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10.5: Move swap files to another partition under 10.5
Authored by: jyu on Dec 05, '07 02:56:37PM

I don't think people should bother with this unless they have 2nd hard drive. If you only have one hard drive, you're wasting your time. It's pure physics. There is only arm in one drive to move around. It doesn't gain any speed boost to put swap files on another partition.



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10.5: Move swap files to another partition under 10.5
Authored by: adrinux on Dec 05, '07 03:21:51PM

Well to quote myself from the mentioned forum thread:

The benefit of moving swap to a different disk partition has been debated before, so please keep your comments useful, we really don't need yet another 'why bother' comment thread :P
Guess I should have added that to the tip too ;)

You're absolutely right of course. My swap partition is on a different disk however. Moving swap doesn't lead to a leap in performance even then. There is one issue moving swap to a different disk cures for me: iTunes stops playing music briefly when large swap files get written, my poor old G4 can't create swap files and read an mp3 from disk at the same time, there is only one head on the drive as you say...

I see a clear but small benefit from moving swap to a different partition (which is on a different disk if we're being pedantic) on my setup. YMMV.



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10.5: Move swap files to another partition under 10.5
Authored by: aardvarko on Dec 10, '07 09:25:28AM

what happens if the kernel hasn't mounted the swap disk by the time VM is initialized? Boots without? Defers swapfile creation?



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10.5: Move swap files to another partition under 10.5
Authored by: TigerKR on Dec 05, '07 09:20:40PM

Firstly, having a dedicated (contiguous free space) partition for swap on the fastest part of the hard drive is beneficial even in a single HDD configuration. Anytime a file is fragmented, it will take longer to read from / write to. Anytime a file (or fragments of a file) are located on the slower parts of the drive, they will take longer to read from / write to. The more the swap is used, the more this effect becomes pronounced. The less the swap is used, the less this effect becomes pronounced.

For the vast majority of people, this isn't really much of a concern. For those for which it is a concern, the answer is to get more RAM, so that they swap less. But for the small minority who constantly hit their swapfiles even though though they have gigabites of RAM, this is helpful. Of course, putting the swapfile on a different drive is better. Heck, its even more betterer ( :) ) if you can put it on a different bus completely.

But, sometimes that's not an option. Like for instance if you're on a laptop, which has a slow HDD to begin with, a typically lower RAM cap, and typically less expansion possibility.



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