Question of faster response...?

OK, as some of you know, I just recently put in a second harddrive, and set it as a slave to my original OS harddrive. As part of the changeover process, I started looking at what programs I could change to the new drive. One of the first things I did was to try moving the paging file to the new drive. After I did, it seemed to confuse the system and it gave me a message of "Virtual memory is too small", even though it was as large as it had ever been. I think it also triggered a crash while I was researching the paging file that night, and didn't issue a error report as a result of the systems confusion.

While researching the Virtual Memory/paging file, I ran across this information, and wanted to get some input from the Great and Wise Wizard Of Oz on what I had read. While no one complained about a system crash running the pf on a secondary HD What I did read was, the way of increasing performance on your system if you have a second hard drive is, to run your paging file with the minimum and maximum set at the same setting because you don't want your HD fumbling around resizing your PF while in the middle of a some task where a lot of memory is required. Also, it's suggested that you should run a paging file on both harddrives, because it is like DIMMS, the system can input both simultaneously and shorten you input output time to half.

As a result, I am now running two paging files, and both are set to over 600 MB of memory space, scince my system only has 256MB of memory at present and the diagnostics I have run says I need more memory on this system. So, does this agree with what the Great and Mighty OZ, thinks. Anyone? Adrynalyne? Seem logical and supportable? Thanks for your Input!!

 

First off the slave drive will probably be running the same speed if not slower than the master drive. You should make your second hard drive a master and run your cd-roms, etc as slave. I too have read that you should keep the page file at the same size. I've also read that you should keep it it a level like 200MB - 1024MB depending on your RAM. I'd have to agree with the second method more. Windows will increase your page file at will regardless when it runs out... I ran across a good read on this subject a while back, so I will look for it and let you know.

 

you want to keep your page file numbers the same size so it doesnt have to keep resizing itself which uses extra processes and set it 1.5 times the size of you memory 384 and set the maximum to the same.then go and buy some ram.lol

 

Yeah, that's what I expected on the minimum maximum settings, because all of the scources that I checked said the same thing. What I was most curious about was the running paging files on both harddrives to enhance input/output time. Anyone heard of that one before. Does it seem to help?

 

For office and home ram 256 Min and max DF
for game and design at leat 512-1G ram or more, min 512m max 1024-2048m
Generally, it will be better if you get more ram than increasing swaping page

 

true, but on a budget, more ram may not be an option. Who woulda thunk it?

Of course more ram is preferrable. But if you're not spending at the moment and want some extra performance, your PF is worth looking at. Personally I don't know if having two will help. Do you have the drives in any RAID array? I think you'd get more performance RAIDing the drives than adjusting the PF. Then again, if you don't have a RAID card or on-board, you'd have to buy a RAID card... hm. Well, how 'bout try it and see what works better. Odds are you really won't see a difference. It may bench slightly better in one config than another, but in actual practice, you won't notice. Or at least that's my theory.

 

Well it's doubtful that his hard drives are similar for a RAID.... You guys are forgetting that no matter how much RAM you got good ol' Windows is still going to use the pagefile. You pretty much have to disable it, but that is definitely not recommended.

 

Raid card it make you increase performing in system, and you lose cost this cost you must upgrade for ram it is better

Raid 0 make computer sytem faster but you will lost data when you get dead HDD without mirror
Raid 0+1 and raid 1, 3, 5, 7,.......will not faster at all, You lose cost for more HDD but You get safety

 

Well, I pretty much thought as much. I had only seen this alleged enhancement once, and generally if it isn't widely known it is probably a myth. I don't suppose it would hurt to run two page files if you have plenty of harddrive space anyway, so I guess I'll leave it there. I am aware that I need more RAM, but, it will have to wait for a while longer while I work some other things out.

As for RAID, I haven't heard of that one so will do some research on it. What exactly does it do? I am still a long way from a master Geek. I have only been doing this for four months. While I may have come a long way in a very short time out of nessissity, the end is still way out of sight.

 

Theres no benefit of raid 0,0+1,1.