How does RAID1 impact XP-VirtualMemory usage?

[AreWeThereYet]

XP-SP2
1gig RAM
Pentium 4, 3.02ghz (HyperThreaded)
3-Ware Hardware-based RAID-1 controller
250gb SATA-somthing drives...

My Virtual Memory was set to "auto" and using 1533mb! Rembember, everytime
it tries to write to that space, it has to go through the RAID controller and
be written to TWO harddrives.

Could this be contributing to my sluggish desktop?
What would appropriet settings be?

I set a new fixed range of 128-256mb. Just made this change, but so far I
don't see any performance difference, good or bad.

Suggestions?

 

[AreWeThereYet]

Follow-up:

Read a good article this weekend that pointed out the obvious:

HDD access is a bottle-neck no matter how you slice it. Best bet - move the
Virtual Paging File to a secondary drive away from the core system files so
they can be accessed read/write simultaneously.

Consider spreading file across several independent drives. If possible give
it it's own dedicated drive.

I pulled an old IDE -20-gig WDD out of the closet. Full-Formatted NTFS, and
set the VM size 1024-4096mb. I initially wet the C:\ paging file to 16-32mb
and it was constantly paging the full 16mb. Turned it off completely, no
problems yet.

Not a HUGE improvement but seems to have a helped a little.

 

[SoCalCommie]

Follow-up:

Read a good article this weekend that pointed out the obvious:

HDD access is a bottle-neck no matter how you slice it. Best bet - move
the
Virtual Paging File to a secondary drive away from the core system files
so
they can be accessed read/write simultaneously.

Consider spreading file across several independent drives. If possible
give
it it's own dedicated drive.

I pulled an old IDE -20-gig WDD out of the closet. Full-Formatted NTFS,
and
set the VM size 1024-4096mb. I initially wet the C:\ paging file to
16-32mb
and it was constantly paging the full 16mb. Turned it off completely, no
problems yet.

Not a HUGE improvement but seems to have a helped a little.

I've been using a small paging file on a separate partition without a paging
file on C: for years. According to the 'experts' one is supposed to keep a
small paging file on the system partition (C but I have never had a
problem doing it my way. BTW, my paging file is set to 256 MB (2 GB RAM) and
it never exceeds 100 MB of use per session (usually 3 to 5 days continuous
op).