Hi,
in-line relies:
Hi all,
I recenlty got a new computer with a 300GB RAID 0 (2x 150GB Raptors)
as one drive and a 500GB storage drive as a second drive. I am running
Windows XP Media Center 2005 with a Core 2 Extreme processor and two
GeForce 7950 GX2 video cards set up in a quad SLI config. I also have
4GB of DDR2 800MHz SDRAM.
I'm hoping that I can get help with two questions:
1) I noticed that when I boot the system the memory cycle cout does
count all 4GB of memory, but when I am in Windows and I right click on
My Computer\Properties, it states that I have 2.25GB of memory. Is
this a limitation of the operating system?
Is there a way around this to get the whole 4GB recognized?
what Windows is reporting to you (2.25GB), sounds good (with the hardware
you have) to me. See, PCI devices use addresses below 4GB. With the number
of PCI devices you have (4 Video devices for a start) that address space
below 4GB gets quite big. With server class 32-bit OS, like Windows 2003
server, you could re-map RAM (that occupies the same space as PCI devices)
above 4GB, making it visible to OS, but Windows XP 32-bit would not allow
you to do that (limited to 4GB).
Have a look at basic diagram below:
numbers represent memory addresses in GB.
* - is your RAM
# - PCI addresses
In Windows XP you'll have:
0 2 4
********####
(2.25 GB of RAM visible to OS)
In Windows Server 32-bit, with /PAE switch and memory hole in BIOS to re-map
last 2 GB of RAM to above 4GB, you'll have:
0 2 4 6
****** ####******
(4GB of RAM visible to OS)
You have few options if you really need all 4GB of RAM:
1. Run Windows XP 64-bit.
2. Run Windows Server 2003 either 32-bit (check your BIOS if it allows
re-mapping first) or 64-bit.
3. Wait for Vista 64-bit.
If it were up to me, I'd relocate extra 2GB of RAM (that system can't see
anyway... well, for the exception of .25GB) to a different computer.
2) With that much hard disk space, I am wondering if there is any
performance advantage or disadvantage to setting up multiple
partitions on each of the 2 drives. I was thinking of partitioning the
RAID into a 70GB Partition for just the OS and the remainder for
programs. I was also thinking of partitioning the second 500GB drive
into 3 partitions. Two partitions of approximately 215GB each and a
third of about 20GB for the swap file. Would any of this be of any
benefit?
There *might* be a little advantage (performance vice) in creating multiple
partitions if you have stuff that you access very rarely, like patches /
installs for various programs, Office Install Cache (MSOCache) can go there,
movies that you want to keep but don't watch much and so on. Hard disk
performance is mostly driven by access time (check your HD specs). If I have
200GB HD and average access time listed for this drive is 8ms, by creating
partition of 100GB where my frequently accesses files are stored, I limit HD
heads move to this partition, effectively reducing access time in half and
gaining performance... but, this is only in cases where what I'm doing with
those files is I/O bound, and Windows has nothing else to do but wait for
I/O operation to finish. This is not normally the case, after all we
multitask and Windows can do something else while waiting.
Negative aspects of multiple partitions: 2 partitions as above 100 and 100
GB. First has 4GB free space and second 10GB of free space and I have a need
to store 11GB file. I obviously can't do that with 2 partitions without
splitting the file, but can if I were to have a single partition. Some
people advocate use of multiple partitions as way of organizing files, say
disk2\partition2 mounted as F: has MP3 files, disk2\partition3 mounted as E:
has movies and so on.... I honestly don't see anything wrong with folders.
Single folder "Multimedia" with 2 subfolders "MP3" and "Movies" looks more
manageable to me, but that's is an opinion. Same goes for backup, I can
backup just folders that I need to.
Finally, if I removed the swap file that Windows Automatically setup
on the C: drive with the OS and put it on the other drive in its own
dedicated partition, would that be a performance booster or not?
First, a nitpick - it's called paging file (pagefile.sys) not swap. The
difference is dramatic: when a process calls for more memory in Win98 (can
be a background process) Windows, to find RAM to realize this need, will
swap other process' (can be foreground) whole working set to disk - swap
file (proactive). In Windows XP, Memory Manager will "page" only bits
(pages, normally 4KB in size) of stuff that was sitting idle on RAM (first)
and will page only bits that process needs to RAM (reactive, page on
demand). Plus, only stuff that is backed up by paging files (process's
private writable address space) will go to paging file, that rest of
process's address space (like dll, exe) will be just dropped from RAM, it
won't go to page file, because it can be read back (paged in) to RAM from
original dll or exe file. Thus, when you start to page excessively in
Windows XP, you don't page only to page file, you page all over... and you
just can't find the best place on disk for every single file. I/Os to page
file are generally only 10% of the whole paging.
The stuff with the page file is not how much is in there, but how often it
is accessed (keep in mind reading-writing operations to page file are only
64KB in size, paging file is never accessed in a sequential manner, from the
beginning to the end, therefore, there is no need to place it in the
beginning of the drive - fastest place for sequential reading / writing).
The best place for your paging file is in the middle of other, frequently
accessed files, in case of single partition IIRC it is placed by default 3GB
within the disk.
The rule is - paging file should go onto the most used partition of you
least used drive - that is for when you have a lot of pagefile I/Os going,
you might notice the difference (very special cases only).
For general computing, leave it where it is now, on your system drive, you
are worried about nothing.