Another drive...to slow for pagefile?

[johan851]

The system in my sig currently uses a WD 800JB. I have it partitioned out - about 20 gigs for storage and Win2000, 60gigs for general use including WindowsXP, a 450mb partition for the WinXP pagefile, and a 100mb partition for the Win2000 pagefile. I'm going to be adding a 13GB drive soon, just for additional storage purposes. Would an older drive like that (probably 4200 or 5400RPM, not sure) be too slow to move the pagefile to? Or would it still be better, even though it's a much slower drive, to have the pagefile on a seperate controller? TIA!

 

[itshondo]

I have 2 80 gb wd 7200/8mb cache hd's with my windows installed on a 10 gb partition (the boot or first primary partition is installed at the outer portion of the disk, which spins fastest, which speeds up whatever is loaded there- that's where my 10 gb windows partition is installed. As far as your paging file, you could set up the 5400 disk with a 10 gb partition like I did- it all depends how many programs will be installed here, and I haven't run out of room yet with a ton of stuff installed.

I would really recommend you buy more ram and do away with a paging file all together. I have 1 gb pc3500 installed without a paging file - it really speeds things up.

 

[johan851]

I'd rather keep a smaller pagefile and disable the paging executive to use it as little as possible...some things require a pagefile.

I wasn't really going to move my OS to the slower drive...just the pagefile.

 

[noob_123]

so is it better to disable page file if u have 1 gig of ram?

also what requires a page file?

 

[johan851]

Some stuff just doesn't work properly without pagefile enabled, I've heard. Some apps require at least 2mb in pagefile...it just generally causes more problems than it needs to. Never tried disabling it though...

 

[Rav]

I disabled it on my gaming machine when I got 1GB of RAM, haven't had a problem yet. Only thing is Photoshop complains that there is no page file when it starts up, but it works fine.

If you are going to have it enabled, I highly sugest you increase their partitions. 450MB and 100MB are WAY to small. I'd say give them 1GB partitions and lock the size of the page file. I also would not bother with a seperate drive for just the swap file, atleast for your standard desktop, unless you have a second one already installed anyway. Adding 4200 or 5400 drive would slow you down, you would be better off having it on a seperate partition of your WD.

-Rav

 

[itshondo]

I've only had one software problem (without a page file) - Quake 3 will not load. Whether it's the page file or being overclocked, I don't know. Everything else works great. The worst thing that happens if you diabe the page file is you have to change it back. A fixed is size best.