HOW BIG SHOULD THE SWAP FILE BE ??
This is a discussion about HOW BIG SHOULD THE SWAP FILE BE ?? in the Windows Hardware category; i have a p3 500 with 384 mb of ram. even with that much ram w2000 makes a swap file sized 550 mb !!!! do i need a file that big or can/should i make it smaller ???? under nt4 i used the programm superdisk to create a virtual swap drive of 100 mb in ram is this also possible under w2000 ??.
i have a p3 500 with 384 mb of ram . even with that much ram w2000 makes a swap file sized 550 mb !!!! -- do i need a file that big or can/should i make it smaller ????
under nt4 i used the programm superdisk to create a virtual swap drive of 100 mb in ram -- is this also possible under w2000 ??
under nt4 i used the programm superdisk to create a virtual swap drive of 100 mb in ram -- is this also possible under w2000 ??
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I was wondering... Have you guys ever heard of solid state ram?? and whats with this overhead?? Putting a swap file on a ram drive has almost no overhead... And if you have an ungodly amount of ram... why not use a ram drive... Most of these systems we are talking about anyway are for games, Not CAD, Not VB, NOT DB and Not Servers.
I have been using a ramdrive with a swap file.. and my hard drive "thrashing" was cut to nill. SO callin this guy a yuppy for being different is not called for.. LOL.. Its guys who think outside the Box that actualy get stuff to run.
**this is not a slam.
I have been using a ramdrive with a swap file.. and my hard drive "thrashing" was cut to nill. SO callin this guy a yuppy for being different is not called for.. LOL.. Its guys who think outside the Box that actualy get stuff to run.
**this is not a slam.
Amazing. People STILL don't get it. There seems to be some sort of fundamental lack of understanding as to what a swap file actually does!
A machine will work BETTER with NO swap file than with a swap file in RAM.
Of course putting a swap file on a RAM disk will reduce thrashing. Turning off the swap file will do the same.
The whole point about the swap file is to increase the total amount of memory to the OS...how will taking some away be a benefit?
Solid State RAM - like there's any other kind?
What you actually mean are Solid State Disks - a sh1t load of RAM that presents itself to the OS as a disk drive. These are used generally in mainframes and other legacy I/O intensive environments to speed throughput - mainly because the actual hardware has limits on the addressable memory space.
I seriously hope you don't regard yourself as an IT professional - this kind of "thinking outside the box" looks more like "thinking outside the rubber room" and gives us all a bad name...
[This message has been edited by YuppieScum (edited 04 February 2000).]
A machine will work BETTER with NO swap file than with a swap file in RAM.
Of course putting a swap file on a RAM disk will reduce thrashing. Turning off the swap file will do the same.
The whole point about the swap file is to increase the total amount of memory to the OS...how will taking some away be a benefit?
Solid State RAM - like there's any other kind?
What you actually mean are Solid State Disks - a sh1t load of RAM that presents itself to the OS as a disk drive. These are used generally in mainframes and other legacy I/O intensive environments to speed throughput - mainly because the actual hardware has limits on the addressable memory space.
I seriously hope you don't regard yourself as an IT professional - this kind of "thinking outside the box" looks more like "thinking outside the rubber room" and gives us all a bad name...
[This message has been edited by YuppieScum (edited 04 February 2000).]
JimmyK your funny d00d,,,
hehe , people buy these hi-end systems cause either salesmen tell them they need it and they don't know the difference,, or they are like you and me when we first bought our computers long ago (didn't you always want something fast or maybe the best ****,, of course you did)
people always want bigger and or better
its the way of life d00d,, anyways i've had a good chuckle reading you d00ds reply's ,, and remember don't be so hostile,, this is what these boards are for ,, ,how can anyone learn if they keep getting hassled,,,
,, best way to learn ,, is ask!
bigb otherwise known as byron
hehe and p.s no hostile intention intendid to any of you just an observation,,, peace!
hehe , people buy these hi-end systems cause either salesmen tell them they need it and they don't know the difference,, or they are like you and me when we first bought our computers long ago (didn't you always want something fast or maybe the best ****,, of course you did)
people always want bigger and or better
its the way of life d00d,, anyways i've had a good chuckle reading you d00ds reply's ,, and remember don't be so hostile,, this is what these boards are for ,, ,how can anyone learn if they keep getting hassled,,,
,, best way to learn ,, is ask!
bigb otherwise known as byron
hehe and p.s no hostile intention intendid to any of you just an observation,,, peace!
