Swap File placement

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: DeeperWell
Also, to go full circle right back to the beginning question - can we all agree that he should NOT place the pagefile on the slower 5400RPM drive? 🙂

YES! I tried that a long time ago with a 4.3GB 5400RPM Western Digital that I had (it's still in my parents' computer), and it was three or four times slower (or so it seemed) than having the page file even in a separate partition on the other side of the same drive where my OS was installed. Definitely, any performance gained from having a separate channel will be annihilated by the slower disk.

 

[Joker81]

YES! I tried that a long time ago with a 4.3GB 5400RPM Western Digital that I had (it's still in my parents' computer), and it was three or four times slower (or so it seemed) than having the page file even in a separate partition on the other side of the same drive where my OS was installed. Definitely, any performance gained from having a separate channel will be annihilated by the slower disk.

That is probably Not from the 5400 RPM part but more from the its 4.3GB. The data is further apart from each other then in 4.3 GB sawp file in its own partiton on a 120 GB Drive.

I suggest just trying both ways out and do some benchmarking see what one is better. I would put it on a second drive just to do it. It may be a little slower but probably better for the life of the OS disk.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Joker81
That is probably Not from the 5400 RPM part but more from the its 4.3GB. The data is further apart from each other then in 4.3 GB sawp file in its own partiton on a 120 GB Drive.

I suggest just trying both ways out and do some benchmarking see what one is better. I would put it on a second drive just to do it. It may be a little slower but probably better for the life of the OS disk.

I assume you're saying that as capacities increase, the density of the data on the platters becomes higher, so higher transfer rates are achieved? Still, a 7,200RPM disk has much better access times than a 5,400RPM disk, negating any advantage of the latter even if the transfer rates were equal / higher on the latter.

If you had been paying attention earlier, you would have learned that it's the access time that matters, not raw transfer rate. Ergo, the swap file will be much better off when placed on the 7,200 RPM disk (I'd put it in with the OS partition, but you can have it any way you like 😉), as opposed to being placed on the 5,400 RPM disk.