Upgrade/configuration issues/advice

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Creativy, writing and more

Hi,
I am currently getting ready to upgrade my system for some new job
responsibilities. I do need more disk space and with what I do disk drives
fills up fast. I got a DVD+RW/CD-RW combo drive and it needed to be master.
That shouldn't be a problem having hard drive 3 - probably a 200GB drive as
slave, correct? Based on needs I'll probably go with an E-IDE drive versus
the possibilities of more speed from an SATA drive.
I was given the indication that the size of the pagefile may be too
small. I thought it was set to 2GB as I have 1GB memory. But it's only
1.5GB and probably quite fragmented. With the extra space of a new 200GB
hard drive I should be able to make room to be sure that the pagefile
remains at 2GB. I was wondering if when space got really tight if Windows
resized the pagefile to 1.5GB as I thought it was set to 2GB at one point.
Technically I have room now for a 2GB swapfile/pagefile. And I was told
that there is a way to recreate it and fix the fact that it is most likely
quite fragmented. Anyone know how to do that now?
In the mean time, I still need the disk space so I guess I could even
put the pagefile on the new drive. For the budget there is funds for extra
memory and when one does video editing with files nearly 1GB in length is an
extra 500MB of RAM going to matter? could it help? I currently have two
500MB modules and one more slot. When I bought the 500 MB DDR memory it was
less than it is today - it's not supposed to work like that. Nothing else
does. Disk drives in the 200GB range are about a third of what they were
when about a year ago approx.
Though I do video editting and much in the way of multitasking, having
many windows running different things at once, I wonder if a better video
card is called for here. I mean like I said, it's not a gaming maching so
most of the work is 2D. I have GeForce with 64MB and it's about a year old
or so. I keep up with the literature in the tech field and usually the talk
is about 3D and video cards that handle that well.
Thanks in advance,
Bruce

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Though I do video editting and much in the way of multitasking, having
many windows running different things at once, I wonder if a better video
card is called for here. I mean like I said, it's not a gaming maching so
most of the work is 2D. I have GeForce with 64MB and it's about a year old
or so. I keep up with the literature in the tech field and usually the talk
is about 3D and video cards that handle that well.
Thanks in advance,
Bruce
Click to expand...

Im not sure what you mean but I just let windows handle the swap file.
You can set it manually. Fragmented? Doesnt it change all the time?
Wouldnt it take care of itself by defragging your HD and then the next
time it used the swap file it would choose a more contiguous area ? Or
if you are going from tight space to huge wiht more HD space then it
would be a problem anyway.

I did a search recently to see what would be recommended for 2D
graphics work and all the sites I read were ancient. They all talked
about the advice the Matrox . Other than that they recommended tons of
mem so I guess it wouldnt hurt. Some recommend a fast setup - usually
RAID. All of them recommended putting the swap file on a different HD
on a different IDe channel than the primary HD.

For the hell of it since its cheap - I would get a newer graphics card
with 128 megs. You can get a 9200 or 9100 or sale someplace. Wait for
the memorial day sale or if thats a dud Im almost positive theres
going to be one in June or defintely July 4th. The decent sales are
getting few and far between this year. I personally think its a combo
of the economy getting better despite all the whining about the lag in
employjment numbers (even thats subsiding with two months of decent
job growth) and there have been numerous talk about small signs of
inflation here and there.

Also mem prices - there was a horrendous memory glut - this seems to
be a regular cycle in high tech - boom and then glut and then bust.
But the latter part of the decade was filled with talk about a HD
glut, mem glut and of course a general high tech bust after the boom
which created a huge firesale in tons of tech stuff. Oh I forgot about
the CDR glut. Supposedly people were selling at a loss.

I used to get PC133 then DDR2100 for free after rebate all the time.
I got so sick of it I passed up several offers. Then they
disappeared. The industry has been cutting back and selling off for
years so that and bettering economy - I just read that Dell was seeing
rising profits from renewed buying from corps for tech after years of
no growth from corp buying --- that means higher mem prices. Its a
combo of temporarily low mem prices from the glut and maybe even price
fixing - pressure in the face of bettering economy. I think one huge
conglomerate was buying up the firms that were being sold off and they
were investigated for price fixing since they would control a huge
portion of the mem mkt. Not sure what happened to the investigation
but it seemed to die off.


So more mem probably wont hurt, swap file on different HD if that
still holds - on lot of ANCIENT sites and even RAID or at least a 7200
rpm new HD. A new video card probably woudnt hurt either with more
mem.
 
Though I do video editting and much in the way of multitasking, having
many windows running different things at once, I wonder if a better video
card is called for here. I mean like I said, it's not a gaming maching so
most of the work is 2D. I have GeForce with 64MB and it's about a year old
or so. I keep up with the literature in the tech field and usually the talk
is about 3D and video cards that handle that well.
Thanks in advance,
Bruce
Click to expand...


Heres a thread at a photo site they would know more about it than I
do.

http://forums.photographyreview.com/showthread.php?t=1813
 
So, here's silly question that I should know the answer to already. How do
I specify where the swapfile should be located. I'm thinking somewhere in
the control panel that information is set but I'm not sure yet. I'll keep
looking.
Bruce
 
In Control Panel,
system/advance/performance/settings/advanced/ then
click change
in the virtual memory section.

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