That's it. That's all I can take.
For those of you who STILL think that placing your swap file in RAM is a good idea: On behalf of computer professionals everywhere, I politely submit that you need to give your computer away, and take a vow of computer silence. In return for removing yourself from the computer using world, we computer professionals will make sure that you always have bicycle playing cards so that you can play solitaire without having to worry about so called problems as "disk-thrashing", or even worrying about losing track of your game when the power goes out. We will even supply you with a UPS for your solitaire (two candles and a lighter.)
Now that was a joke and was not intended to offend. Just as the thought of using a RAM disk for a SWAP file must be a joke.
Regards...
For those of you who STILL think that placing your swap file in RAM is a good idea: On behalf of computer professionals everywhere, I politely submit that you need to give your computer away, and take a vow of computer silence. In return for removing yourself from the computer using world, we computer professionals will make sure that you always have bicycle playing cards so that you can play solitaire without having to worry about so called problems as "disk-thrashing", or even worrying about losing track of your game when the power goes out. We will even supply you with a UPS for your solitaire (two candles and a lighter.)
Now that was a joke and was not intended to offend. Just as the thought of using a RAM disk for a SWAP file must be a joke.
Regards...
Look BigB, no damned salesman told me to buy a dual socket 370 mobo, nor did he tell me to buy two 400mhz celerons, nor did he tell me to get 256mb of ram, i built it cause i could, i think your little pansy ass is jealous of all of the high end people, if you want one too then go out and bust your ass like the rest of us....or does mommy and daddy still support you?
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As for all of the people out there who think that it would be great to use ram for a swapfile......LEARN A THING OR TWO ABOUT A FRICKIN COMPUTER......yes ram is fast, but say you have 384MB ram, and you make a 128MB ramdisk, and try to put a swapfile on it, thats using up 128Mb of your ram that could be used by the computer. the ram going to be used anyway by the computer anyway as cache, which would be faster than making a stupd RAMdisk and making it a swap file.
..Ok, by reading these worthless.."I wanna make my ram my swap file"...posts, i think my IQ just dropped 20 points and I can't remember how to be nice anymore, especially after ByronT had a Stroke because some people can't get it through their melons.
P.s. No offense to anyone....but some of you must be have serious problems.
Have a nice Day.
and smile
[This message has been edited by EddiE314 (edited 04 February 2000).]
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As for all of the people out there who think that it would be great to use ram for a swapfile......LEARN A THING OR TWO ABOUT A FRICKIN COMPUTER......yes ram is fast, but say you have 384MB ram, and you make a 128MB ramdisk, and try to put a swapfile on it, thats using up 128Mb of your ram that could be used by the computer. the ram going to be used anyway by the computer anyway as cache, which would be faster than making a stupd RAMdisk and making it a swap file.
..Ok, by reading these worthless.."I wanna make my ram my swap file"...posts, i think my IQ just dropped 20 points and I can't remember how to be nice anymore, especially after ByronT had a Stroke because some people can't get it through their melons.
P.s. No offense to anyone....but some of you must be have serious problems.
Have a nice Day.
and smile
[This message has been edited by EddiE314 (edited 04 February 2000).]
ohh man, I jsut came back from a test, I was kind of down, but god dang, u all are some funny SOB's. Im gettign watery eyed here. Im smiling from ear to ear, this hoenst to god has to be just the funniest post. I mean subject matter aside (forget about wahts right or wrong), just reading it as a third party its funny as nutz.
