Placing the Page/Swap file on a Separate Partition

[Guest]

Hi
I'm preparing to partition my new hard drive and have done a fair amount of
research to that end and I'm having trouble reaching a consensus as to
whether it is even advisable to partition. Some believe that XP was designed
to be on one partition to make the most of its optimization features and that
dividing it up over multi partitions defeats that purpose. Some think that
placing the page/swap file on a separate partition will slow it down because
the hard drive heads will have to swing constantly between the system
partition and the swap file partition. Finally, there are differing opinions
on which portion of the hard drive is fastest: the inner or outer track. Any
light/information you can shed on these issues will be appreciated. Thanks
for your help.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Benchmarking on Windows XP
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/sysperf/benchmark.mspx

NTFS Preinstallation and Windows XP
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/winpreinst/ntfs-preinstall.mspx

<snip>

Microsoft implemented certain disk-layout optimizations in Windows XP.
To perform this optimization, during idle time Windows XP moves pages
used for booting the system and launching frequently used applications to
ensure these files are laid out contiguously on the hard disk. The contiguous
disk layout of these pages results in reduced disk seeks and improved disk I/O,
contributing to improved boot time and application launch time.

Windows XP does not perform these optimizations across volumes. Therefore,
for this optimization to be available to users, the hard disk must be partitioned
as a single volume.

<end of snip>

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

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:

| Hi
| I'm preparing to partition my new hard drive and have done a fair amount of
| research to that end and I'm having trouble reaching a consensus as to
| whether it is even advisable to partition. Some believe that XP was designed
| to be on one partition to make the most of its optimization features and that
| dividing it up over multi partitions defeats that purpose. Some think that
| placing the page/swap file on a separate partition will slow it down because
| the hard drive heads will have to swing constantly between the system
| partition and the swap file partition. Finally, there are differing opinions
| on which portion of the hard drive is fastest: the inner or outer track. Any
| light/information you can shed on these issues will be appreciated. Thanks
| for your help.

 

[Star Fleet Admiral Q]

The only performance advantage of having the page file in a separate
partition is when the partition is on a completely separate hard drive,
otherwise the seek time on the drive heads will negate any performance gain
achieved by the page file not being fragmented.

--

Star Fleet Admiral Q @ your Service!

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