pagefile FAT32 or NTFS

[Larry(LJL269)]

I have the luxury of putting my pagefile on a 1GB drive
all by itself. I can format that in either FAT32 or
NTFS. This will be my first NTFS partition and I'm not
sure if the advantages of NTFS are applicable to the
pagefile.

Any Catch-22's or Gotcha's?

Comments/suggestions/corrections appreciated.
Thanks- bye- Larry

Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[Mike Hall]

There are better ways to use an IDE port than a 1gb drive with a pagefile on
it..

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 11:28:39 -0500, "Mike Hall"

|There are better ways to use an IDE port than a 1gb drive with a pagefile on
|it..

Greetings Mike & thank you for your response.

what do u have in mind?

Thanks- bye- Larry

Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[Al Dykes]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 11:28:39 -0500, "Mike Hall"

|There are better ways to use an IDE port than a 1gb drive with a pagefile on
|it..

Greetings Mike & thank you for your response.

what do u have in mind?

Thanks- bye- Larry

Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

If it's a 1GB IDE drive ISTM that it's going to be really slow. If
your C drive is a current high-performace drive it might be a wash,
which drive you put swap on. IMO moving the TMP folder to a second
drive can be a good thing.

It really depends on what you use your system for. The serious way to
decide what to change on your system is to run perfmon.exe while you
are doing whatever task you wish was faster. The goal is to identify
the bottleneck (CPU, memory, or I/O) and then make that resource
faster or reduce the usage of the resource. By definition, there is
only one bottleneck at any moment, and eliminating a bottleneck just
leads you to the next one.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi,

No gotcha's - use FAT32 as performance may be marginally better with the
small drive.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Ken Blake]

In

I have the luxury of putting my pagefile on a 1GB drive
all by itself. I can format that in either FAT32 or
NTFS. This will be my first NTFS partition and I'm not
sure if the advantages of NTFS are applicable to the
pagefile.

Is this a 1GB partition or a separate 1GB physical drive?

If it's a partition on your only (or main) drive, moving the page
file to a location on the hard drive puts it far from the other
frequently-used data on the drive. The result is that every time
Windows needs to use the page file, the time to get to it and
back from it is increased.
Putting the swap file on a second *physical* drive is a good
idea, since it decreases head movement, but not to a second
partition on a single drive. A good rule of thumb is that the
page file should be on the most-used partition of the least-used
physical drive. For almost everyone with a single drive, that's
C:.

However if this is a 1GB physical drive, any drive that small is
very old, and any drive that old is likely to be very slow
compared to modern drives. So the benefits of putting it on a
second drive may be lost or maybe even negative. If you do this,
I would carefully monitor performance before and after to be sure
you're achieved something positive.

Regarding what file system to use, NTFS will give you 4KB
clusters as opposed to 1KB clusters with FAT32.That makes NTFS
preferable. Another choice is FAT16, which will also give you 4KB
clusters.

 

[Ken Blake]

In

If it's a 1GB IDE drive ISTM that it's going to be really slow.
If
your C drive is a current high-performace drive it might be a
wash,
which drive you put swap on. IMO moving the TMP folder to a
second
drive can be a good thing.

Maybe moving the tmp folder to a second drive is a good thing,
but not if that drive is as small as 1GB. That's almost
guaranteed to cause problems.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I have the luxury of putting my pagefile on a 1GB drive
all by itself. I can format that in either FAT32 or
NTFS. This will be my first NTFS partition and I'm not
sure if the advantages of NTFS are applicable to the
pagefile.

Reconsider. It is not really a good idea. By doing that you are pretty
well ensuring that all seeks to get to it will be much bigger - and seek
time is the critical matter in disk access. If you have multiple
physical drives, put it on a partition on the second one; if that is
partitioned in more than one, use the second partition so it is near the
middle.

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

Greetings Ken & thank you for your response.

|However if this is a 1GB physical drive, any drive that small is
|very old, and any drive that old is likely to be very slow
|compared to modern drives. So the benefits of putting it on a
|second drive may be lost or maybe even negative. If you do this,
|I would carefully monitor performance before and after to be sure
|you're achieved something positive.
Yes this is a 1GB physical drive. Here's a comparison
of the specifications of this drive versus the
alternative drive, which C: is now on:
Average Seek 10 vs 11ms
Transfer Rate 13.3 vs 100 MB/s
|
|Regarding what file system to use, NTFS will give you 4KB
|clusters as opposed to 1KB clusters with FAT32.That makes NTFS
|preferable. Another choice is FAT16, which will also give you 4KB
|clusters.
so your reason for preferring NTFS is solely the
cluster size? if so, PartitionMagic will allow me to
set the cluster size of a FAT32 850MB (I said 1GB but I
lied !) partition to 1KB.

