WinXP SP2 Pro: Page File

[Mario]

Hello all,

I'm tweaking my systems and have a question about page file position. One of
my systems is configured as follows:

WinXP Pro SP2, Pentium IV 3.2 GHz, 2 GB DDR RAM.
Hard Drives:
100 GB Primary IDE master drive with windows, program files and my documents
only.
120 GB Primary IDE slave drive with a small 5 GB partition at the very
beginning of the drive and the rest is used for archiving software (accessed
very rarely).
Primary SATA 200 GB hard drive for multimedia storage used extensively for
video editing.

Currently my page file is placed on the dedicated partition at the beginning
of the primary IDE slave drive. The partition is 5 GB, and page file is
system managed.

Windows chooses 2056 MB page file size, which is fine with me, however for
some reason it never places the page file at the start of the partition,
where the "prime" space is, i.e. the fastest access time, but always at the
end of the 5 GB partition.

I have tried filling the drive with 1 GB files and erasing the files that
are at the start of the partition, then enabling the page file, but then
windows creates heavily fragmented page file, which is way worse than having
it in single chunk at the end of the partition.

Has anyone figured out how to force the page file at the very outer edges of
the drive, i.e. at the begining of the logical partition that is itself
placed at the outer edges?

Thanks,
Mario

 

[Jan]

Hello all,

I'm tweaking my systems and have a question about page file position. One of
my systems is configured as follows:

WinXP Pro SP2, Pentium IV 3.2 GHz, 2 GB DDR RAM.
Hard Drives:
100 GB Primary IDE master drive with windows, program files and my documents
only.
120 GB Primary IDE slave drive with a small 5 GB partition at the very
beginning of the drive and the rest is used for archiving software (accessed
very rarely).
Primary SATA 200 GB hard drive for multimedia storage used extensively for
video editing.

Currently my page file is placed on the dedicated partition at the beginning
of the primary IDE slave drive. The partition is 5 GB, and page file is
system managed.

Windows chooses 2056 MB page file size, which is fine with me, however for
some reason it never places the page file at the start of the partition,
where the "prime" space is, i.e. the fastest access time, but always at the
end of the 5 GB partition.

I have tried filling the drive with 1 GB files and erasing the files that
are at the start of the partition, then enabling the page file, but then
windows creates heavily fragmented page file, which is way worse than having
it in single chunk at the end of the partition.

Has anyone figured out how to force the page file at the very outer edges of
the drive, i.e. at the begining of the logical partition that is itself
placed at the outer edges?

Thanks,
Mario

Hello Mario,

The best way to achieve that is creating a special Swappartition of about 5
GB. You can do that with e.g. Partition Magic by Powerquest (sold to
Symantec now) without any loss of data. If you want a freeware program to do
the job, Google for partition manager.

Jan

 

[SlowJet]

Your configuration is 8 times faster than 87% of all PC
users.
You page file would rarely slow your sustem.
The amount of arm swing on the primary just to restore
points would be tens of times more than a week of paging
diferences from second track vs. n track.

Create a folder on the SATA and put you page file thre.
The drive speed diference alone would out way the page
placement. And sence it's on a seperate channel, you
actually get over laying I/O. At your temp files and temp
internet files and you will save a lot of arm swinging
and bong time on the primary.
You could also reload your AV over there and point AWU
and such times to reduce fragment creation from files
being changed every day, week.

And finally, are the two ATA100's disk identical in
through put speed. Buffers, transfer rate, seek specs.
Looks like you have work to do now.

You would also benifit from a smaller system partition
with 8K clusters.


SJ

 

[Alex Nichol]

Currently my page file is placed on the dedicated partition at the beginning
of the primary IDE slave drive. The partition is 5 GB, and page file is
system managed.

Windows chooses 2056 MB page file size, which is fine with me, however for
some reason it never places the page file at the start of the partition,
where the "prime" space is, i.e. the fastest access time, but always at the
end of the 5 GB partition.

Fast transfer speed is not particularly important; what matters is
keeping seek times down by having it as near as possible to other places
on the drive that get most of the action. I don't really advise a
separate partition for it, as it is wasting a lot of disk space, See
discussion at my page www.aumha.org/win5/a/xpvm.htm