Swap file on flash

[Ruptga]

I've read that the swap file can be moved from place to place, so why couldn't I plug in a fast 2GB USB drive or SD card and run the swap file off that, instead of spending triple-digits for one gig of PC5300 SODIMM.

In theory this should work perfectly until the flash drive wears out after a couple years, but I know everything sounds simple until you actually try it.

I already have a gig of normal RAM, and it's mostly adequate, but sometimes I want to look at Google Earth without stopping one of my F@Hs, and that can certainly cause issues if I happen to have two big WUs at the same time. I know the simple solution is to disable big WUs for one F@H, but I'm here because I don't want to do that.

 

[SuperNaruto]

search, there are quite a few topics, but basically

limited read/write
limited speed on sd/usb drive

there are some other reasons...

 

[Ruptga]

I know it's not nearly as good as real RAM, I was more asking about technical issues getting Windows to let me find and move the swap file without crashing.

 

[phisrow]

Moving the swap file is the easy part. Windows explicitly supports putting one or more swap files wherever you want them(though it wouldn't surprise me if network drives are a no go, and removable drives might be as well).

The main issue will probably be cell endurance. 100,000 (or even 10,000,000) write/erase cycles is a lot less time than you might expect, if you are swapping heavily.

 

[RaiderJ]

You can get flash drives that plug directly into a PATA port. Maybe get a 1GB one and use that? Interesting idea, but probably not practical.

 

[Skeeedunt]

would that actually be faster than having it on the hard drive

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: phisrow
Moving the swap file is the easy part. Windows explicitly supports putting one or more swap files wherever you want them(though it wouldn't surprise me if network drives are a no go, and removable drives might be as well).

The main issue will probably be cell endurance. 100,000 (or even 10,000,000) write/erase cycles is a lot less time than you might expect, if you are swapping heavily.

The cell endurance was something I was hoping someone could vouch for. I know flash doesn't last extremely long, but I usually don't have to use any PF, so I don't think this would be a problem. And what was that about multiple PF locations? I could set the primary place to the flash, and another one to the HDD in case the flash ever died. I know I'd still crash, but I would at least have a PF location once I rebooted, right?

But anyway, it shouldn't matter if a drive is removable or not, as far as I can tell Windows sees no fundamental difference between an internal drive and an external one, they both show up as HDDs in My Computer. My original plan was to use a flash card because those are practically internal--they wouldn't get yanked/knocked out of a USB port on accident.

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt
would that actually be faster than having it on the hard drive

(I assume you're not being sarcastic.)
That's the entire idea. Transfer speeds are lower, so far, but compared to a 2.5 drive... The real benefit is the access time, because flash has no moving parts the access time is generally a thousandth of a HDD's.

 

[corkyg]

OK - why don't you just try it - then report how it works and which is faster. Moving parts aside, transferring data to a flash memory device is many times slower than to a HDD. But, that is mainly due to USB being a choke point with a 480 "speed limit."

 

[sswingle]

Vista has a feature built in to get a speedup by using memory on flash drives.

 

[McCarthy]

I support you trying it and reporting back. It may be very quick, or we all might be surprised.

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: McCarthy
I support you trying it and reporting back. It may be very quick, or we all might be surprised.

I'll do that, I've got a 2GB flash card on my christmas list. Yes, that is somewhat pathetic, but I'm an unemployed college kid.
I have no doubt this'll speed up the computer when I hit my memory limit; what I'm really curious about is how long this card will last before it simply dies.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt
would that actually be faster than having it on the hard drive

No - any flash memory device today is USB 2 - limited to a theoretical 480 kbps, way below PATA HDD speed.

 

[SuperNaruto]

I put a 4gb swap file on a faster 8gb iram... didn't see any difference...

 

[w00t]

I don't think this is really going to help. those thumb drives aren't as fast as RAM.

edit: if you want that laptop faster get two gigs. looks like a good laptop to me the only thing is it has integrated graphics.

 

[Jiggz]

Access time maybe faster on the flash drive but with a limited bandwidth, it will be far slower than a 30Mbps hdd. Not to mention some hdd can get as high as 100Mbps on burst because of the cache. On the other hand with the iRam, you are using RAM memory and not flash drive memory with the same bandwidth as a hdd. There should be a slight increase in performance but it all depends on what programs you are running with an iRam

 

[Rubycon]

Having enough physical memory is always going to be better. Set a static paging file size and disable paging executive and you're all set.

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: corkyg

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt
would that actually be faster than having it on the hard drive

No - any flash memory device today is USB 2 - limited to a theoretical 480 kbps, way below PATA HDD speed.

USB's speed is measured in Mbps, not Kbps

 

[Ruptga]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Having enough physical memory is always going to be better. Set a static paging file size and disable paging executive and you're all set.

Static paging file size is pretty self explanatory, but what's this paging executive thing?

 

[JBT]

Originally posted by: Skeeedunt
would that actually be faster than having it on the hard drive

I doubt it. USB2.0 is really not that fast + the fact the the flash drive would eventuall die due to its limited amounts of read/writes.

 

[Hyperlite]

Originally posted by: ADDAvenger

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Having enough physical memory is always going to be better. Set a static paging file size and disable paging executive and you're all set.

Static paging file size is pretty self explanatory, but what's this paging executive thing?

edit: i found it...Text but i checked and mine is set to that by default. there is some interesting things on that page, but most of them i tried are no longer valid with changes in XP, etc...

one of the most promising ones that i saw was the IRQ priority tweak, but i can't see the IRQ # for the CMOS/real time clock. i did a few of the other reg tweaks, but theres not really a good way to see if they actually make a difference...

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: ADDAvenger

USB's speed is measured in Mbps, not Kbps[/quote]

That is correct - my goof - it is Megabits per second.

 

[xtknight]

I'd be really surprised if a flash drive exceeded a hard drive in memory performance (like when using Photoshop for example). The feature is called ReadyBoost in Vista IIRC. Are there any benchmarks for it?

 

[Hyperlite]

Originally posted by: xtknight
I'd be really surprised if a flash drive exceeded a hard drive in memory performance (like when using Photoshop for example). The feature is called ReadyBoost in Vista IIRC. Are there any benchmarks for it?

thats a good question...i'm sure its in RC2, but i havn't see anyone talking about it.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Hyperlite

edit: i found it...Text but i checked and mine is set to that by default. there is some interesting things on that page, but most of them i tried are no longer valid with changes in XP, etc...

one of the most promising ones that i saw was the IRQ priority tweak, but i can't see the IRQ # for the CMOS/real time clock. i did a few of the other reg tweaks, but theres not really a good way to see if they actually make a difference...

Still legit today. As you can see the article is dated too!

In normal usage, XP pages sections from RAM memory to the hard drive. We can stop this happening and keep the data in RAM, resulting in improved performance. Note that only users with a large amount of RAM (256MB+) should use this setting. The setting we want to change to disable the 'Paging Executive', as it is called, is called DisablePagingExecutive. Changing the value of this key from 0 to 1 will de-activate memory paging.

Originally posted by: corkyg

Originally posted by: ADDAvenger

USB's speed is measured in Mbps, not Kbps

That is correct - my goof - it is Megabits per second.

Sure it's 480,000 kbps.

No different than the chief engineer saying we're using 57,550 kW. I say 57.55 MW.