Why page/swap file on each drive?

[Matthew L]

A lot of "tweakers" recommend keeping the page(swap) file
on a different drive from your boot drive. By default, XP
pro creates a page file on each drive or partition. Is
this necessary? Would it be ok just to have a page file
on a drive other than the boot drive?

As I have 1.5gb of memory, would it be ok just have a
small swap file as it will be accessed so infrequently?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Shenan T. Stanley]

A lot of "tweakers" recommend keeping the page(swap) file
on a different drive from your boot drive. By default, XP
pro creates a page file on each drive or partition. Is
this necessary? Would it be ok just to have a page file
on a drive other than the boot drive?

As I have 1.5gb of memory, would it be ok just have a
small swap file as it will be accessed so infrequently?

Thanks for any help.

It would be fine to have a swap file on just one of your other (physical)
drives. Speeds up access.

And the fact that you have 1.5GB of RAM does not (by much) limit the use of
the swap file.

 

[Matthew L]

Thanks Shenan.
I will "disable" the swap files on all but my data drive
which is a separate physical hard drive from my boot drive.

I would still be interested if you have any idea why XP
creates separate swap files on each partition - just
curious.

I am surprised you say that having 1.5gb memory does not
reduce swap file access. I have a Win2k machine (Pentium
2 600mhz) at work with just 320mb memory. I create a lot
of DTP documents and will often also have some big word
and Excel files open at the same time together with
PaintShop Pro and a few instances of IE, cutting and
pasting all over the place. Quite often it can grind to a
virtual halt with the hard drive going like the clappers!

I have no such problems doing the same sort of work on my
home PC running XP Pro with 1.5gb memory.

 

[Ron Martell]

A lot of "tweakers" recommend keeping the page(swap) file
on a different drive from your boot drive. By default, XP
pro creates a page file on each drive or partition. Is
this necessary? Would it be ok just to have a page file
on a drive other than the boot drive?

As I have 1.5gb of memory, would it be ok just have a
small swap file as it will be accessed so infrequently?

Thanks for any help.

It should not do so as a default setting. The default setting should
be one page file on the boot drive.

But doing so does offer some performance advantages if they are on
different physical drives. Windows will use whichever of the page
files is most advantageous to each specific page file usage situation.

And if you do set up a page file on a different physical drive you
should also leave a small page file on the boot drive for those
situations where Windows really wants to use that file.

When I had 2 physical drives in my system I had the main page file on
the second hard drive (which was used mainly for backups and rarely
used stuff) and had a small page file (minimum 10 mb maximum 50 mb) on
the boot drive. This worked very well.

But the ultimate answer to any and all page file location/optimization
questions is to have sufficient RAM so as to eliminate the need for
Windows to actually move active memory pages from RAM to the page file
so as to allow that RAM to be used for other, currently more
important, purposes. That basically renders all location/optimization
considerations irrelevant.

Also note that just because there are no active memory pages being
moved to the page file does not mean that you do not need a page file.
The page file space is also used to accomodate the *unused* portions
of memory allocation requests and for some other specialized functions
such as fast user switching and to capture system failure memory
dumps.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."