On 28 Mar 2008, at 22:12, Alan Milnes wrote:
On 28/03/2008, Stroller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Your note is excellent but I disagree with this bit:-
If the PC is still slow then check disk-space, pagefile settings
("allow the system to manage pagefile size for me", click "set")
unless as a temporary workaround you should always have the paging
file set as a fixed size to avoid worsening the chronic
fragmentation problem on Windows.
I'm not arguing with you, but for me it depends on the user & usage &
stuff. Several years ago, before XP, I used to be a Windows "power
user" - I kept my pagefile on a separate disk and set it's size
manually. I even monitored usage in Task Manager (or was it one of
the utilities under "Administrative Tools"?) to see what actual
amount of swap was used, but was never convinced of the accuracy of
the results (it seemed so little). Whilst a pagefile of fixed size on
a separate disk may be the "best" way to configure a swap file, I
don't think it's optimal for most users.
There are times when someone else may work on the PC, and having the
swapfile on C: is simply what they'd expect to find, if they ever
need to mess with it. I generally like to have systems that I
configure for my Joe Sixpack customers to generally look "normal" and
"standard", so that there's ease of maintenance and so that
everything just "makes sense" if anyone else (probably less
experienced than I) works on it in the future.
Take, for example, partitioning - it's quite logical and correct to
have a separate partition for the C: drive and another, D:, for
users' files & folders; this protects users' documents on D: if
filesystem corruption occurs on C:, or if a Windows reinstall is
otherwise needed. But unfortunately this configuration needs more
maintenance in the future if one of the partitions becomes full -
experience tells me that there's always one user in the household who
will not understand to use D:, and that users will try uninstalling
programs and deleting their letters to free up space, if the system
starts complaining that the C: drive is full. I would prefer they
call me, so that I can delete something that's REALLY consuming
space, or resize partitions appropriately, but they often do not do
so, and with 5% or less free space the partition gets rapidly
fragmented and slows down considerably (to the extent that
defragmenter may be unable to do its job). When short of disk space
other users may right-click on the drive properties and choose
"compress files on this drive to save space" - this slows down the
system even more!
But I admit that - if the system has two drives installed already -
then putting the swapfile on the second drive is probably less of a
problem than my partitioning example. (Although, having said that, if
this user _does_ choose to have a D: drive and intends to use it for
something, then a pagefile.sys scattered amongst their music or video
files might be confusing, or simply considered clutter).
Just because you set the swapfile to a fixed size doesn't mean it's
not fragmented - admittedly, if you do set it to a fixed size, then
boot from another disk and defrag the drive then the pagefile should
never fragment in the future, but I'm not convinced of the cost-
benefit of doing so. A fragmented swapfile is only going to be a
problem (I think - please correct me if I'm wrong) if the system is
writing out a page of memory that spans multiple fragments. If the
swapfile is contained in only (for example) two fragments then how
often will this occur? I have no idea - and one of the reasons I gave
up Windows on my own machines is its the sort of thing that's
completely undocumented - but I'll bet it's not too often.
A swapfile of a fixed size is a compromise between consumption of
disk-space and the risk of running out of pagefile. I have customers
I don't see for two years, so what seems perfectly adequate for a
swapfile now may seem silly small when I next see them. Although I
don't tend to monitor swapfile sizes & usage, Windows memory
requirements have bloomed in that time - 2 years ago one might've
gotten away with 256megs of RAM, but I'm certainly recommending at
least 768meg now.
Considering the size of hard-drives these days I guess I'm being
silly in not simply allocating a fixed-size swapfile of 2gig (or even
4!) and trusting that that'll be adequate for the life of the
machine, but I don't like to waste space unnecessarily, and I'd just
far rather the machine said "out of virtual memory, increasing swap
file size" if it needs it.
To generalise, I have two kinds of customers - those who fragment
once a month, and those who never do. I don't think the slight
penalty of a fragmented swapfile is noticeable to either category.
Either their machine is quick enough, anyway, or it tends to
horrendous slowness. The risk / hassle of running out of swap space
is more considerable, IMO.
Like I say, I'm not saying you shouldn't set the swapfile to a fixed
size, I'm just saying it's horses-for-courses. I guess I'd recommend
setting the swapfile to a fixed size to readers of this list, whereas
I wouldn't to most of my customers.
Stroller.
--
gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
