Re: Advice Please Re: Hard Drive Speeds Relative to Partition Size

In article <3130303037373036498B54EC38@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Johnny B Good
<jcs.computersbutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

Ideally, a completely seperate drive for the OS/Boot partition (the
same ideal for also giving the pagefile exclusive use of a drive of its
own). Unfortunately, an old (outlived its usefulness) 40GB drive won't
provide any benefit due to its relatively lacklustre performance
compared to today's commodity drives of tenfold and more capacity
typically fitted in a modern build.

Indeed. This was quite forcefully brought home to me over the Christmas
period when I upgraded a financially-challenged friend's PC from its
original 20GB 5400rpm Maxtor drive to a 250GB Seagate. (I was lucky to
find a local reseller with PATA drives still in stock.) The performance
increase provided by the replacement drive was astonishing. Windows
loaded in about a third of the time and the machine was much snappier in
use. (a clone of the old drive to the new, not a fresh install.)

Following that, I upgraded the CPU from a PIII 1GHz to a PIII 1.4GHz.
To my surprise, that didn't make as much difference as I had expected.

Yet another point well made in those self same articles. I knew this,
but, just the same, even when there _is_ ample memory, you still need
virtual memory in the system to avoid real memory being frittered away
on speculative demands by profligate applications.

Yes (and as you point out later in your post), Windows doesn't behave
well if there is no pagefile configured and it needs to use one.

I've concluded, from googling, that winNT is nowhere near as clever in
making use of multiple instances of identically sized pagefiles across
different physical disks as mirror copies of each other

It's an interesting concept. I wouldn't expect M$ to do anything
sensible with it though. I wonder if Linux has the ability to do this?

A better alternative ( for 32 bit OSes) to using disk drives for
virtual memory is to use standard ram to provide virtual memory in the
form of bank switched modules (either in the form of 'virtual memory'
dimm sockets on the MoBo or as PCI or PCIe add in cards).

If you'd said that five years ago, I would have disagreed, saying that
any memory added would be best added to system memory. Now that the 4GB
barrier has been a reality for a while, it bears further thought.
Perhaps only for specialist applications though.

[2] I've had customers bring in E-Machines PCs with a 'Brag Sheet'
sticker, proudly proclaiming "Windows XP _and_ 128MB ram"

jeez.

My first thought, on seeing that sticker, was that it was
intended to act as a 'customer filter'. To my mind, it was a coded
message which effectively stated, "Clued up customers need not apply.".

You're too cynical, Johnny :)

--
(\__/)
(='.'=) Bunny says Windows 7 is Vi$ta reloaded.
(")_(") http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/windows_7.png


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: Pagefile size quirks
    ... "Virtual Memory in Windows XP" ... > pagefile, nor what disk I put it on, system diagnostic programs always ... > system properties shows "Total paging file size of all drives: ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Pagefile.sys corrupted
    ... One way of deleting the pagefile is to reboot into Recovery Console mode ... However, before deleting the pagefile, configure virtual memory to set ... the min=max settings for virtual memory (on both drives), ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support)
  • Re: Advice Please Re: Hard Drive Speeds Relative to Partition Size
    ... I suppose you might need quite a lot of memory to buffer _all_ 6 ... same ideal for also giving the pagefile exclusive use of a drive of its ... both drives may be the interface: ... virtual memory in the system to avoid real memory being frittered away ...
    (uk.comp.homebuilt)
  • Re: Computer memory low
    ... Avast says it only requires 100 MB of HD space. ... Forty gigabyte drives can now be ... What's the connection between HD RAM and Virtual Memory? ...
    (alt.home.repair)
  • Re: A question about BLOCK
    ... only need 10 bits of addressing per block. ... so many blocks per device and as continuous virtual memory to the ... worth of drives or 2^74 bytes of virtual memory without having to use ... If you have the more modern blocks where blocks are just in RAM ...
    (comp.lang.forth)