I guess ur right bigb, heh we shouldnt get so worked up. and ur right I have a confession, I paid 4,324 that is four thousand three hundred and twenty four dollars, for a packard bell p100 with 16 megs of ram, and a 2.1 gig drive. and I didint know squat about comptuers. BUT with tinkering and playing around I learned a lot, I didnt expect/want to be spoon fed answers by people on forums, like many people are now a days.
hehe Im still having a good laugh about all this. You all are a bunch of comedians, and Eddie, I knwo what ur saying man, I got frustrated the first time I figured out what was really going on witht his post, but bigb is right, to many people are duped into buying something cuz its "bigger and badder"
u know what my father just bought? an 9,000 dollar laptop and docking station with 22" inch monitor. Its top of the line Ill tell u that much, with space for pci expansion and everything, BUT my dad cant even use home row keys or type more then a 25 words a minute. But thats what he wanted for his "arc view" and "cad" programs, who was I to argue, and he didint even consult me because he knew Id tell him to do something else, instead he called up some "professionals" and said he wanted a powerful laptop to run everything and have a docking station. they said anywhere from 5,000 to 12,000 dollars and they said the 9,000 dollar system would run everything flawlessly, so he got it.
its got a dvd player over 160 emgs of ram my father said, hi end PIII processor and what not. so after all my babbling u se bigb was right
hehe that iq thing was pretty funny as well, u all are just killin me here....
I guess ur right bigb, heh we shouldnt get so worked up. and ur right I have a confession, I paid 4,324 that is four thousand three hundred and twenty four dollars, for a packard bell p100 with 16 megs of ram, and a 2.1 gig drive. and I didint know squat about comptuers. BUT with tinkering and playing around I learned a lot, I didnt expect/want to be spoon fed answers by people on forums, like many people are now a days.
hehe Im still having a good laugh about all this. You all are a bunch of comedians, and Eddie, I knwo what ur saying man, I got frustrated the first time I figured out what was really going on witht his post, but bigb is right, to many people are duped into buying something cuz its "bigger and badder"
u know what my father just bought? an 9,000 dollar laptop and docking station with 22" inch monitor. Its top of the line Ill tell u that much, with space for pci expansion and everything, BUT my dad cant even use home row keys or type more then a 25 words a minute. But thats what he wanted for his "arc view" and "cad" programs, who was I to argue, and he didint even consult me because he knew Id tell him to do something else, instead he called up some "professionals" and said he wanted a powerful laptop to run everything and have a docking station. they said anywhere from 5,000 to 12,000 dollars and they said the 9,000 dollar system would run everything flawlessly, so he got it.
its got a dvd player over 160 emgs of ram my father said, hi end PIII processor and what not. so after all my babbling u se bigb was right
hehe that iq thing was pretty funny as well, u all are just killin me here....
I do have to admit that I wrote that last post of mine with a smile ear to ear. And I laugh everytime I find this post at the top of the hardware forum! Especially when I was trying to figure out what a "UPS" would be for someone playing solitaire...
I just can't wait for the next self-proclaimed computer expert to tell me that a SWAP file on a RAM disk is a good thing... I'll get another dose of those good ole endorphins with the ensuing laughter. My programmer still can't believe somebody went to the trouble of a RAM disk for a swap file...
And maybe this is the answer to the question "How do we convince these people that a SWAP/RAM disk [i got tired of typing the long version] is a bad idea?:" We laugh at it and make fun of it long enough that they finally are humiliated into realizing that it's a dumb idea.
I just can't wait for the next self-proclaimed computer expert to tell me that a SWAP file on a RAM disk is a good thing... I'll get another dose of those good ole endorphins with the ensuing laughter. My programmer still can't believe somebody went to the trouble of a RAM disk for a swap file...
And maybe this is the answer to the question "How do we convince these people that a SWAP/RAM disk [i got tired of typing the long version] is a bad idea?:" We laugh at it and make fun of it long enough that they finally are humiliated into realizing that it's a dumb idea.
I'm going to say something just to keep this funny lil' thread going. We all know that Windows needs a swap file and that if you let Windows manage the swap file that it will constantly shrink and grow. What some of us may not know is that even if you have 8m-768m of ram WINDOWS WILL STILL MAKE A SWAP FILE. Sure the swap file may be only a couple of megs but the swap file is still there. NOW I can see if you have an ungodly amount of memory and if you carefully monitor your swap file using swap file monitoring programs and if you notice that you almost never swap to the disk because of your ungodly amount of ram. Then what the hell stick that swap file on your RAM drive. Heck...if ya think about it it'll also be more secure, since your swap file will not be left behind for sneaks like me to snoop through.
