Where to place the swap/Page file?

[iNFiNiTE]

I have a seagate barracuda 80 GB hard disk drive with seven partitions, with last one (about 2 GB ) for the page file. Is it ok to place in the last partition or should i place it in apartition nearer to the windows partition or the program files partition?

My system specs are P4 2.66 Ghz, 512 MB DDR RAM, Intel 915 Foxconn motherboard and an Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 128 MB Graphics card with a LG combo Drive.
Partitions are C,G,H : - 10 GB, D E F: - 15 GB EACH AND I:- PARTITION FOR PAGE FILE.
Please help...

[geekysage]

Your setup is abosultely fine. Many experts differ on optimum swap file location, some say keeping the swap file on C: is best coz the drive head is gonna be there most of the time to access system files, programs, etc. so less head movement implies better performance, while others have a different theory and prefer to keep the swap file on the last partition.

Having a separate hard drive just for the swap file is recommended for better performance but that's a luxury not all can afford.

By the way, i am not much of an optimizer though i know a lot about such stuff. There was a time when i too was highly paranoid about optimizing my computer but not now as the noticeable difference in real world application performance is almost negligible with today's super charged processors and gigs of RAM.

PS: I have a laptop w/ 80GB HDD - 5400rpm, 512 MB PC2700 DDR RAM, Pentium M 1.8 GHz - 2MB cache, DVD-RAM/RW and i have kept the page file on the primary active partition aka the C drive.

[digen]

Less head movement is true but what about fragmentation mate? Continuous usage of that part of the disk with frequent install/un-install will also make that part fragmented.


Imho the second solution is what is more feasible.Though you may not have another drive but a not so frequently partition should be enough.

Before even setting the page file, I would suggest reading this article by Alex Nichol[MVP]

Virtual Memory

[geekysage]

Less head movement is true but what about fragmentation mate?

That's why i said, "Many experts differ on...the last partition." Looks like you belong to the second category.

[digen]

Hehe Yep ! Placed the page file in a not so used partition.

Also another things,get the PageFile Monitor by Doug Knox[MVP] from here.The thumb rule of Page file= 1.5 times the RAM isnt suitable under most cases imho.

MVP's prefer monitoring upon usage & then setting it accordingly.I feel the same

XP Page File Monitor

[alib_i]

For the sake of completion of discussion ...

There is small utility called PageDefrag (35KB, freeware) which allows you to defrag pagefile during startup process.
A must have utility for everyone !



Download PageDefrag

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alibi

[digen]

Oh yeah damn I missed it! Thanks for posting it here alib_i
Infact all the utilities from Sysinternals are awesome & the best of all they are all FREE !

[alib_i]

Yeah, you're right digen.
Even M$'s own developers use sysinternals' utilities
Very good utilities .. and on the top of it .. they're small and completely free !!

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alibi

[iNFiNiTE]

Thanks everyone for the advice and the link regarding virtual memory. I have the pagedefrag and it works realyy well, and i m going to download page file monitor.