Optimizing the swapfile isn't a very hard thing to do. The main problem is in choosing which of the various methods or techniques you should use. The previous pages have discussed the pros and cons of the different methods and by now, a pattern should have emerged.

Evidently, creating a permanent, contiguous swapfile that's just nice for your system and moving it to the outer tracks of the hard disk is the best way to optimize your swapfile. A semi-permanent swapfile may help you avoid running out of swapfile space but the price in performance often isn't worth it. Moving the swapfile to an alternate hard disk is a great idea but unless you have a free IDE controller and the second hard disk is at least half as fast as the first one, it's a little hard to get it right. Needless to say, moving the swapfile to a different partition is both a waste of time and counterproductive.

So, I think we should just save ourselves some time and grief by using the three proven methods of optimizing the swapfile - creating a swapfile that's just nice in size and moving it to the outer tracks of the hard disk; and moving the swapfile to a second hard disk if you are lucky enough to own one that's at least half as fast as the first hard disk. Sometimes, the easiest way is the best way.

A Word From The Expert

"There shouldn't be a performance increase with multiple partitions. In fact, quite the opposite. If you have a 4 gig drive, partitioned in 2 gig partitions, with all data on the second partition, it's entirely possible that it will take longer to load data from that partition, since it's farther out on the drive.

One of the reasons for putting the swap file as that first file on the drive is because the drive can load things faster from the front of the drive. With the above configuration, you are forcing the data to be at least half way out on the drive."

Russ Johnson
Product Support Engineer
Symantec Corporation