need help with paged file?

Nforce2XP

Ok hi guys
my question is very simple i have two hardrivers one is a 40 gigas maxtor ata 133(7200rpm)and the other a wester digital 15 gigas ata 66 (5400 rpm),
and i have one system paged of 1500 mb on the maxtor driver and same amount on the wester,both drivers are ntfs but i made two extra partitions.
both drivers are in different ide channel and both are as master,but the otherpartitions are fat 32 not ntfs,so i have this drivers with the fat cuz i read somewhere that de fat format is more fast that the ntfs but less secure,i want to know if this is good or i should format them as ntfs,i want good performance of my system pages,thank you so much.

an35n ultra
3200+ amd xp locked
3200 ddr memory
windows xp sp2 home

Judas

Although thier is a speed difference between NTFS and FAT..... i'd have to say it's pretty much unnoticeable. Actually, in same cases, personally, i've seen NTFS preform much better.

IMO, FAT is quite dangerous if you think about it. ZERO tollerance of any write or read errors. If the system suddenly reboots without it doing it properly, thier is a chance that the last bit of data stores could either be corrupt or completely non excistant.

Now my understanding is that your Windows and Program files and Games are on your main 40gig Maxtor.

And you have the 15 gig other stuff. (you didn't specify)

I can't really make a recommendation though.

What do you use your computer for most?

Do you download alot? do you use up rather quite abit of space?

Have you ran Benchmarks on both drives to see what thier Read or Write preformances are like, how close they are (this being fairly important as a ata133 vs ata66 could prove to be quite massive in thier preformance, or similare anyways)

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Nforce2XP

Thanx buddy,
well,i got the 40 gigas as my main boot disk with system operative and evryting is as default,and the 15 gigas as multimedia like you home dvds and things like dowload aplications software and such things,i did the 1.5 gigas partition on the 40 gigas hardrive and another on the 15 gigas.
so its means that fat would`nt give any improvement over ntfs,if so can you tell me if this setup will be good or not thak buddy i apreciate your help

FR4GGL3

i would recommend you to build an extra partition for your swap-file.

and then make it fat16. the prob of loosing data is not so bad on the swap partition (in my eyes).

i did a 1gig fat16 partition which only contains the swap-file. i think it is faster, although it could be that the speed improvement is because the swap-file has its own partition...

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[color=Green]Yes Sir, I Can Boogie[/color]

Judas

erm, FAT 16 is not wise, no to mention it automatically LIMITS the partition size to rather quite small (2gb? )

doesn't sound small but it should most DEFINITELY NOT BE ON FAT16..

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FR4GGL3

maybe. but my swap is since 2002 on my fat16 partition and i never had problems - so i will keep it (but that shouldn't influence other ppl.).

don't trust ntfs that much - i had a COMPLETE data lost on my second hdd 4 weeks ago. totally ntfs partition.

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[color=Green]Yes Sir, I Can Boogie[/color]

PangingJr

Windows XP supports the creation of primary partitions and logical drives of up to 4 gigabytes using the FAT16 file system. The maximum cluster size is 64K.

FAT16/32 support within XP is there for backward compatibility and not as the primary file system.
It allows you to read other disks from a multi-boot system that may be formatted with these structures.

For a page file, the file system used is not important. It is only involved at times when the file is being enlarged or contracted, but that will not happen much if the initial size is enough to cover your normal level of actual use. The rest of the time the kernel virtual memory system is accessing pages of the file direct.

The paging file used for virtual memory is done in 4K chunks which writes very efficiently with NTFS with 4K clusters.

Nforce2XP

hum seems interesting so what do i do now?
convert the fat 32 to 16 or ntfs,i want to know what really improve performance in my system.
thanx guys for the help

Judas

IMO, NTFS has always proven to be the fastest for me, we have CPU's now that simply do it without really even having to use a cycle is seems....

It's safe, its stable, it's a solid preformer.

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md5

That doesn't justify your decision to move to FAT16. HDs die all the time. In fact, NTFS has more features than FAT16/FAT32 to save your data in case of power loss etc

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PangingJr

For virtual-memory support, Windows 2000/XP creates one paging file called Pagefile.sys on the disk or volume on which the operating system is installed. The default size is equal to 1.5 times the amount of physical memory. A small paging file limits what can be stored and might exhaust your virtual memory for applications. If you are short on RAM, more paging occurs, which generates extra activity for your disks and slows response times for the system.

Because the size and location of paging files can affect your system’s performance, you might want to modify them. Also, because maintaining multiple files on multiple physical drives can improve performance, you might want to add a paging file.

The following guidelines describe how to optimize the paging file.

Set the Same Initial and Maximum Size
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Setting the paging file’s initial size and maximum size to the same value increases efficiency because the operating system does not need to expand the file during processing. Setting different values for initial and maximum size can contribute to disk fragmentation.

Expand the Default Size
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Expanding the default size of the paging file can increase performance if applications are consuming virtual memory and the full capacity of the existing file is being used. To determine how large your paging file needs to be based on your system workload, monitor the Process (_Total)\Page File Bytes counter. This indicates, in bytes, how much of the paging file is being used.

You can also determine the appropriate size of a paging file by multiplying the Paging File\% Usage Peak counter value by the size of Pagefile.sys. The % Usage Peak counter indicates how much of the paging file is being used. Consider expanding the page file whenever either this counter reaches 70 percent of the total size in bytes of all paging files or the Memory\% Committed Bytes In Use counter reaches 85 percent, whichever occurs first.

A large paging file uses disk storage space, so do not create a large paging file on a disk that is very active (for example, one that services heavy application or network activity) or one that has limited space. Change the file size gradually and test performance until you find the optimal balance between paging file and disk space usage.

Move the Paging File
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If disk space on your boot volume is limited, you can achieve better performance by moving the paging file to another volume. However, you might want to leave a smaller paging file on the boot volume and maintain a larger file on different volume with more capacity for the sake of recoverability. Depending on how you have configured your system’s startup and recovery options, the configuration might require that you maintain a paging file of a certain size on the boot volume. Therefore, make sure to consider your startup and recovery settings when planning to move the paging file.

Use Multiple Disks
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Although Windows XP supports a limit of 4,095 MB for each paging file, you can supply large amounts of virtual memory to applications by maintaining multiple paging files. Spreading paging files across multiple disk drives and controllers improves performance on most modern disk systems because multiple disks can process input/output (I/O) requests concurrently in a round-robin fashion.

A mirrored or striped volume is a good candidate for the placement of a paging file. Placing the paging file on its own logical partition can prevent file fragmentation. Creating multiple paging files on a single logical volume or partition does not improve performance.

If you find that page writing and disk writing or page reading and disk reading are equivalent on a logical disk, splitting the paging file onto separate volumes is helpful.

Create a partition for placing the paging file only..
meaning don't use the partition for 'anything' else but for the paging file.

NTFS is the obvious choice to be used on the partition.

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Nforce2XP

Ok thanx to all,i am going to format back to ntfs.

well i think this is the best i can do.

bye