windows swapfile location -- different drive = faster speed?

[ijeff]

I've heard putting the windows swapfile on a different drive than the one that windows is installed on will increase speed, since one drive doesn't have to look for data AND handle the swapfile at the same time.

However, I've also heard that it only increases speed if the swapfile drive is on a separate bus or IDE controller. This sort of makes sense to me. Does anyone know the truth about speeding up your installation by moving your swapfile?

[masterofpuppets]

Yes, it must be on a different IDE channel or a different SATA port for it to have any effect. Although it may have a little effect even if it isn't. What would be even faster would be to have a solidstate storage device such as a compactflash card or some RAM if you have enough. I think you can get IDE compactflash drives.

[KoolDrew]

This is true, but how much RAM do you have? With enough RAM I doubt the pagefile location would matter at all, but it does depend on your usage patterns too.

[IamAnoobieCheez]

There is an alternative.


It's not about swaping files, but there are ways to boost the HDD performance. This info is given by someone i know. Get a SATA or EIDE(depends on what you use) controller card that has 4 or more outputs. For example you can have four SATA hdds run in raid 0 stripe, giving some serious performance increase. Even 5 or more drives can be hooked up to run raid configurations. The question is, are you willing to buy all that drives and run em.

[JfRsQ]

check sig :D

Raid 0 with 2 Raptors 40GB on NF4
Raid 0 with 4 masters Diamondmax9 80GB on RocketRaid 454....

If only I would have the space for 4 more 80GB to run a Raid 0 with 8 HDDs :stick:

[harpyboy]

gigabyte RAMDRIVE... stay tune..... for swap file drive... it beats the hell out of RAID 0 x4

[JfRsQ]

Swapfile in RamDrive ??? It would be useless to have a 1GB ramdrive to store the swapfile into memory :confused: Better just to don't use any swapfile to force windows to use only ram :stick:

[TekXoID]

JfRsQ; It's not literally 1GB, it's made by Gigabyte (www.gigabyte.com.tw). It offers up to 4GB.

You buy your own ram and fill it up, and considering that SATA-II is limited
to 300MB/s anyway, you can just buy 4x1GB CAS3 DDR266 and you're set.

Forget storing just the swap on there, your whole install can be on it and the data is retained using a lithium ion battery pack that can hold
the data for, I think, over two weeks on each charge, which is no problem at all, especially if your rig is on all the time like mine is anyway.

[harpyboy]

yeah... 4 GB of PC2100 ram is pretty cheap.... ebay them to be cheaper...

the whole setup will probably be less than 400$ ..

JfRsQ :u can disable swapfile... but some programs need it... CAD.. music editing... and ofcoz servers...... the ramdrive will definately help.

[IamAnoobieCheez]

RAM Drive is nice... that's another alternative.

Don't be fooled by multi drive raid0 setups... they can be deadly fast. Like the guy has mentioned take 8 10k sata raptors running@ raid0 on an ultra-high-end 512mb onboard cache buffered hdd controller card. You are looking at least $1600 just for the hdd setup. It's ultra expensive... but can outperform anythings else exist out there. it'll crush it so bad it's not even funny.. :) :cool:

[JfRsQ]

JfRsQ; It's not literally 1GB, it's made by Gigabyte (www.gigabyte.com.tw). It offers up to 4GB.

You buy your own ram and fill it up, and considering that SATA-II is limited
to 300MB/s anyway, you can just buy 4x1GB CAS3 DDR266 and you're set.

Forget storing just the swap on there, your whole install can be on it and the data is retained using a lithium ion battery pack that can hold
the data for, I think, over two weeks on each charge, which is no problem at all, especially if your rig is on all the time like mine is anyway.

Err, sorry :D I thought of a 1GB Ramdrive, not the PCI card made by Gigabyte that I saw recently on overclockers.com. Yeah , this thing looks nice but for record, it's not 2 weeks of "holding", it's only 16 hours If you boot 17 hours after you shut down, well.... you will get a nice screen saying that system disk is missing :stick:

[KoolDrew]

The purpose of the pagefile is store things when there is not enough system memory. Now why would you move your pagefile to a RAM drive?

You would not benefit at all from doing that.

[bxa121]

compact flash ide drives from a uk seller.

http://linitx.com/product_info.php?products_id=307

anybody know where i can get an ide drive for any flash cards?

[FatRakoon]

The purpose of the pagefile is store things when there is not enough system memory. Now why would you move your pagefile to a RAM drive?

You would not benefit at all from doing that.

I dont think you understand...

A RamDrive is a Virtual Disk, thats held in the system RAM yes!

