re: Paging file & external drive
Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 10:58 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Alex
(86 messages posted)
OK, I got the message loud and clear :)
I will leave it on C: and allow the system to manage its size.
Thank you!
Alex
On Wednesday, October 15, 2008 at 10:14 am, C K wrote:
>You never want to put a paging file on an external, and especially not on a firewire.
> Firewire interfaces seem to have more issues than USB. I've seen many machines
>that have had issues where the connection would drop unexpectedly, and the machine
>would have to be rebooted once or twice to get it back. It is a known issue with
>firewire. USB is less problematic, but can still drop. You also are adding traffic
>to a buss that the internal drives won't use and will slow down the page file access.
> The internal drives work in DMA (Direct Memory Access) mode and actually bypass
>the CPU to communicate with the physical memory when data needs to be moved thus
>reducing the CPU load especially when other apps need it more.
>
>The FSB (Front Side Buss) on your machine can be a big bottleneck if you are trying
>to move to much data on it (you have an older slower buss), and data moving to or
>from a drive that can't work in a native DMA mode slows everything down, and can/will
>totally choke your system depending on what is being called for by your applications.
> In this case, the drive is in DMA mode (between the interface and the drive), but
>the firewire interface isn't working in DMA mode, because it requires the CPU to
>be involved. This is why a USB CD/DVD burner can be slowed down and even stopped
>in some cases, and produce more coasters if you are trying to do other tasks with
>the machine IME, even if it has burn proof technology in it (as they all do now).
>
>If your external disconnects for any reason, Windows (W2K or XP makes no difference
>which one) will hang and crash IME (W2K is worse). This can result in a system
that
>won't boot in a worst case scenerio and sometimes won't be able to be repaired IME.
>
>As for the size, let Windows manage it unless you have an application that requires
>a set size, as some do. Setting it to big requires Windows to manage a resource
>that is to large and it can actually slow down your system. Physical memory corrolates
>to virtual memory (physical memory is asigned "spaces" in virtual memory plus a
>little spare) so having it many times larger than the physical memory doesn't add
>any speed and actually is worse for Windows from a management standpoint.
>
>The only real advantage to a user set size page file is that it won't fragment or
>at least will have fewer fragments than when Windows manages the page file. You
>won't notice a difference unless you are using applications that require a different
>virtual memory management scheme.
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