Where to locate partition for NT4 pagefile.sys - can I do it at the beginning of the drive?

[Fun Guy]

I am building a new multimedia machine for video editing and image manipulation, and it will have 1GB RAM. I will initially be using NT4 (because some of my programs don't have Win2K driveres yet) but will have a separate partition for experimenting with Win2K, the pagefile, and data storage. The way I have the drive partitioned right now is as follows (in order, from inside to outside of drive):

1) 7GB NTFS NT4 Partition
2) 2GB+12MB NTFS pagefile.sys partition
3) 5GB NTFS Win2K partition
4) 20GB NTFS storage partition

I was thinking that if I want this machine to be as fast as possible, then I would want the pagefile at the beginning of the drive, like this:

1) 2GB NTFS pagefile.sys partition (1GB RAM)
2) 7GB NTFS NT4 Partition
3) 5GB NTFS Win2K partition
4) 20GB NTFS storage partition

But was wondering about the NT issue with the largest system partition needing to be under 7.8 GB (MS Knowledgebase article) and if this scheme would screw things up. Anyone have any knowledge or experience with this?

 

[jaywallen]

The boot partition must end before the 7.8 gigabyte limit, so setting the system up the way you propose will not work -- or at least it will stop working at some point -- like right after applying a service pack and defragging.

I know there are people here who will disagree with me, but there is no reason to put a pagefile on a separate partition -- unless that partition is on a separate drive (and on a separate channel if it's IDE). If you're worried about pagefile fragmentation there are free and commercial utilities which defrag pagefiles at boot time. If this were a server and you were having an uptime contest with yourself, I could see locating the pagefile on a separate partition on the same drive -- maybe. In that case you might consider a non-ntfs (FAT) partition for the pagefile. If your NT4 OS partition really needs to be 7 gigs, I'd suggest just taking it on out to 7.8 and sticking the pagefile in the same partition. You might consider reducing the size of the first partition and installing most / some apps on a different partition from the OS if they'll tolerate that.

It's nice to have the pagefile near the front of the drive, but it's more important to have the MFT there. And, in that case, you want to set the size of the zone reserved MFT so that the MFT won't fragment if it has to be expanded. If you can set up the drive in another system, that might be ideal for the purpose of arranging this sort of configuration.

I hope you find a configuration that suits you.

Regards,
Jim

 

[Fun Guy]

Please explain the following:



<< If this were a server and you were having an uptime contest with yourself, I could see locating the pagefile on a separate partition on the same drive -- maybe. In that case you might consider a non-ntfs (FAT) partition for the pagefile. >>



Thank you.

 

[jaywallen]

By that I meant that, since the pagefile defraggers only work during bootup, if you have a fixation on uptime (like quite a few of us who run servers) you might want to put the pagefile on a separate partition to prevent possible fragmentation of it during resizing. The type of work you're planning to do with this machine provides a real workout for the OS and hardware. Depending on your work habits I suppose it would be pretty easy to induce resizing of the pagefile and metadata. My reference to possibly using FAT instead of NTFS is based solely upon the messages of others. I prefer going NTFS all the way on NT and W2K systems. But I've seen claims that FAT can provide a faster partition for purposes of hosting a pagefile.

I would do some research to be sure of this before trying to implement it. I've seen a lot of bogus claims about tweaks to improve performance. This one seems to make sense on the surface. I suspect that the handling of data inside the pagefile is quite separate in behavior from that of the external file system. If that is the case, then a simpler external file system might make for greater efficiency. As I said, I don't know if this is fact or wishful thinking.

Regards,
Jim