Where and how should I install the o/s swap file

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mm00659

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Oct 15, 2006
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Hello fellow computer enthusiasts. I have the following parts and am putting the system together soon. I have a question on the o/s. But first, here are the parts: cooler master stacker mc 830 with many extra fans, thermal take 750w, asus p5w dh deluxe, e6600 with stock fan, 2 x 1024 corsair (hope it works), ati x1950xtx, 2 x 74g raptor 10k SATA, 1 x 250g 7.2k, SATA, a floppy, a samsung dvdrw, windows xp pro with sp2 cd.

Here's my question. I hope I can install the o/s on both raptors in a raid0 cfg cause that's what I was hoping for. I have never done this before but that's what I want to do. The next question is on the mem swap space on the c: drive. I have always installed that on the same drive as the o/s (c:) but I recently heard that I could install it on another drive for better performance. In this case it would go on the 7.2k 250g SATA drive. Is that true and is that something I choose when installing xp pro, or do I change it after the o/s is installed? Thanks to all for your help.
 
The microsoft mantra is 2.5 times the amount of RAM and off the OS partition. Really off the OS partition is something I still follow but with the amount of memory going on machines these days, 2 and half times your two GB is unecessary. If you want to make sure your swap is big enough to put a full memory dump on a crash just make it the same size as your memory.
 
Thanks. What's your opinion on making a small partition just for the o/s? That's how I have my old setup. I guess one thing to consider is backup and restore strategy. Do you want to back up the o/s partiotion plus a data partition, or backup 1 big partition. I guess fragmentation should be considered too. If you have a small partition for the o/s as the c: drive at the beginning of the drive, all fragmentation fo the c: partition will stay at thge beginning of the drive. If you have a big partition, fragmentation can make the heads travel a longer distance. What do you think?
 
mm00659 said:
Thanks. What's your opinion on making a small partition just for the o/s? That's how I have my old setup. I guess one thing to consider is backup and restore strategy. Do you want to back up the o/s partiotion plus a data partition, or backup 1 big partition. I guess fragmentation should be considered too. If you have a small partition for the o/s as the c: drive at the beginning of the drive, all fragmentation fo the c: partition will stay at thge beginning of the drive. If you have a big partition, fragmentation can make the heads travel a longer distance. What do you think?
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You have a lot of options, but nothing is going to yield any real performance differences. I partition mine based on simplicity, for restoring and organizing. I have two drives, one of which is formatted solely as C:. I put my OS, apps, and games here. My second drive (or partition in your case), is where I put my data files, documents, music, etc. I use SyncToy from Microsoft to make backups of things on my C drive, like e-mail, MS Money file, favorites, game saves, and have them automatically copied to the D drive. If one drive dies, I have my data backed up. I copy the contents of my D drive to my server once a week. Then, if I need to rebuild, restore, etc, I only have to Ghost my image down to C, and I'm back on my feet with nothing lost. There's no reason to install apps anywhere but C:. It isn't going to save time for a rebuild, since they'd need to be installed again.
 
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