Any performance benefit?

[Rubber Bullets]

I have 2 HD in my computer.

a 20GB ata66, and a 40GB ATA100.

Currently they are on the same IDE channel. There is no point pairing them with CD writer and DVD drives, I know this, but to get max performance I have read that I should have my swap file on a different HD and controller.

So the question is, do I get any performance boost from buying a PCI card, IDE controller and attaching my 20GB drive to that?

Otherwise I have a KR7A-133 mobo, (no problems yet Skyler )
Win XP pro
Athlon XP2000+
1x 512Mb DDR2100 Ram


Thanks

s

 

[caLLous]

If you'd thought ahead you could have bought yourself a KR7-A-RAID and had the onboard controller.

But, in theory, it makes sense to have the swap file on a different IDE channel to the boot disk.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Thanks Callous,

TBH I have been kicking myself ever since I bought the board that I didn't get the RAID version. I just thought that I didn't need the RAID and didn't think any further d'oh


Still I just wondered if I would notice the performance boost.

s

 

[xane]

TBH you'd be better spending money on more RAM to avoid using the swapfile in the first place

 

[kameleon]

the recommendation is that you put the swap file on your fastest drive. are you using a blue ide cable for the drives?

 

[Rubber Bullets]

More RAM is on the list cam, but more expensive than the PCI card. One day I'll have both but for now it's the PCI card I can afford.

Kameleon, it should be on the fastest drive, yes, but should also be on a different drive to the app and OS (and if poss on a different controller), is that right as well? I'm just looking for the best way to do it with what I've got.

My cables are not blue, and TBH I have no idea what the implications of that are

s

 

[kameleon]

sorry i should have made myself clear (ive been up all night)

it doesnt matter if the os is on the same hdd but it should be the fastest drive you have. if say you have 1 os on the 66 ata hdd you should have the swap file on the 100 ata drive (if they are both running the same file system)

when i said blue cable i meant blue plug the faster ata ide cable has a blue plug. if you are running on a normal plug youll only get ata 33 anyway

but to be honest you should have no problems at all with 512 mb of ram anyway

 

[Dimebag]

TBH you'd be better spending money on more RAM to avoid using the swapfile in the first place

Is that meant to be a joke? You try turning the windows swapfile off with 512 mb ram, or even running with 1gb of ram or more. It dies instantly down to a crawl.

Why not run your system disk and dvd player on one channel, the 1st channel, and run your 2nd harddisk and cd writer on the other?

Surely this would solve your probs of having the swapfile on another drive, on another controller?

I doubt it will really give you an awful lot of increase in the first place to be honest. I run my system off an ata 66 drive with the swapfile on the same disk, aint nothing wrong with it!

Also you dont need more ram, 512 is fine. Unless you are using your machine for stupidly mem hungry apps?

Dime

 

[xane]

I never implied turning off the swapfile. The more RAM you have the less likely the swapfile is to be needed, although I'd have to admit that moving above 512MB is unlikely to improve by that much.

Swapfile optimization is overrated anyhow, the system uses files, both temporary and permanent, from all over the disk, if the swapfile was the sole use of an entire disk then I'd see the point but as soon as any other file is accessed on the same device the positioning is lost and the performance benefits dissappear.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Thanks a lot for those answers.

Bizarrely my second drive seems to have died, making it all a bit academic

But thanks anyway.

s

 

[caLLous]

This is what you want.

 

[Wilier]

YAY, got my bid in with 3 mins to go.

$25000, they are a fecking bargain.

 

[Skyler]

lucky