The reason for putting the swapfile on another drive is that IDE drives can't multitask (
AFAIK, SCSI drives can). So if an application was calling for some file or other (or writing to the drive) at the same time as reading/writing on the swapfile, it slows down. If the swapfile's on another drive, it can do both at the same time so even though my secondary drive is a bit slower than my primary drive, it'll still be faster overall (though of course it would be better if the secondary drive was as fast as the primary).
An important part of it though is that the drive with the swapfile on it isn't sharing the IDE cable that the primary drive is on. Then not only is it not worth doing, it'd be worse than just leaving it on the primary drive. Ideally, the drives shouldn't be sharing IDE cables whatsoever. To do that you need more than 2 IDE ports so either a motherboard with 4 IDE ports (like mine) or one with just 2 and a PCI card with another 2 ports on it. I only have 3 IDE devices at the mo (2 HD's and a CD drive) so I've got an IDE port to spare.
The reason for putting the swapfile on the first partition is that the start of the drive is the fastest part. This is because the start of the drive is physically on the outside of the drive which is spinning faster than the inside of the drive. That's why my games will be nearer the start of the drive than my applications as they have more of a performance need (in my case, games are what this whole thread is about
).
With only one hard drive, the best thing is to put the swapfile at the start of it. It's it a bit tricky to give it it's own partition though as Windows will want to install to the first partition. Oh yeah, the reason for giving the swapfile it's own partition is to stop it getting fragmented and mixed-up with other files which makes it less efficient and slower. I think the usual way is to make the swapfile a fixed size and then use a third-party utility to move it to the start of the drive. Then because the swapfile is a fixed size, it can't get fragmented.
You can get a better and more detailed explanation from
here (click next at the bottom of the page to advance through the article).
Quote:
|
Best Wishes on your endeavors!
|