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?  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?

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.

Thanks,
AnnaSummers

============================================================
From: David Gillett <[log in to unmask]>
Date: 2006/10/19 Thu AM 11:07:33 EDT

Fragmentation requires the interaction of TWO 
mecahnisms:  the growing and shrinking of the file, and the creation and 
destruction of OTHER files.  If the swap file has a partition all to itself, 
that second mechanism never applies to that partition, and so the fact that 
the swap file is growing and shrinking doesn't lead to fragmentation.

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