-=PCTechTalk=- Re: Another "technical," theoretical question
- From: EddieB <fasteddieb216@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2010 23:06:01 -0400
Hey Larry,
I'm assuming you mean Vista's ReadyBoost feature. If not, then please let
me know who makes it since "RamBoost" finds a lot of matches, but none that
I see sound like what you are talking about.
I personally don't think it's a good use of a Flash drive to put the swap
file (actually Pagefile) on it. Here are a few things that I base my
opinion on, but I don't know how dated this info is, so some of these
limitations may have been overcome.
- Flash drives have a limited # of read/writes allowed, so will fail much
quicker with data that is updated often.
- Flash drives read random data quicker, but HD's are quicker at reading
larger chunks of sequential data.
- ReadyBoost does cache at least some of the Pagefile, so you are
duplicating data to use ReadyBoost and Pagefile on the same Flash drive.
- I've read a lot about ReadyBoost not really helping PC's with 4GB of RAM.
It sounds like ReadyBoost drastically improves PC's with 1GB and somewhat
improves PC's with 2GB of RAM. I'm not too sure by how much.
I'm not sure what the limit is for the Pagefile, but I doubt you will need
one that is 4 times the amount of physical RAM. If you need one that large,
then it would be very slow and you would be much better off getting more RAM
(and 64-bit OS if needed). Don't forget that the more RAM you have, the
less you need the Pagefile, but that also depends on what programs you run
and how much of a memory hog they are. Usually programs that use a lot of
RAM and/or disk space will have options for where to create its own temp
files/work files/swap files/virtual memory (these terms can sometimes all
mean basically the same thing - disk space for when there is not enough RAM
or for large temporary disk space).
I'm a firm believer that WinXP is safest with at least slightly larger
Pagefile than RAM and with 2GB or more RAM, you don't need any extra besides
that. Well, actually if you do video editing or other programs that require
large amounts of RAM, then I would go higher. If the only program you run
that requires a lot of space is Photoshop (for example), I would rather put
its first work area on the flash drive instead of the Pagefile. If you have
less than 2GB of RAM, then ReadyBoost would probably be a good idea to use.
At 2GB RAM, I'm not sure if ReadyBoost would be worth it or not.
Ed
-----Original Message-----
From: pctechtalk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:pctechtalk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Larry Southerland
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2010 3:07 PM
To: pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx; the_bullhorn2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx;
thebullhornsbest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Puters_N_Such@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: -=PCTechTalk=- Another "technical," theoretical question
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
I am running Windows Vista Business edition on my desktop unit. It is a
32-bit version, which limits the available ram to 3.1 GB. There was a rule
of thumb that the max size of the Windows swap file was 4 times the amount
of physical ram (in my case, abut 12.4 GBs). If this is still true, and,
assuming that Flash drives are significantly faster than
all-but-the-most-expensive hard drives, would it be a good (practical?) idea
to use a 16 GB flash drive for my swap file instead of using the 5400 RPM
hard drive on my computer?
This came about as a result of reading the Wikipedia article on RamBoost.
My Flash drives may not be fast enough to see any benefit from using
Ramboost, but it occurred to me that I might still use them as swap space in
order to see at least marginal (and hopefully measurable) improvements in
system speed. In theory, if I were to get a flash drive that would meet the
standards for RamBoost, I could use 12 GB for the swap file and the
remaining 4 GB for Ramboost. ;-)
Questions like this just "bother" me until I get an answer. ;-)
Your friend,
Larry
---------------------------------------------------------------
Please remember to trim your replies (including this sentence and everything
below it) and adjust the subject line as necessary.
To subscribe, unsubscribe or modify your email settings:
//www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk
OR
To subscribe to the mailing list, send an email to
pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject. To
unsubscribe send email to pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
"unsubscribe" in the Subject.
To access our Archives:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/
//www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/
To contact only the PCTT Mod Squad, write to:
pctechtalk-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To join our separate PCTableTalk off-topic group, send a blank email to:
pctabletalk+subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
---------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------
Please remember to trim your replies (including this sentence and everything
below it) and adjust the subject line as necessary.
To subscribe, unsubscribe or modify your email settings:
//www.freelists.org/webpage/pctechtalk
OR
To subscribe to the mailing list, send an email to
pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "subscribe" in the Subject. To
unsubscribe send email to pctechtalk-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe"
in the Subject.
To access our Archives:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PCTechTalk/messages/
//www.freelists.org/archives/pctechtalk/
To contact only the PCTT Mod Squad, write to:
pctechtalk-moderators@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To join our separate PCTableTalk off-topic group, send a blank email to:
pctabletalk+subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
---------------------------------------------------------------
Other related posts:
