Giving the System a Boost by Splitting the Swap File
All versions of Windows make use of a swap file. This is virtual memory and acts as hard drive storage space for memory items when you run low on actual physical memory.When physical RAM is completely consumed, Windows data is temporarily shifted to the hard drive. This can greatly slow down the computer, because the hard disk has to work continuously.
If it looks like the RAM is going to get full, it’s advisable to split the swap file onto different, newly defragmented hard drives. Windows can write to several hard drives simultaneously and thus accelerate the data transfer process. However, this makes sense only if you use multiple physical disks and not just partitions, since this will force the disk to write to multiple areas, thereby slowing down access.
First determine which of your drives are separate physically and which are just partitions. For this purpose, go to ‘Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer management’. In the tree view structure on the left side of the window, navigate to ‘Storage | Disk Management’. You will now see the physically divided data drives on the bottom right with their corresponding partitions and the allocated logical drives.
In addition to the system drive ‘C:’, search for the primary partitions of the other physical drives, note their drive letters and then close the Disk Management window.For configuring the swap file go to Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance / Settings. Hit the Advanced tab and go down to the virtual memory section and hit Change. Choose your first partition where you want the swap file, then select Custom Size and enter the size you want for example ‘1536’ megabyte each . Equal values for the minimum and maximum limit define a fixed size, making it impossible for the swap file to fragment the partition and can lead to better performance. Click ‘Set’.
Also check :Swapfile Optimization Guide
0 comments