Guidance required: does a permanent swap file help

[Guest]

I am installing a 20GB disk, dual boot, win ME & 2K.
Should I make a partition of 1 GB, FAT32, cluster size 16K, as the second partition and keep the windows swap files on it? Min and max size 1GB??
Will it affect performance? Is there any good guide or article on creating the best workable partitions on the net?
I would be installing the ME on C drive, and the win 2K on E drive with the swap files on the D partition.
Please help.
anil.

 

[Lucol]

You'd be far better off if you place both WinMe and Win2K swap files on the first partition. File access is much faster at the beginning of the drive.

 

[Ncogneto]

yes this will help as windows no longer has to manage your swap file. This exspecially helps when your drive becomes fragmented, having a seperate partition for swap file avoids this. Ultimately it is best to have a seperate drive on a different controller for your swap file drive. This allows access to both drives at the same time.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

 

[Guest]

Yeah, sounds a good idea.
Another idea, when trying for dual boot, why not make the first partition (C) as a 1 GB partition and keep the boot files and the swap files there.
Then install 2K on D and ME on E.
What should be the swap file size set at? As large a size as possible or is it detrimental to go beyond 21/2 times the RAM?
What should be the minimum size specified....should we keep it 0 or should we set it at the maximum limit?
thanks.

 

[Ncogneto]

Well, I really think you ought to consider this option. Get another drive like the one you already have. Install it as secondary master ( assuming the one you have is primary master) On each drive partition approx a 1 gig partition on each drive at the beginning. This gives you a C drive and d drive on the primary master and a E drive and a f drive on the secondary master. On d install windows me and use e as its swap file ( e is on a different ide bus). Install win 2 k on F and for it use c as the swap file drive. this way you keep your swap file drive and Os drive always on different controllers thus giving you better performance. You can with this set which drive you want to boot to via bios ( slight hassle but not to hard) use a boot loader or even get one of the new switches out there ( haven't tried this yet myself).

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!

 

[Guest]

primary partitions will always get drive letters before extended partitions in Win9X/ME. You have to work with it to change them in Win2k. But it would create some confusion for you if you did. You could still do that, it would just be C&D as the swap partitions.



***Hey I run Intel... but let's get real***

 

[Ncogneto]

Good point, I did leave that out however the process remains the same and it should work just fine. I never have set a dual boot system up myself I just have one computer with ME and one with 2k and another with 98Se so on and so on. The point is to always be using a swap file drive on a different drive then the OS you are currently running, allowing faster acces to the swap file drive itself. This way the head of the drive does not have to keep moving across the platter to access the swap file partition and back again and it also allows simultaneous access as long as the two drives are on different IDE channels.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing!