Setting up my swap file..

[Kookstick]

I had to reformat my drive due to probs with DX7 and was going to setup my swap file again, I believe the rule of thumb is twice your memory and to set the min and max the same. Is this right or do you guys do something different? Do I run defrag and reboot before and after I set the settings?What about letting windows manage it? Sorry for all the questions but I just want to do it right.

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Asus P2b(1010),P3 450,128 mb pc100,Matrox G400 DH,Asus 50x,Iomega zip,Mitsumi CDR,Ibm 10 gb hd,Sb Live,Win 98

[Wombat]

I know you'll hear lots of things from lots of people, but I believe in 2 or 2.5 x your RAM, and give it its very own partition. Preferably early on the disk so that it gets the faster reads.

[Kookstick]

Wombat, That's kinda what I was thinking but how do you setup a partition and designate it to a specific part of the drive? The last time I had a fixed swap I noticed it was at the very end of the drive. Thanks.

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Asus P2b(1010),P3 450,128 mb pc100,Matrox G400 DH,Asus 50x,Iomega zip,Mitsumi CDR,Ibm 10 gb hd,Sb Live,Win 98

[Wombat]

The partitions are usually dished out in order. You'll have to make it one of the early sectors. This might mean deleting the partition your C: drive is on, however.

[Guyver]

If you've only got one hard drive, get another. Make a partition large enough for your swap area as the primary partition on the new drive, then you can use the rest for storage....

I use about 400MB of my 4.5GB drive as permanent non-changing swap. Works great.

Guyv



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ABit BE6, PIII-450 OC'd 600Mhz. 128MB PC133HSDRAM, 2.0V, 39C, Matrox Millenium G400 MAX, Adaptec 2940UW, Seagate Cheetah 9.1GB, Quantum 4.5GB, Kenwood 52X TrueX, Mitsumi 3XDVD, Sony SDT-5010 4MM DAT, Toshiba 32X SCSI CD, Memorex 6x2x4x CDRW, Iomega 100MB Zip ATAPI, 1.44MB 3.5" Floppy, 3Com/USR 56K Voice Faxmodem Pro, HP DeskJet 895CXi, Pioneer VSX-3700S Dolby Surround Receiver, Design Accoustics 3-way fronts, Pioneer Surrounds, Logitech Marble FX

[Kookstick]

Guyver, How can you have all that hardware on your system, I have the 10 gb hdd as the primary master,my iomega zip as primary slave,asus 50x as secondary master and CDR as secondary slave. Doesnt that mean I would have to lose something to use a second hardrive?

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Asus P2b(1010),P3 450,128 mb pc100,Matrox G400 DH,Asus 50x,Iomega zip,Mitsumi CDR,Ibm 10 gb hd,Sb Live,Win 98

[Spire]

Kookstick,

You were asking how to set up a swap file in a specific area on the drive. The "easy" way to do this (well, "easy" depending on your setup) is to repartition the drive, and then dedicate an entire empty partition (preferably the first one on a non-primary drive) to the swap file.

Another way is to directly edit the FAT using a disk editor. Believe it or not, I actually used to do this! But I definitely wouldn't recommend it for the faint of heart.

The third way -- and the one I recommend -- is to set up the swap file, then defrag the partition using a recent version of Norton Speed Disk (part of the Norton Utilities). Speed Disk has an option to optimize the swap file you by moving it to the absolute beginning of the partition.

Hope this helps.

Spire

[shoarthing]

Spire has it right - using proprietory
"defrag" to move swapfile to periphery
of HD platter is easy; but costs dosh:
I usually count number of platters of HD,
then set C: partition = or just greater
than HD size/number platters, then set
dedicated swapfile partition, then leave rest
of drive for Linux. I think/hope this
ensures swapfile is on periphery of 2nd
platter.

[Kookstick]

I took your advice and got norton's utilities and it set the swap file at the beginning just like you said it would. Thanks to everybody for all your help. Later

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Asus P2b(1010),P3 450,128 mb pc100,Matrox G400 DH,Asus 50x,Iomega zip,Mitsumi CDR,Ibm 10 gb hd,Sb Live,Win 98

[Wombat]

Hey shoarthing,
Have you set Linux and Windows to use the same swap space? I've thought about doing it, but haven't really felt a need yet.

-Wombat

[Jorden]

Just set up my 9.1Gb 7200rmp Quantum HDD as second drive, with a 640Mb Primary drive and the rest for a future WIN NT...

The 640Mb PD is for the swap-file only, set to 512Mb or otherwise I would get TSD.dll faults in WIn98FE.

Now a question: When I install WIN NT on the secondary partition on that 9,1Gb HDD, will it still be able to boot, as it's not on the primary partition??

Jorden.

[Guyver]

Kookstick...

Sorry, haven't visited this thread for a while...

SCSI, my friend, SCSI... Why fly low at 33.3, or 66.6, when you can fly high @ 80MB/S or higher. SCSI is where it's at.... (It also costs about 2 to 3 times more than IDE)... Unless you search for those bargains....

Guyv

[Brent]

My 2c.
With 98 and one hard drive not more than 2 years old, let Windows handle everything for you or use Norton Speedisk.
If you have two drives, and the faster drive is your second drive, follow advice as per the above replies.
If you have have two similar 7200 rpm drives, get the latest Norton Speedisk and let Norton do it for you.
RE SCSI, if you use 98 and have only one hard drive, the latest IDE 7200 drives (even the Quantum KA is lagging now)will kick the butt of any SCSI other than the top end 10 000 rpm LVD/ Optical drives. The latest IDE's transfer about 23 megs a second whereas even a good 7200 rpm SCSI is well below that. Even the 80mb SCSI 10 000 rpm drives stand alone are only transferring about half of their electromechanical bandwidth limit. Now a couple of even oldish SCSI drives multitasking applications under NT is another kettle of fish-thats where SCSI screams along.

[shoarthing]

Hey, wombat, funny you should say that . . . You can, apparently; but there's just not much point. Do you know whether it's possible to set up a w95/w98/[linu]x/ multiboot machine on one HD without a Boot Manager like System Commander which can conceal one windows partition from the other? Despite [because?] those years at the DOS prompt, Lilo really freaks me out [even if it can do it], and a new freebie I downloaded, GAG, can't hide DOS partitions.

shoarthing

[Wombat]

Sorry, LILO does just what I need it to, and I haven't looked anywhere else. As far as hiding Windows from Windows, I don't have too many ideas. Windows isn't built with any security in mind. The only guess I would take is to maybe disable the drive letter of the other drives, and then make the configuration file read-only. That won't stop someone that knows what they're doing, though.

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K6-2/350@400, 503+ rev 1.2a, 128MB PC100 RAM, Millenium G200, RH6.1 w/ 2.2.12-20, Win98, and too many classes