Putting the page/swap file in RAM instead of on HD?

[Ken B. 0]

I've seen utilities that allow you to section off some of your RAM and turn it into a drive letter. This means it's volatile (erases when the computers turns off), but for a page file (swap file), would not this be a great idea??? Have your swap file, say 512MB, in super fast RAM???

 

I'm thinking of upping from 512MB to 1Gig and using half of it for a swap file. I'd hate to use another hard drive just for swap file. I do Video and audio work.

 

Any drawbacks to this idea???

[Ken B. 0]

That stinks. Just looked up that Ramdisk you mention and their smallest unit at 1GB is a freakin $1000. Too rich for my blood, but thanks for the detailed info Alec, it is appreciated. I guess I'll just stuff my page file on another hard drive. Better than nothing.

[Jerry Atrik 0]

i tried the cenatek ramdisk. they updated it so it could work for u like that.

it uses system memory like the one alec wrote.

i use a 1 gig ramdrive for my volitile work drive.

[Ken B. 0]

Alec,

 

Do you have a list of exactly what files and services should be put onto a second drive, aside from the page file? I use Win2000 (SP4). I'm kinda new at this. ;(

 

Oh, one other question, Alec: Do I have to have THREE harddrives for all this? One for OS and apps, one for page file etc, one for Video/Audio files?? It would kinda suck to have three hard drives going. It will increase my power consumption and noise from my system! ARGH!

[duhmez 0]

you can use system ram and benefit, but you need special configuration. i tried before "ramdisk nt"

it has an option to use excluded ram. this means, windows doe snot know the other ram is there, say exclude 512 ram and kep 512 live. windows wont know the ram s there, but it will be a drive letter, and ready for swapfile. to generally iuse a pagefiule for swapfile, the problem is windows sees the paged ram as being used ram, which makes it think most of the ram is used to it will page even more.

 

got it?

 

you need to use excluded ram to have this work. ramdisknt does it quite well. 92k/xp support too of course.

[Ken B. 0]

Alec, just 3 more questions and I think I will be done, if you don't mind.

 

Is it a bad idea to put the page file and my large audio and video files on the same seperate disk? Or should I keep the audio/video files on their own disk? Big performance differences???

 

Also, What about duhmez' idea above, the ramdisk NT program that blocks off system memory so that the system won't know the blocked off memory is there?

 

Finally, if I use a second disk for the page file, does it need to be comparable in spec to the main drive, or can it be an older slower disk, or even a notebook disk and still get good disk speed improvements?

 

Thanks Alec, you are da best!!!

[jmmijo 1]

One thing you have to ask about your current config here Ken B is, how large or the video data files you're currently working with ?!?

 

If they are large files, 1GB plus then I would look at adding a lot more RAM to your system, basically add more then you need currently so as to maximize your system ram use before paging.

 

Another option is to use a reg/system tweak app like X-Setup that would allow you to set the OS to use all/most available ram before paging.

 

Anytime you have to page it will slow the machine down, no matter how fast your I/O and HD subsystem happens to be

[Ken B. 0]

jmmijo,

 

If I use X-setup like you say, what will happen to the ram that was being used by the programs?

 

Also, my video files can be up 10GB files for a finished product (a 35 minute segment), my audio can be about 250MB files. Not sure how big individual clips are, probably less than a GB most of the time, per clip.

[Ken B. 0]

Aw man, I'm sorry Alec, one more.

 

How big do page files get usually? I remember there is the option of letting windows decide how to size-resize the page files, or force it to stay within certain parameters. I hate to use an 80GB drive for page files that might be only 1GB. I can put all page, temp, log etc files on this one disk, though, correct?

 

I do have 3 disks available, I'm just wondering if my system will be able to handle it (heat and noise), and if it will be overkill. I guess I'll find out. I'm using FDB drives.

[jmmijo 1]

Quote:

Sorry to "steal-your-fire" here jmmijo, but since I am here replying to him, I might as well answer:


* @ this place in REGEDIT.EXE? You will see the LargeSystemCache set to 0 by default on workstation/pro models of NT based Os' like NT/2000/XP/2003 etc. which means MORE RAM goes "free" for programs to access... if you set it to 1 (default on server Os type/models iirc)? The cache gets more "free RAM" allocated to it by default...



(I'd be willing to bet that is the area that particular tweak is working on in the X-Setup program, a mass registry re-writer like TweakUI, Fresh UI & the like work on reparameterizing system setup values!)

APK

No problem APK

As for your system config Ken B., you may want to look at adding some extra RAM as it's pretty darn cheap now a days. The thing is it will not slow down your system performance and you maybe able to tweak it a bit to gain some extra performance, here's how.

If your machine can take up to 2GB of RAM via 512MB modules then you can adjust your pagefile size to say a static 1GB min & max and then reboot after adjusting this. Once you reboot, try out your video app and see how things work. See if there are any slowdowns or even if it seems to be working faster.

I myself also prefer static pagefiles rather then dynamic ones. Basically once you get above 1GB of physical memory you tend to need less of a pagefile to handle any overflow

So what kind of motherboard do you have again ?!?

[Ken B. 0]

jmmijo,

 

I have a Abit KG-7 RAID with a 2400+ Athlon XP on it. It's running with 266Mhz FSB, and the board is capable of up to 3.5GB of RAM, but only registered type in the high an amount. I'm using ECC non-registered, now.

 

I just bought an extra 256MB module for 512MB total, and a 120GB drive. I will probably just use three drives instead of doing the RAM thing, because I don't have any extra money to buy more RAM. I'll let you know how my system performs when it is finally finished upgrades.

[jmmijo 1]

One thing I noticed with my upgraded gaming rig is that a RAID 0 array with a pair of SATA drives really does make things faster, not just the OS loads but pretty much everything

 

I have two boxes, one is the Server/Workstation that I'm typing on now and the other is strictly for gaming so it doesn't have a lot of the extra crap running in the background nor any of the fluff that Microsoft includes with XP Pro.

 

Of course my gaming rig is a P4-3GHz with a matched pair of 512MB modules and this does make the system much faster then it was when running a 2.53Ghz running at the slower 533MHz FSB.

 

As for your Athlon system, my server is running a 2600+ Barton core on an Asus A7N8X Deluxe board with a matching pair or DDR333. It's a snappy little setup but I do sometimes see some slugishness, but only when I'm trying to run a game like Diablo II at the same time the server is running

[Ken B. 0]

jmmijo,

 

I can't wait to get this hard disk setup properly. I just hooked up my three drives. 2 are fluid bearings and one is ball (an IBM 60GXP). I will be selling the IBM and getting another fluid unit tomorrow. Even with the ones I have, after hooking up all three, they were extremely quiet. The only one that stuck out sound-wise was the IBM ball bearing unit. Not loud, but louder than the fluid bearings. Man, those fluid bearings must be silky. I had to put my ear up to it to even tell if it was spinning.

 

I'll keep you guys updated.

 

Is there any benchmark utility I should use to mark out the difference between my current setup and the new one I'll do this weekend with the three drives?

[overworked 0]

When looking at RAM drives you might check out this link

 

http://www.hyperos2002.com/07042003/products.htm

 

They have a couple of rather expensive hardware solutions but, they also offer a software product that basically lets you spawn-off volatile copies of your OS. It's a really interesting concept!

 

I was playing with the idea of putting a thumb drive on a system to cache the pagefile to but I started looking at the through put numbers and hard drives are still a better, cheaper solution. If you have lots of memory in a system, you might just make the page file small enough to force the system to use memory....