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Where to put the swap file...

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icecom3

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Jun 17, 2011
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I got my GW2k 4dx2-66 upgraded with a P83 overdrive, 64MB of RAM, and an 8GB IDE drive. The drive is connected to a 16-bit ISA controller. I am wondering where to put the swap file for windows 95 or 98 (both run well).

Before anyone asks why I am tweaking out this old Gatewaysaurus, I am putting together a multiboot system with Dos 6.22 for gaming, windows 3.11, Windows 9x and DSL Linux (using Acronis).

Anyway, regarding the swap, I am wondering if I should use my original 325MB hard drive and on-board controller as the swap file for windows 9x. I ran a benchmark on both of the drives, and I am not sure what to make of it. The max throughput for the older drive is faster, but the max access time is slightly slower. See below.

Benchmark:
WD 8GB (ISA Controller) versus WD 325MB, (onboard)
Rotation speed 5290 and 3320
Max throughput 1800 and 2800
Linear Read 1600 and 1200
Interleave 1 and 1
AveAccess Time 12 and 11.5
MaxAccess Time 19.2 and 20.6
Track to Track 3.6 and 2.5

What values should I be worried about for the swap?
 
Ok well your results are indicating that your onboard IDE controller and drive are faster than the ISA controller/drive combo. So in theory yeah you could put it there, however I don't see why (well ok, BIOS support probably) you wouldn't put the probably faster 8GB drive on your onboard and get the faster controller and drive and then your slower controller and drive for data storage.

Either way you'd want it on the faster location, even though it's mostly purged memory data in the swap file if it does reference it, having the swap on a slower drive would slow down your system any time it needs access to that information.
 
My guess is that with the I/O going through a 16-bit ISA bus, it won't make a whole hill of beans difference. But I'd put the swap file on its own partition.
 
The 8GB drive will perform a lot better on the onboard controller, which probably is VLB. There was some benefit to putting the swap file on a dedicated physical drive, the theory being that a slower drive doing nothing else will still be able to respond faster than the faster drive that's servicing other requests. But with 64MB of RAM, hopefully you won't be hitting the swap file all that much anyway.

I'd try moving the two drives to the onboard IDE, if that's possible, then see how they benchmark.
 
Dave Farquhar said:
I'd try moving the two drives to the onboard IDE, if that's possible, then see how they benchmark.
Click to expand...
The onboard controller won't recognize anything beyond 1GB, I tested a few drives, and the highest was an 800'ishMB HD.
I am not using VLB for the controller. I tried one, it would not recognize while booting. I tried configuring as a secondary controller but it was rebooting my system wildly. So I took it out not wanting to risk my system.
So I am using an ISA controller, which has its own bios, boots up with my system, and recognizes anything up to 8GB.

Chuck said:
My guess is that with the I/O going through a 16-bit ISA bus, it won't make a whole hill of beans difference. But I'd put the swap file on its own partition.
Click to expand...
Do you mean on the same hard drive? Or a new partition on the same hard drive?
 
icecom3 said:
The onboard controller won't recognize anything beyond 1GB, I tested a few drives, and the highest was an 800'ishMB HD.
Click to expand...

There, the only real difference is the BIOS support. A drive overlay may get you out of that problem.

Do you mean on the same hard drive? Or a new partition on the same hard drive?
Click to expand...

Ideally, a different drive, but a separate partition on the same hard drive is the next best thing.
 
Microsoft's official answer to your situation is to put the swap file on the drive that is not running the OS. This means you can write/read the swap file while simultaneously writing or reading system files.

You'll need a swap file of about 192mb for best performance. If it where me I'd put everything on the 8gb drive, and use the 325mb drive as a swap file drive with a 256mb swap file.
 
After reading this thread, and looking into a possible software overlays to put my larger HD on the old onboard controller, I stumbled across something nice. If I leave my ISA controller card in the computer, anything plugged into the onboard controller will adopt the ISA controller cards bios settings. This was a fantastic find and I wish I knew about this earlier. So now my larger drive is plugged into onboard controller, and it is running much faster benchmarks than before.

So now, the situation is reversed. The larger faster HD is on the onboard controller, and the slower smaller HD is on the ISA controller card.

Is there any benefit to putting the swap on the slower drive, now that it is on the slower ISA card?
 
Probably not. Best make a small partition at the start of your fastest harddisk for it (5 MB larger than your swapfile)
 
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