Hello Folks,

This sounds like a tough question to me.

I've order components for a new computer. (I hope I don't smoke this thing.) I ordered Windows 7 Home Premium to install on it. (Builders Pack) The stuff hasn't arrived yet, but I was wondering about something.

I read somewhere that it is advantageous to have a SEPARATE drive for virtual memory. Would it be a good idea to partition a section of the new hard drive to be used only for that purpose? If so, how much should I partition? I ordered a 500GB SATA II. I'm not a big computer user and could easily spare 100GB for virtual memory, or would 10GB be more than enough? If a separate partition is an ADVANTAGE, is there anything special I would have to do to set it up to be used advantageously?

My current thoughts for partitions is:

C: Operating System
D: Virtual Memory
E: Programs and everything else
F: Backup – Things I don't want to lose

Thanks,
Harry
The old MS suggestion was a separate drive (not partition) for virtual memory if possible. And even then there was essentially no difference. But given the SPEED of today's drives and cpu's I wouldn't worry about it. If you want a separate partition for good housekeeping purposes that's fine, but there's no need to pay any attention to pagefile settings these days. Leave it as system MANAGED and move on.Thanks Allen,

That answers my question very well.

HarryYou're very welcome. And just as an aside, I guess I'm a bit "OC", but I have lots of partitions on all of my systems Having a separate partition on the same drive for virtual memory/swap file was only advantageous when you ran Windows versions before windows 95 (3.1,3.0, etc) in Standard Mode.

Standard Mode created Swap files "on the fly"- one for each application. Enhanced mode used a single large swap file that was created in a contiguous area of the hard disk. The only advantage to a partitioned approach is that all the files stored on that partition would be contiguous and CLOSE together, so it really only offered an advantage in Standard Mode, since the enhanced mode swap file was always contiguous.

Actually, it is not really necessary to separate hard drive partition for virtual memory. However, that is a good system optimization since it will have a small chance of having your page file fragmented as it shrinks and grows. Fragmentation can slow down your computer’s response. On the other hand, with regard to how big your virtual memory partition should be, you need to have it twice bigger than your physical memory. So, you may not want to go any bigger than 2 GB on your system.Just feel VERY free to ignore the above post.