this is actually a subproblem in any larger decision
tree that I outline a in response to Alex's post. I
would appreciate your input there too!
Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

GreetingsAlex & thank you for your response.

|Reconsider. It is not really a good idea. By doing that you are pretty
|well ensuring that all seeks to get to it will be much bigger - and seek
|time is the critical matter in disk access.
Here's a comparison of the specifications of this drive
versus the alternative drive, which C: is now on:
Average Seek 10 vs 11ms
Transfer Rate 13.3 vs 100 MB/s << biggest Delta >>

|If you have multiple physical drives, put it on a partition on the second one; if that is
|partitioned in more than one, use the second partition so it is near the
|middle.
here's the whole story:
1- I was so happy with the performance of my new backup
system (see ' Ultimate Backups for Peanuts " post) that
I converted my drive that had the pagefile to USB2.
2-since this eight-year-old hard drive wasn't being
used, I thought I would install it and put the pagefile
on it while I decided what, if anything, to buy and
waited for a good deal. So this solution is only
temporary.
3-the only other thing on the second IDE is a CD
rewriter which I hardly ever use.I thought I might add
and place the pagefile on either a:
a-reconditioned 10 Gigabyte Drive ($10) OR
b-new 80 Gigabyte Drive ($40)
c-something else on sale?
the existing 40 Gigabyte Drive is about half full.

I am leaning towards b -, I'm sure eventually I'll find
some use for all that space.

Comments/suggestions/corrections appreciated.
Thanks- bye- Larry

Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

On 2 Jan 2005 12:24:03 -0500, (e-mail address removed) (Al
Dykes) wrote:

|It really depends on what you use your system for. The serious way to
|decide what to change on your system is to run perfmon.exe while you
|are doing whatever task you wish was faster. The goal is to identify
|the bottleneck (CPU, memory, or I/O) and then make that resource
|faster or reduce the usage of the resource. By definition, there is
|only one bottleneck at any moment, and eliminating a bottleneck just
|leads you to the next one.

that's a good point. I just began looking into that
when I was investigating" pagefile in use" routine that
Alex recommended.

just for kicks I created a .msc with those 3
measurements on it and started running
applications-think I had 50 or 60 processes running
including 3 IE's, 10WXplore, APS, PI6, PX7, Organizer,
OE, DragonVR, ScrennCapture, Magnifier,.... I know I
was up to about 93% CPU usage but I think I still had
300MB of RAM available. I have 1.8 P4.

I started one more application which was when the start
menu & Taskbar stopped responding. I had to close three
or four applications before the system started to
respond again.

I think what I have to do is to go back and find out
how you turn on logging, what application will analyze
that data, and therefore what format it needs to be
in.

this is actually a subproblem in any larger decision
tree that I outline a in response to Alex's post. I
would appreciate your input there too!

Your help is MUCH appreciated.
Thanks- bye- Larry

Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

On Sun, 2 Jan 2005 10:48:49 -0700, "Ken Blake"

|Maybe moving the tmp folder to a second drive is a good thing,
|but not if that drive is as small as 1GB. That's almost
|guaranteed to cause problems.
Yes- mine fluctuates wildly but it is on its own
partition.

Thanks- bye- Larry

Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.

 

[Larry(LJL269)]

On 2 Jan 2005 12:24:03 -0500, (e-mail address removed) (Al
Dykes) wrote:

|It really depends on what you use your system for. The serious way to
|decide what to change on your system is to run perfmon.exe while you
|are doing whatever task you wish was faster. The goal is to identify
|the bottleneck (CPU, memory, or I/O) and then make that resource
|faster or reduce the usage of the resource. By definition, there is
|only one bottleneck at any moment, and eliminating a bottleneck just
|leads you to the next one.

that's a good point. I just began looking into that
when I was investigating" pagefile in use" routine that
Alex recommended.

just for kicks I created a .msc with those 3
measurements on it and started running
applications-think I had 50 or 60 processes running
including 3 IE's, 10WXplore, APS, PI6, PX7, Organizer,
OE, DragonVR, ScrennCapture, Magnifier,.... I know I
was up to about 93% CPU usage but I think I still had
300MB of RAM available. I have 1.8 P4.

I started one more application which was when the start
menu & Taskbar stopped responding. I had to close three
or four applications before the system started to
respond again.

I think what I have to do is to go back and find out
how you turn on logging, what application will analyze
that data, and therefore what format it needs to be
in.

this is actually a subproblem in any larger decision
tree that I outline a in response to Alex's post. I
would appreciate your input there too!

Your help is MUCH appreciated.
Thanks- bye- Larry


Any advise is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.