Virtual Drives - Allocation

S

SteveM

I have Vist 64 bit, 4gig mem, E6850, 500gig HD SATA II,

What would be the gains, if indeed there are any, if I installed a E-IDE 160 gig drive - slave to my DVD writer, THEN used it as Vitual memory for the OS. Could also allocate 'temp' forlders, Nero's caching, and so on.

Anybody have a clue OR am I talking a load of c&*$. ?
 

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Hi Steve,

To gain any performance from relocating your Virtual Page memory, the drive it is being moved to will need to be faster than the drive Vista is installed on. Which of course you would have Vista installed on the faster one anyway though. ;)

Usually you will just gain space by having items installed or relocated to the second drive. In some cases you can gain a bit of performance when you have some programs, like games, install on the second drive. Vista can then do whatever on it's drive while loading the program (game) on the other drive at the same time.

Hope this helps,
Shawn
 

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Hi shawn,

I understand about the discussion point on drive specs, but, how do you guage a drive writing whilst it is reading, if the virtual memory is on the same drive. Is not the question also if running two CPU's and the virtual drive on a different interface -OS on SATA, Virtual on IDE is the actual work load distributed more effectivly ?

On another note I will be installing the drive on the IDE to use for video editing as a virtual drive in any case.

Thanks.
Steve.
 

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Steve,

Vista will not be able to read and write to the virtual memory at the exact same time no matter what drive it was on. That's why it's always best to have it or Vista on the fastest drive you have installed.

I believe you are correct and that it should run better with the video editing set on another drive. This way Vista will load what it needs from it's drive, while at the same time reading and writing to the video editing drive.

Good luck to you,
Shawn
 

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Brink said:
Steve,

Vista will not be able to read and write to the virtual memory at the exact same time no matter what drive it was on. That's why it's always best to have it or Vista on the fastest drive you have installed.

I believe you are correct and that it should run better with the video editing set on another drive. This way Vista will load what it needs from it's drive, while at the same time reading and writing to the video editing drive.

Good luck to you,
Shawn
Click to expand...

OK !
I am NOT been rude (I wish to make this quite clear):o.
Do you understand or are you involved in the programming of Vista 64 ?

Why :

Because my understanding of 64 bit OS's are the usability of the CPU's.
If the OS gives a task to the CPU to read data and then (if it is correctly programmed) to use the other CPU to write data it does not matter at all where that read/write information is from.

Yes I see your point on how fast a disk is capable of read/write, but in a "multitasking" enviroment and along a 64 bit data bus what is lost on one hand is gained on another.

ALso Vist and windows has always given the opertunity to have a virtual drive allocated anywhere the user so whishes. So have the programs enhanced this operation or Not.

With respect.
SteveM.
 

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No problem Steve,

Having the CPU's multitasking will certainely help performance. Of course, the read/write would work best when reading from one drive while writing to a separate drive at the same time instead of from the same drive or partition.

Vista has improved Virtual Memory management. Although it usually works best when managed by Vista on the same partition as Vista is installed on, you can certainely relocate it to see if it will run better on the other drive. You can see how to do this in Vista here if needed.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/132201-virtual-memory-paging-file-change.html

I think if you ran your programs off of the SATA drive and used the IDE drive for Virtual Memory and the temps (or the other way around), it may help some because of the read/write performance from above. The only drawback I see is having the IDE as a slave to the DVD drive. If you can, you might have the SATA connected to a SATA connector, then have the IDE drive and DVD drive on their own separate cable instead of slaved.

Just try each setup and see how it fast it feels to you under a heavy load.

Shawn
 

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Brink,

Thanks for the reply.
SATA is a 500gig WD drive and boots the OS.
IDE is a Hitachi 160gig (and your are indeed correct) its slave to the DVD drive, and should be master.
Have put VM on the IDE yesterday or the day before, (staying up to late on these damm forums, the days are running to nights and .......), still boot a few time since and run Bioshock a fair bit and to tell you the truth forgot that IDE held VM. Have seen no disadvantages YET !

