Re: What are the benefits of Partitioning HDs and having a dedicated drive partiton for the Swap file?
- From: "Gerry Cornell" <gcjc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 10:07:58 -0000
Ron
Some interesting observations by all in this thread.
"Ron Martell" <ron.martell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pmmjn2drqkn0npk9os703715uqp3jovdae@xxxxxxxxxx
PaceMkrRep@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
2) With that much hard disk space, I am wondering if there is any
performance advantage or disadvantage to setting up multiple
partitions on each of the 2 drives. I was thinking of partitioning the
RAID into a 70GB Partition for just the OS and the remainder for
programs. I was also thinking of partitioning the second 500GB drive
into 3 partitions. Two partitions of approximately 215GB each and a
third of about 20GB for the swap file. Would any of this be of any
benefit?
Finally, if I removed the swap file that Windows Automatically setup
on the C: drive with the OS and put it on the other drive in its own
dedicated partition, would that be a performance booster or not?
With regard to your RAID setup I think you should reconsider your
choice of RAID 0 for the operating system. RAID 0 is not even a true
RAID because there is no redundancy (the R in RAID stands for
Redundant). With RAID 0 your data is spread across the disks
(striped) which means that if one disk fails the entire content of the
array is lost and unrecoverable except at great expense.
RAID 0 is acceptable where the utmost in performance is desired and
other methods are in place for backup/recovery. Also a 70 gb
partition is a bit excessive for just the operating system. If you
make certain that all programs are installed on other partitions then
you could reduce the O/S partition to 20 gb or so and still have lots
of space.
Gordon makes the point that separation of operating system from
programmes is pointless because the related registry entries are with
the operating system. If you lose the registry you have to reinstall all
programmes.
What advantage do you see as being gained by separation?
Now for the swap/paging file. With more than 1 physical hard drive
the optimal performance is obtained by configuring a paging file on
each physical drive. That allows Windows to choose whichever paging
file is best situated for each specific paging operation. Also
Windows uses the paging file on the system drive (e.g. C:) for other
purposes as well, such as the system failure memory dumps, and these
functions will not be available if there is no paging file on that
drive.
One further point with regard to performance. A separate paging file
partition, on any drive, will often have a negative impact on the
overall performance of the computer. This is because the use of a
separate partition will most often result in increased travel
distances for the disk head mechanism as it shuttles between the
paging file partition and the other partition(s) on that drive.
The conventional wisdom with regard to placement of the page file on
the second drive was at the beginning of the drive. However, I suspect
that that was on the basis of it being used regularly. If the prospect is
that it will be used infrequently then does it not need to be placed in a
different location on the drive. Please comment.
Taking the previous point further where should you place backup files
which will only need to be accessed if something goes wrong?
The ultimate answer to all performance related issues regarding the
paging/swap file is to have sufficient RAM so as to eliminate the need
for Windows to relocate active memory content from RAM to the paging
file in order to allow that RAM to be freed up for other, currently
more important uses. With your 4 gb of RAM you are probably in that
situation.
Good luck
Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair
"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."
--
Regards.
Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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