please tell me about SWAPfile

I don't think that would be a good idea, from what I understand the swap file is basically virtual memory and disabling it may have serious performance penalties. Conventional wisdom is to set the min and max swap file size to the same amount to prevent resizing, twice the amount of your installed Ram is the usually recommended size.

Maybe Slack or one of the other Gurus can give you some more insight.

Atwork posted a link recently to a cool article on PC optimization, it might be worth a read

http://www.sospubs.co.uk/sos/jul00/articles/pcmusician.htm

Good Luck :)
 
If you're on a system that is so old that the swapfile has a serious impact on your system performance, then you've got bigger problems :)

It doesn't matter how much memory you've got, you need to leave the swapfile alone. You can try to outguess windows if you want, and set the max to 2.5X your RAM size or so. Some people recommend fixing it at a specific size, but I've never seen a swapfile resize while recording....and if I did it would mean something was a bit out of control (at least with 256MB RAM). However there's no reason to not set it at a fixed size since a few hundred megs of disk space isn't an issue these days.

Blah blah blah. Maybe we should as why you want to disable the swapfile? :)

Slackmaster 2000
 
Ñyes i do music on old comp P2 with only 5gigs HD
so i always have to delete lot of files b4 i can burn backup
thnx
 
If you're trying to save disk space by minimizing your swap file, you're gonna get screwed. Windows needs that diskspace to operate properly. Hard drives are cheap these days (I just picked up a 60 gig drive for $119 bucks). If you can't swing that, you can pick up a used drive (maybe another 5 gigger) for cheap. Even if it's not fast, you can use it to store the stuff you're not currently working on. (it's quicker than burning backups)
 
thnx money is not an issue ,the process of formatting new disk is.
i'm not a compguru
i consider it manytimes but when i read that i have to format into FAT32...,set BIOS?...blahblah...
i have to stepback
can someone please tel me the right way to format it?
i'm not sure i can doit or not
 
If you buy a new drive and ADD it to your existing one, it's fairly painless. Just follow the instructions with the drive (note for note), and you should be fine. (usually, you just change a jumper on the drive, plug it in, boot up, and format it).

Use the new drive for your recording space, and leave the rest of your computer alone. You'll have to tell your recording software to use the new drive to place your files, (usually just an option under "preferences", or something like it) and you're home free.

If you need to REPLACE your current drive, you'd have a lot more work to do. If you must go this route, and you're not confident with it, I'd pick up some drive software, like Partition Magic.

Good luck with it.
 
Sean, did you buy the 60 gig Maxtor that's been on sale at Best Buy? Or something else? Just wondering, I was thinking about buying one myself...

The only thing I'll add about the swap file is that the old "rule of thumb" which says your swap file should be 2 X the size of your RAM sort of breaks down once your RAM hits about 256 meg. If you have 512 or 1 gig of RAM I would think that you could get by fine with a 256 meg swapfile.

And as others have said, adding a new drive as a second drive isn't all that difficult. Replacing a drive (and moving everything to the new one) can be intimidating if you don't know what you are doing, but its not rocket science either. Check the web, I'm sure you can find lots of "how-to" stuff to help you.
 
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Actually, it's an IBM. I got it at one of the big computer shows. I normally don't buy IBM hardware, but I couldn't pass up the deal. Maxtor makes a good drive, though. I'm sure you'd be okay.
 
Ah ha - At a "Super Computer Sales" show I bet. Probably from Sky Tech Computer too? I've bought a lot of my stuff that way... Although sometimes the big retailers beat even them.
 
Slackmaster2K said:
Some people recommend fixing it at a specific size, but I've never seen a swapfile resize while recording....

There are two reasons to set the swap file to a fixed size:
  1. Startup Speed: If it is set to a variable size, windoze has to re-create the file every time you boot.
  2. Fragmentation: The swap file can become heavily fragmented as you go along, especially if you leave your machine on for long periods of time, or if you are doing a lot of writing/deleteing to your drive. This will slow your box down considerably. If you set it to fixed, and especially right after you defrag your drive, the entire swap file will be in one space. If you defrag your drive with a variable swap file, defrag will not defrag the swap file.
    [/list=1]
 
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