swap (noobie question)

I'm thinking of increasing my swap partition, which is easy enough. but I've recently read up on how to also make a swap file. I was wondering; what are the pros and cons of using a swap file vs a swap partition?

Without knowing your system setup I have found that the best configuration if possible is creating swap partitions on each individual hard drive. The old discussion rages as to the size of it, but I normally reserve 1GB on each drive. I have 700 odd meg of RAM in my machine.
The pro for a swap partition is that it is dedicated purely to that function and therefore the read speed is no slowed by having to process other irrelevant data.

For the best description of swap space and the reason for it, an oldie but goodie is on the RedHat Linux page here.

The next page tells you how to create either via the command line.

The question is, do you really need more swap space?

Of course, if you have a large hard drive and space to use...