- Unless you're willing/able to place the Swap File on a second hard drive, it is actually worse to put it on separate partition.
this is my opinion and experience...though the white paper you demonstrate indicates otherwise..
The slowest part of accessing a file on a hard disk is head movement...seeking. If you have only one physical drive then the file is best left where the heads are likely to be the majority of the time...where is most activity is going on?...on drive C:. If you have a second physical drive, in principle it's better to put the file there, as is then less likely that the heads will have moved away from it. If though, you have a modern large size of RAM, actual traffic on the file is probably low, even if programs are rolled out to it, )(inactive), so the point becomes an academic one. If you do put the file on another partition, leave a small amount on C: — an initial size of 2MB with a Maximum of 50 is good here...so it can be used in emergency. Without this, the system is inclined to ignore the settings and or make a very large one instead on C:
- Since the Swap File would be on the boot partition, this simply means to defrag the boot drive. Standard Operating Procedure
I don't have the link right now, but I posted a free pagefile defragment utility on the free programs thread...use that to defrag your pf, or perfect disk, or any professional defrag utility that does an off line defrag
Since Windoze uses RAM x 1.5 as the default minimum, your recommendation is to just let Windoze manage that.
actually for xp ms recommends a much bigger pf then 1.5...and yes, they know you are likely to have 512 or more of ram...1.5 ram with expansion enabled is the latest information
1.5 is the figure ms recommends if expansion is enabled, and they admonish anyone from lowering the initial minimum below this...it is not the recommendation if you disable expansion
Although many claim to set min. and max at the same level, Windoze defaults to an increased max. size. Your recommendation is to let Windoze set the max.
the people that used to recommend a static pf, (they no longer do by the way) were assuming xp behaved like 95.
it does not.
in the NT kernel, once the pf is contiguous, it is impossible for expansion to fragment the original pf
of course, if the os needs more pf, it will add to the original pf, and that will be apart from it, or fragments.
however, the additional parts that were necessary are discarded on reboot...in other words, the original pf remains contiguous, fragmentation cannot possibly survive a reboot...no matter what.
now, if your harddrive is developing bad sectors where the pf is, xp will possibly remap the pagefile, (god this os is good)...this remapping will fragment the pf obviously, however remapping occurs if the pf is static or dynamic
what the original advice should have said was "make sure your pf is so large it never expands"...but leave expansion enabled in-case your settings are not sufficient
Basically, what you're saying it to let Windoze completely handle everything about the Swap File.
unless you get the message that windows wants more vm, or in the case that you have two hard drives
in the first case, I would set the initial minimum to 2x ram, and leave expansion to the full available, which is 4096