Swap file on RAM disk?
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I recently got a new machine at home (woot!). It has 1GB Ram. So I was wondering, what would happen if I were to: 1) reduce the swap file size to 512MB 2) create a RAM Drive and then set the swap file to exist on the RAM drive. Is this even possible on Win 2K/XP? Has anyone ever tried it? Does it really result in better performance results? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
I used to do something similar to this with ramdrive.sys back with 16-bit windows. I would create a 1MB RAM drive and point the TEMP and TMP environment variables to it. Compiles were blazingly fast.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
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I used to do something similar to this with ramdrive.sys back with 16-bit windows. I would create a 1MB RAM drive and point the TEMP and TMP environment variables to it. Compiles were blazingly fast.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
DavidCrow wrote: point the TEMP and TMP environment variables to it That's another idea: Is it possible in Win2k/XP to have the temp directories somewhere other than their default locations? For example could you remap to "c:\winnt\Temp" or "c:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Temp" to point to some other dir? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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Jim Crafton wrote: swap bactem with 1 GB or RAM, a 3.0 GHz P4 HT'd CPU, and a mobo with 800mhz FSB, to be just about instantaneous when switching between apps. So, use Linux. For those who have a good Linux machine, try the following experience: open an average sized program once (e.g., Firefox or some other browser). Close it. Open it again. Do this in Linux and do this in Windows. The speed difference is astonishing. I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
Daniel Turini wrote: use Linux Uhhm, ... wait for it... No :) ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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DavidCrow wrote: point the TEMP and TMP environment variables to it That's another idea: Is it possible in Win2k/XP to have the temp directories somewhere other than their default locations? For example could you remap to "c:\winnt\Temp" or "c:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Temp" to point to some other dir? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
Jim Crafton wrote: Is it possible in Win2k/XP to have the temp directories somewhere other than their default locations? Not only is it possible, that's what I have done on my machine. By default, they both point to the C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Temp folder. I changed them to be C:\Winnt\Temp instead.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
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Jim Crafton wrote: Is it possible in Win2k/XP to have the temp directories somewhere other than their default locations? Not only is it possible, that's what I have done on my machine. By default, they both point to the C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Local Settings\Temp folder. I changed them to be C:\Winnt\Temp instead.
"Opinions are neither right nor wrong. I cannot change your opinion. I can, however, change what influences your opinion." - David Crow
Ahh, so if a RAM disk were made for this, that might make a difference in perf, at least for stuff like compiling, etc ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
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I recently got a new machine at home (woot!). It has 1GB Ram. So I was wondering, what would happen if I were to: 1) reduce the swap file size to 512MB 2) create a RAM Drive and then set the swap file to exist on the RAM drive. Is this even possible on Win 2K/XP? Has anyone ever tried it? Does it really result in better performance results? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
I did a search on this a while ago. The consensus seems to be: - windows will always swap regardless of how much memory you have. - windows doesn't like to boot with a page file on a disk that doesn't exist - there are work arounds, but evidently there isn't much performance increase - it is worthwhile putting a temp dir on a ram disk so long as you are prepared to loose all the data on reboot - this is mainly an issue if you move the IE temp dir to the ramdisk where cookies you want to keep (that auto-login) will be erased on reboot. ...cmk Save the whales - collect the whole set
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I recently got a new machine at home (woot!). It has 1GB Ram. So I was wondering, what would happen if I were to: 1) reduce the swap file size to 512MB 2) create a RAM Drive and then set the swap file to exist on the RAM drive. Is this even possible on Win 2K/XP? Has anyone ever tried it? Does it really result in better performance results? ¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF!
HyperDrive III http://www.hyperos2002.com/?affid=19129[^] sort of does what you want but it doesn't share main memory...
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Jim Crafton wrote: swap bactem with 1 GB or RAM, a 3.0 GHz P4 HT'd CPU, and a mobo with 800mhz FSB, to be just about instantaneous when switching between apps. So, use Linux. For those who have a good Linux machine, try the following experience: open an average sized program once (e.g., Firefox or some other browser). Close it. Open it again. Do this in Linux and do this in Windows. The speed difference is astonishing. I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
Daniel Turini wrote: For those who have a good Linux machine, try the following experience: open an average sized program once (e.g., Firefox or some other browser). Close it. Open it again. On Windows, it opens almost immediately the second time I load it, hence I'm not sure what the point was? -- Andrew.
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Daniel Turini wrote: For those who have a good Linux machine, try the following experience: open an average sized program once (e.g., Firefox or some other browser). Close it. Open it again. On Windows, it opens almost immediately the second time I load it, hence I'm not sure what the point was? -- Andrew.
Andrew Peace wrote: On Windows, it opens almost immediately the second time I load it, hence I'm not sure what the point was? :sigh: People are so religious about this topic that it's hard to make any statement that does not start a flame war. Just to be clear: I never said that Windows is a piece of crap OS created by Micro$oft and that Linux is da 1337 software. Sorry for the rant, but I just received 5 flaming e-mails about how easier Windows is than Linux and about driver support. Ok. Now, for your answer. I bet you never tried it in Linux, otherwise you'd understand. Download a Knoppix CD and try it. In Linux, you'd not use the word "almost". Even on a 650Mhz machine with 256Mb RAM. My point was that Linux seems to take better advantage of huge ammounts of memory than Windows XP when it comes to avoid swapping. It's clearly faster. I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
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Andrew Peace wrote: On Windows, it opens almost immediately the second time I load it, hence I'm not sure what the point was? :sigh: People are so religious about this topic that it's hard to make any statement that does not start a flame war. Just to be clear: I never said that Windows is a piece of crap OS created by Micro$oft and that Linux is da 1337 software. Sorry for the rant, but I just received 5 flaming e-mails about how easier Windows is than Linux and about driver support. Ok. Now, for your answer. I bet you never tried it in Linux, otherwise you'd understand. Download a Knoppix CD and try it. In Linux, you'd not use the word "almost". Even on a 650Mhz machine with 256Mb RAM. My point was that Linux seems to take better advantage of huge ammounts of memory than Windows XP when it comes to avoid swapping. It's clearly faster. I see dead pixels Yes, even I am blogging now!
Daniel Turini wrote: People are so religious about this topic that it's hard to make any statement that does not start a flame war. Just to be clear: I never said that Windows is a piece of crap OS created by Micro$oft and that Linux is da 1337 software. Sorry for the rant, but I just received 5 flaming e-mails about how easier Windows is than Linux and about driver support. People do indeed get religious about this topic. I wasn't trying to flame you, I was simply asking if I'd missed something as I don't experience the Windows behaviour that you described. Daniel Turini wrote: I bet you never tried it in Linux, otherwise you'd understand. Download a Knoppix CD and try it. I've used Linux almost every day for the last six months, and on a semi-regular basis before then. It certinaly can be fast for some applications, though I must say in general I find it to be slower than my Windows installation. (This isn't necessarily a Linux issue but more a driver issue - I believe my graphics driver isn't a particularly good one, I have a Radeon Mobility 7500 (I think) card.) In terms of the particular speed metric you mention, I would have said that the systems were roughly equal. I would argue that Linux will load Firefox more quickly the first time you load it, hwoever. However, I'm not sure how fair or unfair such a comparison is, since Fedora Core 2 at least seems to come with some kind of binary prelinking operation scheduled to occur daily, which (and I've never really investigated exactly what it's doing) may spoil the results, even if only by not taking into account the massive slow down whilst this operation is taking place. -- Andrew.