Show us your hard drive performance

[Brink]

Here's an update of my results from here with a added a second page file. It gave a small performance increase.

New updated results here.




SATA SSD (v2):


SATA II HDD (32MB buffer) 7200 RPM:

 

[swarfega]

hmm interesting, what size did you set the pagefile to?

 

[Brink]

I had it set to be system managed with it at 8GB on each drive.

 

[Night Hawk]

With the drives here any second paging file from any installation would have to be sent to the storage drive! I don't think that would for several of those?! since more then one drive is the OS drive depending on which OS.

 

[bilbat]

Build 7068






Respectively:
150G WD-VR RAID0 pair - systems
150G WD-VR RAID0 pair - swaps
1T WD-RE3 RAID1 pair - data
1.5T SG single drive - backups

 

[bloke]

whats a good page file size? i know its depending on how much ram you have, but isnt it better not to use a page file if you have enough ram? in my case i only have 4gb which is too low so what size page file shoould i be using? 8gb?

cheers for the insight,
Rick.

 

[bilbat]

I let the system manage my pagefile size - I just put it on a different partition/drive to take advantage of RAID throughput; I typically run 7-32, as some industrial logic stuff hasn't heard of x64 compilers yet, and I run big programs with big data files - usually a logic writer on one screen, an HMI designer on another, Visual Studio on a third to write 'glue' to Office apps, and Word/PaintShopPro on the last to edit the user manual - I provide an 8.5 partition for 7/32, and a 9.5 for 7/64 - never have seen either pagefile grow past roughly six...

 

[Night Hawk]

A good page file depands on the aplication and the kernel you are running. For 32bit gaming many elect to disable it entirely or assign it to a second partition or drive. With the 64bit the advantage seen there is less swapping out to the drive seeing more information loaded into and kept in the active ram.

In fact a good article on this is seen at A Closer Look at Windows Vista, Part III: 32-Bit vs. 64-Bit Windows - Developer Zone - National Instruments

 

[bloke]

A good page file depands on the aplication and the kernel you are running. For 32bit gaming many elect to disable it entirely or assign it to a second partition or drive. With the 64bit the advantage seen there is less swapping out to the drive seeing more information loaded into and kept in the active ram.

In fact a good article on this is seen at A Closer Look at Windows Vista, Part III: 32-Bit vs. 64-Bit Windows - Developer Zone - National Instruments

cool thnx for that link i been reading through some of it. the thing i cant understand is why Microsoft made 4gb ram considered to be a "high" amount of system memory, thus having to result in an x64bit o/s. Personally 4gb should have been made the maximum limit for x86 (32bit) as it seems to be the most used and reasonable amout, if it is just basic office use and gaming end-users (which in the end would be the highest amount of buyers for Microsoft), and it would just leave others that want 4gb or more for rendering and video editing ect that really require the higher amounts of ram.

i know what it is like to have 4gb of ram, then i have 2gb video memory (98gx2's Q-SLI) that then becomes shared with system memory 4gb-2gb=r2gb, then an o/s that will consume just over 1gb with visual features and Dream Scene being used and typical background software (logitech setpoint, realtemp, sound panels, anit-virus ect) 2gb-1gb=r1gb
Then the high end gaming like the classis example Crysis, consuming excess of 800mb, with that all in mind they made x86 to recognise 3.75gb ram. 1g-800mb=r200mb 3.75gb-3.8gb= -50mb, but you will see the 'low on system resources' way before 3.75gb of usage.

So even in x64 i get 'low on memory', so should 1gb page file be all i would need? Also would the performance side of it be better to have the page file on a complete seperate drive, or if the boot drive is faster to just partition a section and make it dedicated for the page file?

sorry for going off-topic here i just need a quick answer.


Rick.

 

[swarfega]

whats a good page file size? i know its depending on how much ram you have, but isnt it better not to use a page file if you have enough ram? in my case i only have 4gb which is too low so what size page file shoould i be using? 8gb?

cheers for the insight,
Rick.

