I have been refining my system little by little for quite some time now and many a new inspiration has come from the archives provided by Radified. Looking to shed light on this or that partitioning issue over the years I have probably read through the Partitioning Strategies 10 or so times. Now I am into other optimizing tricks for Windows operating systems and have been clued into setting up swap files on separate partitions. So here I am seeking to gain a grip on this new concept. I tried this for a Win 98 OS I use regularily and I do beleive it improved performance. No benchmarking, just feeling it out.

So, above and beyond my main question: Is setting the swap file in a separate partition effective for optimising Windows? If the answer is "sometimes" could you please specify the details of how versions are affeted by this tweak and which situations enhance or negate the effects of the tweak.

But main topic of question is, considerring a notable improvement for each version of Windows, how should partitions be set up for the swap files of multiple OSs? I noticed that the swap files created by differing partitions of Win 98 are given the exact same file name. Using one partition for two OSs I saw only one swap file. I am worried that the OSs may end up 'tripping' over eachothers swap files considering the specifics of file size and maybe content.

Kind regards, Brandon

this question has been kicked around many times .. with many perspectives.

personally, i've never done it.

what i *do* like the idea of, tho (tho have never implemented) is creating a separate partition for all easily-fragmented files (as a way to minimize wear-n-tear on the system drive by minimizing the necessity to defrag it).

others may chime in with good links.

i think this was a good idea years ago, but now that processors and memory & hard drives are so fast, i don't think it matters any more.

many of the sites that advocate this approach still reference w95/w98.

"10 times"?

I may be in the boat of needing tweaks for better performance. My board only supports SD ram tho im running 512 x2. Bought around year 2000, I know the fsb is a class behind. 2.3ghz athlon xp seems to perk up when I clear out everything else that might be in its way.

What sort of files are subject to fragmentation so bad that they should have a spot reserved for them? swap files?

AMD Duron 2600+ 266 FSB
2x512 SD RAM
MSI K7T Turbo2 MS-6330
BIOS V3.6, optimal settings
VIA VT82C686
GeForce2 Mx VerD
FSP Group-Fortron/Source FSP530-60GNA 530W
IDE1- WD800JB 80G(master)
IDE2- WD Caviar 160G(cable select), Mitsumi CR-4804 TE(cable select)

Any suggestions as how to locate the 'kicked around' discussions on this subject? I'm not connecting with the search feature.

I modified my previous messge and added a question. Probly a noob manoover  ::) that didnt register any new postage.

schmirk

Usually the question of where to place the swap file occurs in threads about partitioning.

Here's a good reference regarding WinXP swap file placement issues:  Virtual Memory in Windows XP

And here's information on partitioning:  PLANNING YOUR PARTITIONS.  You will find a paragraph that talks about sharing the swap file between Win98 and WinXP in there!

Excellent! That aumha.org is a treasure trove. Thank you for the links Night Owl. Now, where are my reading glasses... 8)

The biggest advantage I can see of putting your swap file on a seperate partition is that you can arrage your partitions to put your swap file at the beginning of the drive.  The biginning of the drive is also the outside of the physical disk.  Since the outside edge spins faster than the inside edge, there is a speed difference.  Putting your swapfile on the fastest part of the drive can make a difference on some systems.

With that said, RAM is cheap these days and far faster than a hard drive.  It would be best if you had a pile of RAM and hardly swapped at all.