Well, this is a REAL PHYSICAL device, that uses REAL RAM thats seperate from your PCs RAM, and it acts like a small dis, thats ultra quick.

Its already been done however, its not new. My Atari has a SD Card reader that runs on the SCSI line, and if set to Device 0, I can boot from it, and the Atari not being a space hog like Windows has become, I can have my entire OS and a whole load of anythings on one of these SD Cards... smaller than this, but far more useful for the Atari than you would think, especially because Atari compatible HDs are so bloody slow.

[Carlz0r]

Err, sorry :D I thought of a 1GB Ramdrive, not the PCI card made by Gigabyte that I saw recently on overclockers.com. Yeah , this thing looks nice but for record, it's not 2 weeks of "holding", it's only 16 hours If you boot 17 hours after you shut down, well.... you will get a nice screen saying that system disk is missing :stick:
Which is why someone will end up designing a power adapter for it. I know I'll be trying if I get one of those.

[alanore]

The diffrence in performance of having the swap on another IDE channel is very slim, to the point where its faster having it on the faster disk no matter if it has the OS or not.

Putting the Page File on a CF card isnt a good idea, they only have a limited amout of writes before it not longer works. I lost a solid stat MP3 player because I intalled Linux on it.

One thing that may help slighty is if you make a partition for the PF, that way your disk gets fragmented less, meaning less seek time so better performance.

[KoolDrew]

One thing that may help slighty is if you make a partition for the PF, that way your disk gets fragmented less, meaning less seek time so better performance.

Putting the pagefile on a seperate partition, but on the same physical drive would be a bad idea. All this would do is increase seek times.

[alanore]

That would depend on how the drive was partioned, but after a week becuase your drive has a seperate partion your windows files would not be fragmented meaning your overall seek time is reduced.

[[XC] moddolicous]

How do u find the swapfile folder, or change it all together. I'll run a couple benchies to see how much of a differnce it makes. I've never heard of this.

[Major]

I always run my pagefile on a different drive other than OS when possible. Just makes sense that it should be faster.

here ya go:

[KoolDrew]

That would depend on how the drive was partioned, but after a week becuase your drive has a seperate partion your windows files would not be fragmented meaning your overall seek time is reduced.

Fragmentation means very little. It also definitely would not reduce seek times.

[Ugly n Grey]

RAM Drive is nice... that's another alternative.

Don't be fooled by multi drive raid0 setups... they can be deadly fast. Like the guy has mentioned take 8 10k sata raptors running@ raid0 on an ultra-high-end 512mb onboard cache buffered hdd controller card. You are looking at least $1600 just for the hdd setup. It's ultra expensive... but can outperform anythings else exist out there. it'll crush it so bad it's not even funny.. :) :cool:

Actually it won't, high end HD benches still belong to SCSI HD's on U320 or better yet, fibre.

[ImportantAwareness89]

I have 2 drives for my future computer

A 250GB SATA 7200.8 which will be my main drive, and a Hitachi 7K250 PATA 160GB, which was one of the fastest 160GB PATA drives last year according to XBit. I'm sure the 7200.8 will be faster, but the 160's not a lagger either, so should I put my pagefile on the 160GB PATA drive?

[sluflyer06]

RE: Gigabyte Ram Drive !!There is alot of misinformation in this thread about it!!

1. It's sits in a PCI Slot because it's recieves 5VSB from the PSU so that when the comptuer is powered down it is still being fed juice as long as yoru PSU is plugged in and you don't have the master switch in the back OFF.
2. It is SATA 150 interface, there is currently nothing in the works for it to use SATA 300.
3. The battery pack indeed is LIthium Ion but has been tested and does not last 16 hours if removed from the PC...explained: it will last close to 16 hours in the PC if its sitting in the PCI slot and the computer is unplugged or being transported...HOWEVER if you remove the Drive from the PCI slot for a reason Gigabyte has not been able to find out it eats the power much faster and the battery is only good for about 8 hours.
4. A review was done using the Drive as a swap drive and it didn't help they only noticed a difference when the system ram was cut down to 512.
5. The only real performance gains were when it was used as the following:
A. Scratch Disk for Photoshop when ram availability became low.
B. Loading your game of choice onto the drive...in Doom 3 it cut load times signifigantly and also by a noticable amount in BF2.

Conclusion: This Drive shows no real benefit UNTIL: It's SATA 300 comp. AND you use 2 of them in Raid 0.

I know its a dissapointment but it's the truth...maybe when it's the $50-$60 they promised its performance/price ratio will make it worth it.