Usually its 1.5 times your phsyical memory. I have both min and max set to the same amount to avoid defragmentation of the pagefile.

 

[scaramonga]

Usually its 1.5 times your phsyical memory. I have both min and max set to the same amount to avoid defragmentation of the pagefile.

Not so much to do with defragmentation, but its better to have a 'fixed' pagefile, rather than Windows having to resize one all the time. , but yes, I have mine set as swarfega's.

 

[bloke]

would it be better on the same drive but another partition as the o/s if that drive was faster or another drive altogether that was slightly slower?

 

[swarfega]

You could put it on another partition on the same drive. Some recommend that but my personal preferance is a separate physical hard drive preferably with 32mb cache buffer and at least 7200rpm.

Having pagefile on another partition is still preferable to having it on the same partition as the OS.

 

[bloke]

You could put it on another partition on the same drive. Some recommend that but my personal preferance is a separate physical hard drive preferably with 32mb cache buffer and at least 7200rpm.

Having pagefile on another partition is still preferable to having it on the same partition as the OS.

cool thnx for ya help! ill give it a try, though im not sure how or what to expect in the performance side of it

i already had my 1tb main drive partitioned into 3 drives win7 7057x64, win vista ultx64, that weird 200mb partition it makes upon installing windowz and now a partition i made for the pagefile 20gb total and set the pagefile for 6gb min max and will do the same for vistorium.

and then there were 4...

my other samsung (backup) drive is hardly a performer compared to the 1tb seagate, but the other debate i was thinking is that it will still but the extra load on the same drive as the o/s, but will it still be better than using the lower spec drive???

 

[Night Hawk]

The Windows managed size seen here is 3.582gb for the 4gb of memory installed. For customizing the larger 5gb-6gb would be a though for the 32bit Windows. Some definitely prefer seeing the paging file designated to a separate partition or drive on gaming builds.

With the 64bit kernel you are seeing less requirement there for the paging file to begin with. But even with 32bit Windows whether 7, Vista, or XP some will go further and actually disable the creation of it from the start as another way to boost performance on the 32bit side.

Meanwhile I have to find out what's so different about the Green Power 500gb WD over the typical Caviar SE models for suddenly getting the tuner card running plus now being able to record video on 7! Getting back to that old HD Tune maybe a look there will have soime indication for that!



There doesn't seen to be anything odd about this drive compared to the others with the only difference being the 7077 build.

 

[bloke]

well this is with my drive and a seperate partition on it as page file, my other screen shot with the pagefile on the same o/s partition is somewhere in this thread.


EDIT my sammy sung

 

[swarfega]

It would be interesting to see them side-by-side to compare.

 

[Night Hawk]

With XP, Vista, and the 7 builds they all see the paging file on the same partition so that wouldn't work here too well. The image there was simply a repeat test on the same drive again. That was with the 251 again as well since I forgot to copy the 255 over. oops!

Gee? I'm batting a thousand today! That was the Vista /7 64bit there while something interesting came up on the 7077 drive namely 14.7ms over the other drives seeing the usual 13.5ms?

 

[bloke]

With XP, Vista, and the 7 builds they all see the paging file on the same partition so that wouldn't work here too well. The image there was simply a repeat test on the same drive again. That was with the 251 again as well since I forgot to copy the 255 over. oops!

Gee? I'm batting a thousand today! That was the Vista /7 64bit there while something interesting came up on the 7077 drive namely 14.7ms over the other drives seeing the usual 13.5ms?

maybe the cpu usage something to do with your access time? cpu usage=hdd usage?

 

[Night Hawk]

maybe the cpu usage something to do with your access time? cpu usage=hdd usage?

That's always possible since I always seem to be busy doing something here.

Actually I suspect it has to do with being taken out of the external enclosure for internal use being one of the Green Power series. That's supposed the energy efficient line of drives like the 1tb that was already in use. The regular Cavier line has the faster access time seen there.