Hard Disk Partitioning win WinXP

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by Richard M

The whole point of having a separate partition for the swap file (just as Linux does) is to avoid fragmentation of it which can slow the system down.

That's why you don't let windows controll the VM
Set your page file to be static, ie same initial size as max size

[Sociable]

I would go with a simple 10-15 gig for main Windows partition and rest for data and not mess with swap file settings at all unless you are very sure what you are up to.

Tweaking is fine but 9 times out of 10 causes more problems than any resulting benefits.

[John Smiths]

That was the case with Win9x/ME. With NT-based systems such as 2000, XP, 2003, the swap file is called pagefile.sys and there can be one per disk partition.

There is an article on optimising XP's virtual memory performance athttp://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/...es/03june16.asp, which includes having multiple pagefiles on multiple hard disks (though not for the reason I mentioned above).

Just read the link (and the link from the link - about optimizing XP) and it says not to put mulitple swap files on different partitions of the same physical drive. But do you think it would be best to have a diff. partition for the swap still? Then i spose u could defrag that individual drive and therefore just the swap without defragging eveything....also the default swap size is 1.5 x physical RAM and the max is 3X - i have 1GB ram and don't really want a 3GB partition jsut for a swap which would probably not get used fully most of the time - so do you think it would be worth reducing standard and max sizes??

Cheers

EDIT: Just read last two posts and therfore probably won't bother with seperate partition for swap...cheers

[SMHarman]

10Gb is 'nuff for the windoze partition even with Office and most of my other apps loaded in it. Its when you add big games, Quake, Command and Conquer and the like that you get problems.

Whilst the Swap Partition sounds like a nice idea - I've found 1Gb of RAM helps.

[Xaccers]

Originally Posted by John Smiths

Just read the link (and the link from the link - about optimizing XP) and it says not to put mulitple swap files on different partitions of the same physical drive. But do you think it would be best to have a diff. partition for the swap still? Then i spose u could defrag that individual drive and therefore just the swap without defragging eveything....also the default swap size is 1.5 x physical RAM and the max is 3X - i have 1GB ram and don't really want a 3GB partition jsut for a swap which would probably not get used fully most of the time - so do you think it would be worth reducing standard and max sizes??

Cheers

With 1GB RAM you won't actually be using the swap file that much. Set your page file to 1.5GB min and 1.5GB max.
Don't bother putting it on a different partition.
When you defrag, defrag all your drives at the same time.

[John Smiths]

With 1GB RAM you won't actually be using the swap file that much. Set your page file to 1.5GB min and 1.5GB max.
Don't bother putting it on a different partition.
When you defrag, defrag all your drives at the same time.

Cheers - will do (as soon as the laptop is fully charged) when i install win xp