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Second Partition as Virtual Memory?

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7 replies

by maggot

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Here is the situation:

I have a 40 Gig hard drive partitioned as follows: C:\= 31 Gig D:\= 7 Gig (and change) Operating system installed is Windows 98 SE. on C:\ System physical memory is 128 MB SDRAM

Other than setting D:\ as drive for swapfile usage and using settings of 550 MB Min. and 2000 MB Max. do I need to put any system files in the swapfile drive? And if so which ones?

7 replies

by thechas

You have it correct.

The page / swap file is the only file that virtual memory uses.

You do not want to have any other "system" files on the page file drive.

The primary advantage to having a separate drive for the page file is to keep both the page file and system files from becoming fragmented.

I do store other files on the drive that I use for the page file.
Things like driver installation files that once extracted from their archives never change.

That is the key. Should you place ANY other files on the page file volume, you want those files to NEVER change.

If you place files on the page volume, first move the page file to another volume.
Move the files.
Defrag the drive.
Then, set the page file back to the page file volume.

Had I seen your comment, or if you had sent me a message with a link to your previous question, I would have posted a comment there.

Chas

by poettone

Actually your both right and wrong at the same time..

The best most effecient way to stack your memory is to place the swap file on a drive that is partitioned as FAT.. Yes you heard that correctly..

My typical install has a drive designed just for the swap file, formatted as FAT, setting my VM as follows.

C: Drive 50 Meg , for dump files. Not really needed but it will bark if you don't set it..

D: or what ever drive I'm using set at two times the installed amount of system ram.. Most cases you want to go more depending on your plans to upgrade memory. Then set the min at 1-1/2 times the amount of ram installed with the max set at two times the amount of ram.

So in this case 128mbx1.5=192mb min and 256 max with the fat file system.

If you looking for a major speed boost by doing this, you can forget it.. You need MORE RAM in the system.. 98 is not so bad with this setup but will perform slowly no matter what if you run a lot of apps.

This setup also works well with NTFS filesystems and you see a lot of top professional server techs doing this..

Good Luck..

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