Wednesday, October 14, 1998 12:47 PM Chuck Hassenplug wrote:
Dear List Members,
I just got a Fujitsu 4.3 GB UDMA HDD and I need to know
the best way to set it up with two partitions, one a d:\ of 100mb
for a swap disk  in win98 and the rest on a c:\ partition. It is in
the computer right know, hooked up to the secondary IDE
channel, with another drive being on the primary IDE. The
motherboard is a FIC PA-2013. I would like to set it up with FAT32.
Chuck Hassenplug

you may want to reconsider putting the swap file in a small D:
partition. Recording methods differ from drive to drive, but when
a partition is going to be so small it is only 5% of the disk capacity,
you can reasonably assume it is going to consist of adjacent
cylinders.  Outside cylinders closest to the boot sector are
read at a higher transfer rate than inside cylinders on most drives,
because some recording methods allow more sectors per track in
those cylinders, so more bytes are read with each revolution.
Putting the swap disk on the inside cylinders cancels a lot of the
advantage in putting the swap disk in its own partition.  Of course,
a small C: partition has its own penalties.  The disadvantage of
installing windows to drive D: is that some programs insist on
installing to a C:\program files directory, so you have to be
constantly alert during installs to catch and change the install target
directory. I have one system configured this way, with windows installed
on drive E:, but I typically get around all of this by putting the swap file
on a different drive if I have one, and letting windows manage it if I don't.

As for step by step instructions, Mark Rode covered it all in his post. One
thing to consider, you can partition and format a drive on the secondary
channel to have a primary dos partition and an extended partition, as long
as you don't install any software before the drive is moved to the Master on
the primary channel, otherwise all your drive letters will be shuffled, causing
trouble with your registry and such.

If your going to share your big partition in a network, it is always a good
idea to put the swap file on an unshared partition or drive to prevent network
users from crashing your pc by filling the partition where your swap file
resides.  I have also seen cool performance gains from moving the swap file to
a second drive when using a SCSI bus.  However, taking into consideration
the heavy network bias of my systems, I have never seen any worthwhile
payback for messing around with the swap file settings on a single IDE drive.
You may have better luck depending on how you use your PC.
Tom Turak

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