But, when at SUN through Unix I could tell which ever CPU I chose, and often had 6 or more to choose from, to run what ever task I chose. I know you can not do this under Vista. My point is that the OS was built to take advantage of multiple CPU's and on that thought I will further investigate Vista's multiprocessing capabilities. (that should keep me busy for a couple of weeks).
Question ?
What tests do you think wouuld show performace on where the VM is.
Thought, maybe I need to reduce phisical memory down to 1gig or even 1/2 a gig so that the use of VM takes up a lot of system process time ! Then run a intense system task. hmm need a script, copy memory to disk then copy all back to mem but it would be VM then. Sorry waffeling now.

Thanks SteveM.
 

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SteveM said:
Because my understanding of 64 bit OS's are the usability of the CPU's.
If the OS gives a task to the CPU to read data and then (if it is correctly programmed) to use the other CPU to write data it does not matter at all where that read/write information is from.
Click to expand...
Steve,

64-bit OS's do not, inherently, use multiple CPU's better than 32-bit OS's. They just have the ability to address a larger memory space and handle large amount of data more efficiently.

Scott
 

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Unless using assembly where you have an amazing amount of control over where the data goes and which instructions are executed; in MOST cases while programming you perform a read or write. The operating system does all the dirty work, routing the request, buffering the data and then actually writing it out or reading it. And it will perform your request when it's good and ready. Adding another hard drive specifically for paging really won't help you.

If you really need performance while processing large amounts of data, add 4g more of RAM. That will give you a visible performance boost.
 

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sidewinder said:
SteveM said:
Because my understanding of 64 bit OS's are the usability of the CPU's.
If the OS gives a task to the CPU to read data and then (if it is correctly programmed) to use the other CPU to write data it does not matter at all where that read/write information is from.
Click to expand...
Steve,

64-bit OS's do not, inherently, use multiple CPU's better than 32-bit OS's. They just have the ability to address a larger memory space and handle large amount of data more efficiently.

Scott
Click to expand...

Damm, quite correct.
 

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Well there certainly seems to be some opinions here.
I can see I have my work cut out to find the answer. So -
Using 'heavyload' as brink has suggested is going to be a good start. I think several tests are going to be in order. Starting with a 1 hour test as a guide for duration on all.
System now has a SATA CD attached.

1. Test system with 1 drive SATA II attached with OS on and VM file.
2. Test system as 1, but with second drive on IDE channel. (as Master)
3. As 2 but with VM file on IDE.

Ofcourse this does assume the testing software is reliable. but we will see.
 

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I hope you'll all pardon me for the overly simple minded approach, but - Moving virtual memory from one spot to another still means reading/writing to a hard drive, no? Since that's the case, if you really need more space then installing more RAM is clearly the way to go from a performance POV.

The other suggestion would be to ask if a thumb drive or other SSD could be designated for that purpose. I've never tried it, but it'd certainly be faster than writing to disc, the files are temporary anyhow, and it'd be cheaper than more RAM.
 
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Scotteq said:
I hope you'll all pardon me for the overly simple minded approach, but - Moving virtual memory from one spot to another still means reading/writing to a hard drive, no? Since that's the case, if you really need more space then installing more RAM is clearly the way to go from a performance POV.

The other suggestion would be to ask if a thumb drive or other SSD could be designated for that purpose. I've never tried it, but it'd certainly be faster than writing to disc, the files are temporary anyhow, and it'd be cheaper than more RAM.
Click to expand...

No. 64 has got to have a virtual mem space, so adding memory will not answer the question. Surely reading/writing to two different drives on two different controllers will be faster ? And that is the question....
Using a thumb or SSD would be faster IF the read/write speeds are faster than the HD, anything on a USB would not be. Also how would you connect the SSD ? - PCI bus card slot I assume .... that would be faster BUT a 32gb SSD on a EIDE are about £300 and their write speeds are nearly the equivilent to a SATAII HD.
 

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Virtual Memory management is taken care of by the MMU.
So dual core or not its another part of the CPU(s) that deal with it.
All of the articles that I have read so far have pointed to allocating your virtual memory to another hard drive on another controller CAN be benificial in performance. Obvisously taking into account that the HD is fast at read/write.
Also more memory is the best way and as Scotteq says mem is probable the cheaper option.
For gaming and normal usage, but if as I do video production you are limited to the amount of memory you can install !
My MOB will only take 8gig, vista 64 (at the moment) will only see 128gig. So that is the dilemer and why looking into Virtual memory is the question.
 

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