Paging File vs. Scratch Disk

X
Posted By
xz501
Nov 26, 2003
Views
503
Replies
9
Status
Closed
Do they need to be on different Physical drives for optimal performance?

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DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 26, 2003
I think the theoretical answer is yes, but I question how noticeable the difference is in real time, particularly once you consider all the other things that affect one’s perception of performance. If you have a RAID configuration, differences may become more pronounced and I’m not sure what placement of page file and scratch disk is recommened for RAID.

That said, I figure if you’ve got multiple drives, then go for it. That is the approach I take, on the assumption that it certainly shouldn’t worsen performance. Plus, if you let Windows manage your page file and leave it on your sytem drive, then that page file is prone to becoming fragmented and risk a performance hit on your system, although I’m again unsure just how obvious that is having never taken that approach myself.

I have four drives in my system and configure the first partition of #1 for the Windows O/S installation and other select programs, the first partition of #2 is exclusively for the page file, and the first partition of #3 is for the PS scratch disk. My slowest drive is #4 and is used for miscellaneous data, backup, and installation files.

Regards,

Daryl
X
xz501
Nov 27, 2003
Thanks Daryl

I am a network admin trying to set this up for a Graphic Company. on multi drive systems I am setting up

Drive 1 OS
Drive 2 Data
Drive 3 paging
Drive 4 Scratch.

but they do have some machines with single disks.. I guess I will partition it in 2 four partitions and follow my original setup, what do you think? Other recommendations for single drives? or even two drive machines?
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 27, 2003
How much value there is to splitting a drive into 4 partitions and following a similar approach as with 4 independent drives, I’m not sure. I see nothing wrong with the approach however and would quite likely do the same thing, just keeping the page file and scratch disk partitions down in size sufficient to accommodate their intent. If the graphics company deals with large files, then I’d guess your scratch disk might need to be on the order of 4GB or so. For the pagefile, perhaps twice the total RAM in the system. Others I’m sure could give better advice on that issue.

Regards,

Daryl
CC
Chris_Cox
Nov 27, 2003
4 partitions – no value other than keeping them less fragmented.

The performance would be much greater with independent drives.
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 27, 2003
see nothing wrong with the approach however and would quite likely do the same thing,

exactly what chris said, above. maybe less performance. that suckers gonna be chugging back and forth across partitions to get to the paging and scratch files all day long.
JJ
Jay Jhabrix
Nov 28, 2003
wrote:

Plus, if you let Windows manage your page file and leave it on your sytem drive, then that page file is prone to becoming fragmented and risk a performance hit on your system, although I’m again unsure just how obvious that is having never taken that approach myself.

Ideally, the min and max size of the pagefile should be identical…. that ensures that the pagefile is always in a single contiguous location.

The size of the file? General wisdom is that it should be 1.5 times the size of your RAM. In cases of very little RAM (like i think 256mb and below) you’d need to increase this to 2 to 2.5 times.

I have four drives in my system and configure the first partition of #1 for the Windows O/S installation and other select programs, the first partition of #2 is exclusively for the page file, and the first partition of #3 is for the PS scratch disk. My slowest drive is #4 and is used for miscellaneous data, backup, and installation files.

Daryl… please don’t forget that the (other) drive on the same IDE channel as #4 will only run as fast as #4. (Unless i’m misssing something here?)

Cheers…

JJ
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
Nov 28, 2003
Jay,

Thanks for pointing that out…it may be something to keep in mind for the next system I build, unless that isn’t true of Serial ATA which would likely be the direction I go.

However, my present system has the 1st three drives as SCSI drives, while #4 is an IDE. I know mixing SCSI types will limit peformance to that of the slowest type in use, but do you know if what you’ve mentioned here for IDE drives is also true for SCSI?

Thanks,

Daryl
JJ
Jay Jhabrix
Nov 28, 2003
wrote:

Welcome 🙂

that isn’t true of Serial ATA which would likely be the direction I go.

No idea 🙁

of the slowest type in use, but do you know if what you’ve mentioned here
for IDE drives is also true for SCSI?

Definitely applies to IDE… (wasn’t sure about SCSI, but you’ve now confirmed it). Which is why one should never have CD drives on the same IDE (SCSI?) channel as a hard disk. HDD will run (data thruput will be) at the same speed as the CD drive.

Cheers…

JJ
X
xz501
Nov 29, 2003
Thank you all for your input

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