Windows WITH a swapfile :-)

[ptek]

Hi all,

I have a Athlon XP 2000+ machine with windoze XP and 256MB RAM.

Since 256 MB seems not to be enough for the hungry OS, I must live with a pagefile (virtual memory) bitting my disk :-)

So, I decided to create a extra partition for exclusive virtual memory use. This way, I prevent fragmentation on the system disk gaining some performance as you may already realized.

My big question is: Which filesystem should I use ?
I read somewhere that NT filesystem has more overhead than FAT32. And FAT32 in turn has more overhead than FAT.

For best performance should I use FAT ?
The partition is about 1GB, so FAT should handle it.

[ptek]

Yes, my concern was about performance (less overhead) and to prevent fragmentation (the hint to use a fixed size pagefile was welcome :-) ).

About FAT32 vs FAT16, I think i'll go for FAT16. here's why:

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/file/fileFAT32.html

and extensively explained futher on:

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/file/partFAT32.html

Since my partition is relative small, the amount of slack FAT16 will take will not be so important, and I agree the NTFS might slow down thinks a bit due to the extra feature it offers (user rights, etc)

And look for the "Overall Performance" table on this:
http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

I hope 1GB partition is considered small
 :-D