RAID 0 swap file

[kona]

Sorry if the following topic doesn't fall into the a highly technical category but what the hey, here goes ...





ASUS P4C800E Deluxe
Intel 3.2 P4C
Swiftec 478-V heatsink w/ 92mm Panasonic Panaflo fan
2 Maxtor Ultra Series SATA HDD's
1 Maxtor Ultra Series ATA HDD
ATI 9800 Radeon Pro
1G Corsair TwinX 3700 (2 x 512)
Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB 22" monitor (just got it & love it!)
Klipsch Pro Media 2.1






I'm currently running a RAID 0 configuration using 2 Maxtor 80G SATA HDD's on the Intel southbridge ICH5R controller and a Maxtor 60G Ultra ATA on southbridge as well. I'm wondering what if any performance is gained by running a page (or 'swap') file on the 3rd drive (the Maxtor 60G), as opposed to including the page file on its own partition on the RAID 0 set. I'm currently running the page file on the on drive 'D' on the RAID 0 configuration ... 'C' being the OS: Win XP Pro, and drive 'D' being for the page file.

My Maxtors in RAID are so much faster than the ATA drive in all bechmarks that I decided to include the page file on the RAID array. Seems to me, if the striped set is passing data 3 to 4 times faster (in both reads and writes) than the ATA drive, the page file would perform better on that configuration, even though the swap transfers are on the same HDD (or HDD's in the case of the RAID 0 setup).

Hmm ... how many times can I say 'page' and 'RAID' in one short post?


Dave

 

[Shalmanese]

Question: With 1 Gb of RAM, what are you doing with a page file?

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Originally posted by: Shalmanese
Question: With 1 Gb of RAM, what are you doing with a page file?

Some programs like swap files a lot, so it is often worth using one anyway.

 

[sao123]

a swap file would gain most performance from being on its very own separate drive. One which would not be interfered by anything else reading or writing from the drive.

 

[Delorian]

Generally according to the "Microsoft" way of doing things, you always want to seperate your system partition and your swap file. Hence if your OS is installed on your C: drive (be it the RAID array or your ATA drive) you should put the swap file on the other drive (d: or what have you). But in your case with the 1GB of ram and a faster RAID 0 partition, I would be more tempted to put a smaller swap file (say about 2-300 MB on the raid partition, whichever that is) and make sure it is limited. Try it out for a while and if your programs are claiming they are running out of memory, switch to a larger or non-limited swap file. Basically what I'm saying is if your RAID partition does not host your operating system it is very recommendable to put a swap file there as there will be less activity from the OS and swap file conflicting with each other, resulting in faster performance and paging.

BTW have you tried running with out a swap file?

Good luck

 

[Shalmanese]

Have you tried running a real time RAM monitoring program such as Norton System Doctor? I know it's commonly derided as a memory and CPU hog but with 3.2Ghz/1Gb I think any performance drops would be negligible. It tells you the amount of free RAM you have every second and you can dock it down the bottom of the screen. I've found it pretty handy personally.

 

[kona]

Thanks for the info ...


To Delorian: The OS is on the RAID configuration and the page file is set at 1G on the non-OS drive, 'D'. To be honest, I've have absolutely no memory issues to date with this system in its current configuration. The question posed really had more to do with one of those 'just curious' queries. Thanks for your feedback!

To Shalmanese: I've come to the admittedly subjective opinion that Norton Utilities SUCKS (Version 2003). Having gone through the add'l steps involved in creating an efficient and proper functioning RAID setup as well as the install of numerous software applications, I was more than a little annoyed when introducing Norton into the picture as managed to adversely effect critical system files/functions, at least in Win XP Pro. I found it necessary to re-format (several times) thanks to Norton Utilities.

Call it stubborn... I should have given up after the first install. Guess I've got the 'tweaker' disease! Finally, yes you're right. Norton can be a definite hog on system resources depending on the application's settings. This has really never been an issue in my case however as I only used the very basic utilities, e.g., defrag. Additionally, it's helped having a nice & speedy system.


Thanks again guys!


Dave