On 21 Oct 2006 at 13:18, Ann Fennell wrote:

> David, thanks so much for all of the excellent information.  
> 
> I would never have thought to make a separate partition on my 2nd hard
> drive for the swap file.  I originally moved it to eliminate it from
> the imaging/ghost files and to have it on a separate drive from my OS
> & apps and I made it a fixed size to eliminate any effect on disk
> defragmentation. 
> Rethinking this, wouldn't simply giving the pagefile a fixed size
> (assuming you have plenty of disk space) prevent it from causing any
> defragmentation outside of itself, since it would not be growing and
> shrinking or affecting other files in any way?  

  You can eliminate fragmentation by isolating the swap file from either 
process -- or both.  So yes, a fixed size will also eliminate fragmentation. 
(The source Thomas Mayer pointed me to asserts that a fixed size no longer 
carries the benefit that it used to, but doesn't elaborate.  All I can think 
of is that fragmentation is less of an issue on NTFS partitions....)
  Note that the downside of putting the swap file on a separate partition, 
sharing a drive with other frequently-accessed files, is that it pretty much 
guarantees that the distance the heads have to move back and forth will be 
as long (and slow...) as possible.  Putting it on a drive that is rarely 
used for anything else (I have one that just backs up stuff from other 
drives...) gives the best performance.
 
> ....  I just wonder if
> Defrag tries to move/defrag the pagefile when it is trying to defrag
> the partition that contains it?  IF SO, then putting it on a separate
> partition would prevent this and speed up the defrag - or would
> defragmentation WITHIN the pagefile ever be helpful? 

  In general, defrag can't do much with a file that is currently in use.  
The swap file virtually always qualifies -- one of the reasons to avoid 
fragmenting it is that defragmenting it is almost impossible.
 
> With 1GB (2 x 512MB) Dual Channel Desktop Memory, what would be the
> best size for a pagefile file partition on a 320GB hard drive?  
> 
> Also, will this be adequate memory (I have 512 now) if I'm not playing
> those high-end games?  I do often have a lot of IE & Word windows open
> (maybe 15) at once. 

  One of the things about Firefox that I really like is tabbed browsing.  
One of the things I least like about it is that I have not yet found a way 
to run multiple separate instances of it -- even when I have multiple 
windows, each with their own set of tabs, it shows up as a single process 
entry in the Task Manager.  A process which, in my use, routinely has a "VM 
Size" of 700-800 MB; I have a few other applications that are also routinely 
in the hundreds of megabytes, and with 512 MB of RAM, switching between 
these applications can take an uncomfortably long time.

  With 32-bit CPUs, the maximum address space -- and hence the maximum size 
of the swap file -- is 4GB.  IF you intend the swap file to have a partition 
to itself, there's no point in making it bigger than that.  (And on a 320GB 
drive, there's little need to make it smaller than that, either.)
  But if you only have the one drive, setting up a separate partition 
doesn't get you anything that a fixed size wouldn't also achieve.

David Gillett

      "Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
        programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column.
                       http://freepctech.com/rode