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Swap files and RAID

H

heelix

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 2, 2004
Messages
1,085
I’m a couple shipments away from building my next box. Question on where to put the swap file for Win32. I’m going to have 2x Raptors in RAID 0 for my primary drive, and 2x barracudas in RAID 1 for all the data. Normally, I would put the swap file on a separate drive. Past boxes were SCSI, but were it IDE it would go on a separate channel.

So, the question is – is that still the case when you do RAID 0? A separate partition on the RAID 0 array ideal, or better to park it on the ‘slower’ data drive on another set of SATA channels?
 
if you are spending that much money on a computer you should be able to aford enough RAM so that it won't be using virtual memory much... just leave it on the RAID 0 array... either way, it won't make a lick of difference...
 
Plan on 2G of physical RAM (4x512M). I do a lot of VMWare work, so the swap will get hit and lots of normal IO as well. 1G chips are stupid expensive, with painful CAS ratings for the stuff that was close to my budget. Work picked up the HDD's , so $660+ was on their nickel. Seems the 150G of backup tapes and NAS space I was using was costing real money... :D
 
remember RAID access time is the same, raid is only faster if its a strait unbuffered read/write for large files. (DVD movie copying) just get 1.5GB - 2GB of ram and disable swap
 
If he's running VMWare with any sort of load on it, disabling swap isn't going to be an option, he's going to need at least some. Just leave it on the Raptors and be done with it

The OP complained that 1GB DIMMs typically are higher latency - by a whopping 5ns, compared to at least 5ms for read serivce on a hard drive - a factor of 1000 difference. Yes, they are significantly more expensive, but a box with 4GB of Crucial is going to be significantly faster than a box with 2GB of Corsair XMS that's swapping to disk, whether you like it or not.

Go with 2GB of physical RAM at first, test pilot your typical load in VMWare, and see if swapping becomes a problem. If swapping's a problem, you'll need to Ebay your 512MB DIMMs and get 1GB units. You won't notice 5ns in anything except SuperPi :rolleyes: and the extra investment may prolong the life of your hard drives, and will make your VMWare service much faster if it is using more than 2GB of RAM.
 
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