Hi Everybody,

I have a Compaq Presario 742 with 486DX4 90MHz, 16MB RAM, 421MB HD which I
had to compress (using Drive Space3, Total compressed size 812MB) for extra
disk space. I have Win95a running. Most of the HD is filled up and I often
install and remove large games and programs. I wanted to add a second HD
but that requires some Compaq only spare parts which isn't available in my
country. I am planning to buy a pentium computer in the near future but in
the mean while I have to get by on this machine.

My problem is whenever I start any program the HD keeps on spinning like
crazy and running multiple programs makes it worse. It's like all the time
I am actively using the computer, the HD is also almost constantly
reading/writing. This makes all the programs run really slow and sometimes
messes up the games. I use Norton Speed Disk to defrag regularly. But
almost every other week the swap files gets very fragmented. I suspect that
is the cause of my problems. Is it happening because of the compressed
disk? If I set a minimum value and a maximum value of about 30 or 40 MB in
Windows control panel, will that solve my problem?

I was wondering, if I partition a small part of my HD (i.e. 40 to 60 MB)
and assign it for the swap file would that speed things up for me? If the
answer is 'yes' then I have the following questions:

        1) Ideally how big should the partition be? (Keeping in mind RAM and Small
HD)Is
           there any software or formula to calculate the necessary maximum range?

        2) Do I have to uncompress the drive before I can partition the hard disk?
Can I use
           'Partition Magic' to partition the compressed drive?

        3) After partitioning, how do I assign the swap file to the new partition?
Do I have
           to reinstall Win95?

BTW, I have IE4.0 installed. Should I uninstall it? Thanks a lot in advance
for any help you can give.


Arif.


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