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C:\Dos
C:\Dos\Run
\Run\Dos\Run
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C:\Dos
C:\Dos\Run
\Run\Dos\Run
I swear I was going to post the same thing this afternoon. I had the message written and everything. But at the last minute I backed out because I was afraid that the computer gods would eat me alive . No in actual reality I thought to myself if you had this much ram couldnt you just zero out the swap file? Then windows would be forced to just use the ram.
The thing is...Windows loves the swap file. Like I said before it'll make a swap file even if you don't need it. So I don't really think it would be a good idea to disable it. There's also another reason not to disable the swap file you never know when some ram guzzling program comes along cough--unreal cough tournament--and complains because you had your swap file set to a max and a min of 128.
What I wish someone would make is a program you could use to actually tell Windows what you want to put on the swap file. For instance in NT you can specify an option where you can disable kernel paging thereby decreasing HD access...mabye some bright programmer could make a program to do this?
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C:\Dos
C:\Dos\Run
\Run\Dos\Run
What I wish someone would make is a program you could use to actually tell Windows what you want to put on the swap file. For instance in NT you can specify an option where you can disable kernel paging thereby decreasing HD access...mabye some bright programmer could make a program to do this?
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C:\Dos
C:\Dos\Run
\Run\Dos\Run
For the last time (yeah, right)...
The purpose of the swap file is to make the OS and any apps think that there is more memory than actually exists in the computer.
This is because disk space is cheaper than RAM.
If you have gargantuan amounts of RAM in your machine (eg, several of my servers have 2Gb+ RAM), then setting the swap file to zero is the thing to do. That way the OS won't swap.
Remember - the less RAM an OS has, the more it will want to swap.
Making a RAM disk will encourage the OS to swap, because it have less RAM. Putting the swap file on the RAM disk is like p1ssing in the wind...
How much clearer can I make this?
The purpose of the swap file is to make the OS and any apps think that there is more memory than actually exists in the computer.
This is because disk space is cheaper than RAM.
If you have gargantuan amounts of RAM in your machine (eg, several of my servers have 2Gb+ RAM), then setting the swap file to zero is the thing to do. That way the OS won't swap.
Remember - the less RAM an OS has, the more it will want to swap.
Making a RAM disk will encourage the OS to swap, because it have less RAM. Putting the swap file on the RAM disk is like p1ssing in the wind...
How much clearer can I make this?
So you actually disable the swap file on your servers!!!???? I know performance is a must...but really...
I guess he could do that with 2gb of ram.
Wow! This is one of the most entertaining threads I have ever read on this forum! LOL!
However entertaining, I was not able to come up with the answer I was looking for. I have 128 megs of RAM.. what should I do with my SWAP file? (ByronT, I promise I won't put it on my RAM!) lol.
However entertaining, I was not able to come up with the answer I was looking for. I have 128 megs of RAM.. what should I do with my SWAP file? (ByronT, I promise I won't put it on my RAM!) lol.
Whoa! A convert!!! No way. One person who finally is using their head!
Actually, on my way home tonight from my fiancee's, I was thinking of what you could actually use a RAM disk - with the sole reason being performance. Believe it or not, I came up with 1 usage (in terms of my usage.)
Before I give the "one", let me kill some of the bad usages of a RAM disk. First, the SWAP file (dumbest of all) - but no more said about that. Second, a temp directory - some people don't realize that MS in all of it's glorious knowledge does have some installation scenarios where they place files in the system TEMP directory and then reboots - accessing those supposedly saved TEMP dir files after the reboot. Guess what happens if you put your TEMP dir on a RAM disk. Third, games/CDs copied to the RAM drive. This has some positives - but your negatives are the same as the SWAP file - if the game really needs memory (see Unreal Tournament), you just stole gobs of memory from it.
