Optimizing the Swap File
Windows uses a portion of
the hard disk as RAM, constantly swapping data
between RAM and hard disk as required. The speed
of your hard disk is in the order of 1000 times
slower than that of your main memory. Inefficient
use of the swap file could considerable slow down
your system to a very great extent. One of the
best ways to speed up the swap file usage is to
create a permanent swap file. In a permanent swap
file, the file used for swapping information has
a fixed size and location on your hard disk. When
a temporary swap file is used, the location and
size of the file is determined by application
being used and is not predictable. Also, since
a temporary swap file is constantly written to
and is not fixed in size, it would be highly fragmented
across the partition that holds it. A better option
is to create the swap file on a dedicated partition
on your hard disk. By doing this, the swap file
will never be fragmented since that partition
is only being utilized by the swap file itself.
You can configure the swap file size and location
from Control Panel > System > Performance
> Virtual Memory. The size of the swap file
should be around 2.5 times the amount of RAM on
the system.
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