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From: hd7x@vax5.cit.cornell.edu (Sanjay Aiyagari)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: Best place for swapfiles
Message-ID: <1990Dec9.235337.1491@vax5.cit.cornell.edu>
Date: 10 Dec 90 03:53:37 GMT
References: <50067@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>
Distribution: comp
Lines: 26

In article <50067@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU>,
v027ef3u@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Thomas L Daniels) writes:
> Couple of questions concerning the best time and place to creat swapfiles:
>
> 1) should they be on the same drive as data and other things which change and
> possibly fragment or should I stick it on my program partitions (80 meg drive
> split into 1 meg dos, 50 program 29 data)?
> 2) I seem to remember someone recommending installing windows and swapfile
> before anything else and then using Speed Disk to compact the whole thing
> followed by installing the rest of the programs.
The swap file must reside on contiguous (unfragmented) sectors on the hard
drive.  If your hard drive is highly fragmented, it will limit the size of the
swapfile to the largest unfragmented region.  The best solution is to first
remove the swapfile, then exit Windows and run Speed Disk, and then enter
Windows again and reinstate the swapfile.
As for the location, it seems to me that it would be better to put it on the
program partition since that partition would rarely change and thus rarely
fragment.  The important thing is not to change the physical location of the
swap file.  By putting it on a partition that doesn't get fragmented, you still
allow yourself the ability to run Speed Disk as much as you want on the data
partition without having to delete the swap file first.  (Note that you
probably can run Speed Disk anyway with a swap file present IF Speed Disk
refuses to move hidden files <I believe that is the case, isn't it?> But it
seems to me that maximum optimization would occur if you ran it without the
swap file present on the partition on which you run it).
Sanjay Aiyagari (hd7x@vax5.cit.cornell.edu)