The one that I came up with? Placing MP3 or WAV files on a RAM disk for playback. The truth is that this is the only application that I can think of that would have a decent benefit from running from the RAM disk. MP3 files require constant HD reads - and by placing the MP3 files on the RAM disk, you would guarantee no skipping caused by other HD access. Of course, I would forget about running any processor/memory intensive program at the same time... So I would say that if you have the computer (with say 512MB RAM) and you are working in the room with the computer - but not on the computer - yeah, placing MP3 files on a RAM disk could be pretty cool.
Now, if you're about to do that. Give me your computer. I actually could use that extra RAM - and the extra processing power that you probably sprung for when you bought the beast.
Regards... (and the thread lives on!!!)
Actually, on my way home tonight from my fiancee's, I was thinking of what you could actually use a RAM disk - with the sole reason being performance. Believe it or not, I came up with 1 usage (in terms of my usage.)
Before I give the "one", let me kill some of the bad usages of a RAM disk. First, the SWAP file (dumbest of all) - but no more said about that. Second, a temp directory - some people don't realize that MS in all of it's glorious knowledge does have some installation scenarios where they place files in the system TEMP directory and then reboots - accessing those supposedly saved TEMP dir files after the reboot. Guess what happens if you put your TEMP dir on a RAM disk. Third, games/CDs copied to the RAM drive. This has some positives - but your negatives are the same as the SWAP file - if the game really needs memory (see Unreal Tournament), you just stole gobs of memory from it.
The one that I came up with? Placing MP3 or WAV files on a RAM disk for playback. The truth is that this is the only application that I can think of that would have a decent benefit from running from the RAM disk. MP3 files require constant HD reads - and by placing the MP3 files on the RAM disk, you would guarantee no skipping caused by other HD access. Of course, I would forget about running any processor/memory intensive program at the same time... So I would say that if you have the computer (with say 512MB RAM) and you are working in the room with the computer - but not on the computer - yeah, placing MP3 files on a RAM disk could be pretty cool.
Now, if you're about to do that. Give me your computer. I actually could use that extra RAM - and the extra processing power that you probably sprung for when you bought the beast.
Regards... (and the thread lives on!!!)
Byron...
Sorry to p1ss on your bonfire, rain on your parade, etc, but...
Most MP3/WAV software has some sort of selectable "buffering" option - that is, they'll read x% or y seconds of the data into RAM, instead of streaming directly off the disk.
NEXT!
Sorry to p1ss on your bonfire, rain on your parade, etc, but...
Most MP3/WAV software has some sort of selectable "buffering" option - that is, they'll read x% or y seconds of the data into RAM, instead of streaming directly off the disk.
NEXT!
Yeah, I know...
I was just trying to come up with some scenario that these people hung up on RAM disks could use as an excuse. And it would still have been a lame excuse. Of course, I had sorta forgotten that WinAmp, RealJukebox, et al buffer the input.
And the thread rolls on....
I was just trying to come up with some scenario that these people hung up on RAM disks could use as an excuse. And it would still have been a lame excuse. Of course, I had sorta forgotten that WinAmp, RealJukebox, et al buffer the input.
And the thread rolls on....
Okay.......
So, If I have 128 megs of ram, how big should my SWAP file be? I have max and min both set at 200 right now.. is this good?
So, If I have 128 megs of ram, how big should my SWAP file be? I have max and min both set at 200 right now.. is this good?
OH ****! You have the AND the min set to 200? By doing so you have limited the amount of ram and the OS is gonna start thrashing disk like crazy cause the hard drive to catch on fire and send electrical pulses through the nieghbourhood causing each microwave to emit deadly rays killing all.
On a more serious note that sounds fine to me. I suggest everyone reads the FAQ and ntfaq.com they have a section on swap files. I have mine placed on two drivers, and i havwe a total of 256 MB (I have 128 RAM). This seems to work fine. IMO if your computer works and it works ok then you're swap file is probably fine.
On a more serious note that sounds fine to me. I suggest everyone reads the FAQ and ntfaq.com they have a section on swap files. I have mine placed on two drivers, and i havwe a total of 256 MB (I have 128 RAM). This seems to work fine. IMO if your computer works and it works ok then you're swap file is probably fine.
let win2k manage it and leave it alone!
