Glenn

Most power users will agree with Jack that a permanent swap file improves
performance, if only to minimize the thrashing caused by Windows resizing
the swap file on the fly to optimize the swap file's size-to-performance
ratio. However, properly creating the permanent swap file is key to getting
the performance.

The swap file must be created in contiguous sectors to eliminate
fragmentation. Setting aside an entire logical drive (on your fastest HDD,
preferably a SCSI drive) avoids fragmentation. To avoid slack space, make
sure this logical drive (or whatever drive you do use) has 4K clusters,
which is the size of a memory page. If it is a FAT16 drive, you'll have
less overhead and it will access quicker (this means a FAT16 drive size of
256-511MB to obtain 4K clusters).

To create a non-fragmented swap file in a 2-drive system, temporarily put
the swap file on the non-intended drive, defrag the intended target drive,
then set the swap file back to the intended target drive.

On a single drive system, you can try this (I haven't had to do it in a
long time so my memory is hazy): Close all other programs, set the swap
file to the desired size (do not restart), defrag your single drive, exit
to DOS mode, change the attributes of the swap file so you can RENAME it,
then rename it (i.e., REN  WIN386.SWP  WIN386.$$$), power off, wait a
minute, then power up. Windows should recreate a new swap file of the
specified size when it cannot find the old one. Finally, delete the old
swap file (Ex.: DEL WIN386.$$$).

In the alternative, use Norton Utilities, which can defrag swap files.

It is also axiomatic that the more RAM memory you have (say over 128MB),
the less virtual memory you need, since there is less need to swap to the
HDD (all other things being equal). I have 256MB RAM with a 128+MB swap
file on a SCSI HDD.

Regards,

John Chin
__________________________________________


At 01:21 AM 06/26/2001 Jack R Payton wrote:
> ... once you install more than 128mb RAM, you can
> reduce the 2.5x factor to 2.0x, and if you have 512mb
> RAM, to 1.5x or so ....  Some authorities recommended
> setting aside a separate HD partition and establishing
> it as a fixed swap file, rather than a *variable* one.
>
>> On Sun, 24 Jun 2001 Glenn Josephson wrote
>> In my experience, setting a fixed swap in Win9x can actually
>> degrade performance, especially if the swap is set too large.
>>

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