If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

[yeaimcalm]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

It's also a good idea to reboot after you select "no page file" before setting the alternate drive. This will clear enwanted reg entrys.

[Lazy8s]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Having your pagefile stored on a 2nd disk (assuming that disk is of equal read/write/seek speed) should speed up loading on machines with little RAM, depending exactly on how much RAM you have and how much data you're loading

Having the pagefile on a different partition which is on the same physical disk wont help however, you're still reading and writing to the same disk.

If you're running 2Gb or more RAM I wouldn't bother moving your pagefile, although disabling the pagefile all togther while appearing clever often results in more problems and slow downs than any gains you get from it.

Remember moving and resizing the pagefile can be potentially problematic for a system, its best to know exactly what you're doing before you change anything, make sure you understand what it is you're doing and the possible side effects of doing it wrong, before you change anything.

This is why Microsoft suggests having 2 page files instead of moving it off the boot drive. By default Windows XP will use whichever page file has the fastest access time. So if you have your second pagefile on a diff drive on it's own connection Windows will use that, but the boot partition pagefile is still there to write errors to and the like. The link supporting this is in my first post.

[Robske007a]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Ur saying we all should have 2 pagefiles. but what happens if the disk where BF2 is installed to, is the fastest one and I have installed a pagefile on that drive too. then were back to square one

[Painl3ss.NL]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

although disabling the pagefile all togther while appearing clever often results in more problems and slow downs than any gains you get from it.

Any ideas why this is / what kind of problems? I agree with your post, just like to understand the mechanics of it.

[Lazy8s]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

^^It's because the pagefile is a contiguous list of pages that are needing to be accessed for the program you're running. It has it's own File Allocation Table that is much smaller and more efficient than the one that tracks your entire hard disk. The seek time alone in the pagefile, even though it is on the hard disk, make it significantly faster than reading from the hard disk.

[Lazy8s]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

Ur saying we all should have 2 pagefiles. but what happens if the disk where BF2 is installed to, is the fastest one and I have installed a pagefile on that drive too. then were back to square one

Not necessecarily you should have 2 page files. I only use one. But IF you have 2 drives that are the same speed, IF they are on separate IDE channels, and IF you want the small increase, then yes you should have 2 page files. In the case you presented, yes, windows would probably use the pagefile on the faster drive in which case it wouldn't do anything for you really.

The idea of a page file on a second disk on a second IDE channel allows your IDE drives to basically act as a SCSI setup. A single SCSI drive can read and write because it can send info both ways on the same connection. That's why they are so much more expensive than IDE. Basically, you're using 2 IDE drives to simulate a SCSI drive (which is what most servers use).

[Painl3ss.NL]

Re: If you have 2HDS, low RAM, Verifing Time Solved!

^^It's because the pagefile is a contiguous list of pages that are needing to be accessed for the program you're running. It has it's own File Allocation Table that is much smaller and more efficient than the one that tracks your entire hard disk. The seek time alone in the pagefile, even though it is on the hard disk, make it significantly faster than reading from the hard disk.

I' not so sure that's true. It may be for a Linux system as it has a swap PARTITION and can optimise its internal organisation. But I thought in WinXP the pagefile is part of the normal file system and can even can be fragmented.