Swap File advise

Hi

I was wondering where the swapfile for Windows should sit to get optimum performance out of the system. Most normally have it in the same partition as the OS however i always thought that as long as it on the same physiical disk it shouldn't really matter what partition it sits on.

Splitting your page file through a number of partition and physical drives can hinder your system slightly? Is this true?

Be intresteding what most think as it probably doesn't make that much of a difference tbh.

Kyo

There a nice article here which may be of use.

Thanks Jon that quite a good article.

One thing is puzzelling

"The location of the pagefile is also a common question. The only real performance advantage is if you move the pagefile to a separate partition on a separate physical HD."

This is the opposite of what i would have thought. Having the pagefile on a seprate disk, would have (i thought) make the disk access harder because the Os and swap file are on seperate disks?

confused now

Kyo said:

Thanks Jon that quite a good article.

One thing is puzzelling

"The location of the pagefile is also a common question. The only real performance advantage is if you move the pagefile to a separate partition on a separate physical HD."

This is the opposite of what i would have thought. Having the pagefile on a seprate disk, would have (i thought) make the disk access harder because the Os and swap file are on seperate disks?

confused now

Click to expand...

It makes quite a lot of sense when you think about it.

Say you have a process that needs a lot of RAM and is loading lots of files into the RAM. The RAM is already quite full with a program which you aren't currently using. Therefore the comuter want to page stuff out of the RAM whilst loading new stuff in. The buggest bottleneck is the HDD as the swap file and the program files could be in completely different sectors of the disc and seek times will affect the transfer; bear in mind that it can only read or write one place at a time. However, if you have the swap file on another disc on say a SATA controller, you can page everything out from the RAM and get the program files loaded because both discs are read/writing at the same time.

Crap explination, but I hope you can follow along.

Burnsy

The swap file as you should know is basically where all the crap that doesn't fit in RAM goes. Windows can only access one piece of information at a time from a single HDD, so if you are running an intensive application that requires something in the swap file Windows will have to stop accessing any other data and go look in the swap file.

If the swap file is on a separate HDD Windows can be accessing data and the swap file at the same time.

Burnsy + Sirus - Thanks a lot guys

Both your posts explained it well. I can see it does make sense if you put it like that. Your both absolutely correct. the main thing that i totally missed was that OS can only access or focus on a particular task at any one point in relation to that particular HD therefore it would make sense to have the swap file on another physical disk/partition so that it can read/write both HD at the same time.

Fantastic guys.

Thanks a lot

Kyo

Also just always remember that the page file is not like an "overflow carpark" that only gets used once RAM has run out. It is meant to be a slightly dirty "mirror image" of what's in your RAM. This enables the memory manager to 'swap' pages of memory between RAM and the page file - I can explain the advantages of this if need be.