At 02:00 AM 5/31/2002 -0400, N5MT@aol.com wrote:
>Joe's point about the fixed size swap file is a very good idea.
>It may take you some effort to set it up but this fixed size will cut down on
>the fragmention of the C drive. When Windows thinks it needs more virtual,
>it will auto-expand the swap file but if you tell it to use a Fixed size, it
>will not grow.
>
>The next thing you want to consider is a second hard drive on which you place
>the Swap file to get it away from the system and active data files on the C
>drive.
Both good suggestions. Swap file should be on the most-accessed partition
of the least-used drive. This keeps the head from moving around too much
(faster swapping, if you need it). If you can dedicate a partition to the
swap file, you won't have to worry about sizing and fragmentation. I have
been running all my WinXP systems this way.
When RAM was cheap last winter ($30/256MB), I upgraded all my computers to
512MB. They rarely swap, if ever. RAM shot up in price early this year
(like, doubled or more), but I think it might be coming down again. Got
E-mail from TigerDirect.COM this past week advertising 256MB for $39.99 --
not as cheap as it was, but a far cry from how expensive it had become.
- Jim
--
Jim Reisert AD1C, 7 Charlemont Court, North Chelmsford, MA 01863
USA +978-251-9933, <jjreisert@alum.mit.edu>, http://www.ad1c.com
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