Virtual memory??

[dps]

Hello,

I think my virtual memory setting is totally screwed.

I want to get the best optimal setting for performance but I also want "more space" allocated to D: drive.

Currently my details are ; -

Win NT 4.0

DRIVE USED FREE CAPACITY
C 513mb 2.63Gb 3.13Gb
D 2.88Gb 121mb 3.00Gb
E 599mb 2.34Gb 2.92Gb

Can anyone help me??

 

[Svensson]

Hello dps!
Virtual memory is what the operating system uses when the RAM memory is full. The swap file, which is what Windows uses to store virtual memory on disk, should be placed on the fastest harddrive. But if you have a harddrive that is a little bit slower but isnt used as much as the other one, you can gain performance if you place it on that one. If your drives, C,D and E is on the same physical disk, it doesnt mather which one you place the swap file on.

Take Care
Daniel Svensson

 

[cdogg]

Since you have more than one partition or hard disk, defrag the E: drive first. Better yet, move all your files off the E: drive over to the C: drive temporarily. Then, set your virtual memory on the E: drive with the min and max equal to twice the amount of RAM in the system. After rebooting, move the files you temporarily placed on the C: drive back over to E:

If done correctly, you'll have a "fixed" block of virtual memory at the beginning of the E: drive. This will ensure that it's not fragmented. Also, read times are faster at the beginning of a drive versus the end (though you might not notice a big difference).

 

[dps]

OK - right - But would you be able to inform me how I can saftley increase the size of D:?

Also I forgot to mention in previous - The total gig space is 20gb but as you can see above that is not showing.
Also I am not too (comforatble) sure of moving files and folders and all over to another drive as I recently installed some softwera which I can no longer get hold of; that may winge. currently this software is on that D: drive.

I beileve all I need now is to have that 20 Gb spread nicly over the three drives and that should cure my problem as currently due to the messup, I have ended up with less space avaible on the D:\ drive.

Maybe there is a utility to re-configure the space requiremenst??

 

[Kjonnnn]

is your D: NTFS?

 

[teknikal]

So, these three partitions C:, D:, and E: are showing only a total of approx 9GB in capacity, but you're saying it's a 20GB hard drive? What OS are you using?

I'm a little confused here. If this is true, hopefully you have a cd-burner which would make the fix easy. Make an image of each drive to cd (many apps can do this, I recommend Norton's Ghost) then format the hard drive.

 

[dps]

Kjonn - Yes I believe it is NTFS as I see this when the PC boots up and also somewhere else - cannot remember where. Is there a way I can confirm this?

 

[dps]

Teknikal - I am on NT 4.0.

I do not have a cd burner.

Ok - but can anyone inform me that if I have 20gb and three drives, what is the best settings for each of these drives with respect to the Virtual memory and is there not a utility to allocate space as appropriate to these drives, so that I can get some more space for D:\??

 

[InsanityRmx]

Partition Magic allows you to resize and move partitions along with their data. It's the easiest way to do this without shuffling things all over your disk and rebuilding partitions from scratch. Works on NTFS or DOS.

If you use the fdisk command at a DOS prompt and pick the 'veiw' option, it will show the file system type of all your partitions without changing anything.

Your virtual memory (swap) setting is becoming less important for tuning as hardware gets better, IMHO. The 'old' rules for setting it usually applied to systems with less memory than current systems. If you have 128MB or more of RAM, just let windows manage it dynamically on the default drive. Your system should be using it so infrequently that optimization is pointless. I've heard a lot of arguments for certain techniques, but they're ususually based on artificial conditions rarely encountered in everyday use.

There's actually a good argument against having a big fixed swap file: whether you're usuing it or not, windows wastes RAM holding and index of all the disk sectors reserved for the swap file. Try it. Set a 500MB swap file, reboot, and watch your available RAM shrink. Another problem is that fixed swap files seem particulary prone to corruption when your machine crashes. I rarely see my ol' buddy scandisk since I just let windows manage my virtual memory dynamically. No noticable affect on fragmentation or performance, either. Of course, YMMV.

Tweaking virtual memory buys you little unless you're working with 32 or 64MB systems, or are constantly using huge spreadsheets or have twenty-five windows open for some reason. Just my opinion, but I don't (and wouldn't) bother tweaking it.

 

[Kjonnnn]

You can confirm it be looking under Disk Administrator under Administrator Tools.

 

[dps]

InsanityRMX - Thanks for the response. On ny NT I do not believe there is the option (like in Win 95) for the system to manage the virtual memory.

Right so I take it that Partition Magic is a goog option for me and that there is nothing similar available as default (or standard) with NT.

I shall seek out this utitlity and see if there is a free download somewhere.

Virtual memory - well will not bother will that - yet!

Thanks!!!

 

[CitrixEngineer]

I'd like to see evidence that Virtual Memory is becoming less important

NT depends on Virtual Memory just as much as any other operating system post DOS 6.2x

I studied this area in depth for a thesis, and it would appear that the more memory you add to a system, the more you need a pagefile/swapfile. The Virtual Memory Manager will put stuff into the swapfile on a "just in case" basis, and, depending on the algorithms, it wil put stuff there just because it's been in RAM for a preset period of time. Windows NT uses a combination of both (and others). The bigger the map of RAM it needs to keep, the bigger the index, hence more space is needed on a system with a large amount of RAM.

A static swapfile is the best option, because it prevents Windows VMM from actively resizing the thing while you're working, and prevents fragmentation, as was pointed out above. It should be placed in a contiguous area on a freshly defragmented hard disk to prevent the problems InsanityRmx was experiencing.

I've written an FAQ on Virtual Memory, based on my early notes, on this forum. Much of the information is from lecture notes and technical sites, most of which I can provide links to. It's by no means perfect, but some of the information may be useful.

For CD burning especially, swapfile optimisation is important. The image is spooled into two places almost simultaneously, because you probably don't have the RAM for an entire CD. Even if you did, it would still be spooled in

1) The Burning software's temp dir (which should ideally be contiguous space)

2) The swap file.

I hope this helps

 

[dps]

Thank you for that. Ok so it is important and because I have 262mb RAM and a 20Gb hard disk I do need to correctly configure the virtual mem. Can someone please suggest the best settings in accordance with the settings given above or provide a step by step as this is totally unfamiliar teritory and I would apprciate this as appossed to going out digging it up and reading it up.

Also can someone inform me where I can get a free download copy of partition Magic??