image) and measure the time it takes to finish it. Choose a large enough file to result in a completion time that is measurable, like 15 seconds. Run the test multiple times and record the time it takes every time. Find the average.
Then, change the pagefile setting and repeat the test. Compare the averages.

If your system is slow just in windows not doing anything, I doubt that the pagefile is the problem unless you have an extremely small amount of RAM in your system.

 

[Losty]

Thanks for the reply!

wow ... that would be a lot of work...i did change the page file and ripped a dvd to my hdd. Took the same amount of time give or take a few seconds.

My system is just really slow opening web pages and folders sometimes.
Especially if i am in a game and i hit alt tab ... the web page usually appears instantly ...
but i changed my whole system (to a faster better one ... and my os from w2k to xp) and now when i alt tab out of the game the web page sections off ... top part appearing then the first mid section then the 2nd and then the bottom ... like it was a slow computer ... i thought it might be the page file but i guess not ...

system uses half of the memory total (virtual i assume ... never much more than half)

don't know . thanks for your replies guys...

i appreciate it.

-Losty

 

[Navid]

1- Ripping DVD may not be the best way to benchmark the hard drive since it may be bottlenecked by the DVD drive speed.

2- You did not say anything about the switch from 2000 to XP! How much RAM have you got on this machine?

 

[Losty]

yeah i was just saying that ripping a dvd didn't change much ...
My system change i didn't mention cuz i went from a w2k ~1.1ghz to a 2800athlon64 @ ~now 2300mhz
i did try windows xp on my old system and it ran fine.

so...it got slower... but my system now is xp sp2
so ... i dont know ... haven't had time to change back to w2k and i dont think i will anytime soon but
man this is just insane

i have 512mb ddr pc3200 corsair value select memory

thanks for the reply

losty