Need Performance: relocating page file

I have 1.5G RAM and Photoshop is killing me. One Excel ap is too. Bought
SATA drive intending to reassign paging to it. Shouldn't I create a
partition JUST FOR PAGING? Age has overcome my memory of my own experience
in real-time applications...heck, I wrote my own disk driver because HPs RTE
Driver was too slow...an HP2100...gosh, he's old.....doesn't disk throughput
vary with track? I am thinking that inner tracks have a shorter latency than
outer tracks. Yes I have seen the commonly referenced articles on page file
optimization.

It would have been as cheap, and far less effort to have purchased more
RAM..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


"Largelylivin" wrote in message
...
I have 1.5G RAM and Photoshop is killing me. One Excel ap is too. Bought
SATA drive intending to reassign paging to it. Shouldn't I create a
partition JUST FOR PAGING? Age has overcome my memory of my own
experience
in real-time applications...heck, I wrote my own disk driver because HPs
RTE
Driver was too slow...an HP2100...gosh, he's old.....doesn't disk
throughput
vary with track? I am thinking that inner tracks have a shorter latency
than
outer tracks. Yes I have seen the commonly referenced articles on page
file
optimization.

Well, $79 for a Maxtor DIamond 100 G SATA. The Pro's at the photoshop forum
said that past the 1G point, more RAM doesn't seem to help photoshop. Of
course, these are Photo Pro's.

"Mike Hall (MS-MVP)" wrote:

It would have been as cheap, and far less effort to have purchased more
RAM..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


"Largelylivin" wrote in message
...
I have 1.5G RAM and Photoshop is killing me. One Excel ap is too. Bought
SATA drive intending to reassign paging to it. Shouldn't I create a
partition JUST FOR PAGING? Age has overcome my memory of my own
experience
in real-time applications...heck, I wrote my own disk driver because HPs
RTE
Driver was too slow...an HP2100...gosh, he's old.....doesn't disk
throughput
vary with track? I am thinking that inner tracks have a shorter latency
than
outer tracks. Yes I have seen the commonly referenced articles on page
file
optimization.

Maybe you should be looking to other aspects of your computer's spec.. I
think that buying a 100Gb SATA drive specifically to accept the page file is
overkill..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


"Largelylivin" wrote in message
...
Well, $79 for a Maxtor DIamond 100 G SATA. The Pro's at the photoshop
forum
said that past the 1G point, more RAM doesn't seem to help photoshop. Of
course, these are Photo Pro's.

"Mike Hall (MS-MVP)" wrote:

It would have been as cheap, and far less effort to have purchased more
RAM..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


"Largelylivin" wrote in message
...
I have 1.5G RAM and Photoshop is killing me. One Excel ap is too.
Bought
SATA drive intending to reassign paging to it. Shouldn't I create a
partition JUST FOR PAGING? Age has overcome my memory of my own
experience
in real-time applications...heck, I wrote my own disk driver because
HPs
RTE
Driver was too slow...an HP2100...gosh, he's old.....doesn't disk
throughput
vary with track? I am thinking that inner tracks have a shorter
latency
than
outer tracks. Yes I have seen the commonly referenced articles on page
file
optimization.

A fast hard disk is always the best investment. It makes everything snappy. Windows spends far more time reading and writing files than it does paging.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Read David defending the concept of violence.
http://margokingston.typepad.com/har...e_ga.html#more
=================================================
"Largelylivin" wrote in message ...
Well, $79 for a Maxtor DIamond 100 G SATA. The Pro's at the photoshop forum
said that past the 1G point, more RAM doesn't seem to help photoshop. Of
course, these are Photo Pro's.

"Mike Hall (MS-MVP)" wrote:

It would have been as cheap, and far less effort to have purchased more
RAM..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/User


"Largelylivin" wrote in message
...
I have 1.5G RAM and Photoshop is killing me. One Excel ap is too. Bought
SATA drive intending to reassign paging to it. Shouldn't I create a
partition JUST FOR PAGING? Age has overcome my memory of my own
experience
in real-time applications...heck, I wrote my own disk driver because HPs
RTE
Driver was too slow...an HP2100...gosh, he's old.....doesn't disk
throughput
vary with track? I am thinking that inner tracks have a shorter latency
than
outer tracks. Yes I have seen the commonly referenced articles on page
file
optimization.

Largelylivin wrote:

I have 1.5G RAM and Photoshop is killing me. One Excel ap is too. Bought
SATA drive intending to reassign paging to it. Shouldn't I create a
partition JUST FOR PAGING? Age has overcome my memory of my own experience
in real-time applications...heck, I wrote my own disk driver because HPs RTE
Driver was too slow...an HP2100...gosh, he's old.....doesn't disk throughput
vary with track? I am thinking that inner tracks have a shorter latency than
outer tracks. Yes I have seen the commonly referenced articles on page file
optimization.

Isn't Photoshop the app that uses its own rinky-dink swap file rather
than using the Windows paging file?

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

The idea of offloading the pagefile from other than the XP system partition
is multi-fold. Primarily, you're looking for an alternate bus to allow some
semblance of dual access as in scsi. That is, doing more than one thing at
one time. A single partition exclusively for the swapfile at front of a
hard drive on such a bus, will provide that. A hard drive reads outside
first, then inwards. Opposite on CD/DVD. Such a partition is created at
the beginning of hard drive by XP, msdos, and many 3rd party softwares. It
does not have to be relocated.

A secondary benefit is less fragmentation. The swapfile, over time, will
fragment the system partition, and cause new file or modified file writes to
be fragmented.

If photoshop is writing temp files of some sort, they do not have to be
relocated. If you have some other bus system with a hard drive attached,
moving the default location for these temp files to that may improve
performance and cause less fragmentation of both the temp files on that
location, and the system partition files as the temp files aren't in that
location any longer. Mixing these with the new swapfile location defeats
the purpose of.

If photoshop is using temp files to create a final product, leave the temp
files on the system partition. Rather, assign the location of the final
product in another location instead. When satisfied with the final product,
delete the temp files if not done automatically.

And, don't mess with the swapfile min/max sizes. Let it play in the sandbox
to its heart's content. 4GB partition works for me.
--
Jonny
"Largelylivin" wrote in message
...
I have 1.5G RAM and Photoshop is killing me. One Excel ap is too. Bought
SATA drive intending to reassign paging to it. Shouldn't I create a
partition JUST FOR PAGING? Age has overcome my memory of my own
experience
in real-time applications...heck, I wrote my own disk driver because HPs
RTE
Driver was too slow...an HP2100...gosh, he's old.....doesn't disk
throughput
vary with track? I am thinking that inner tracks have a shorter latency
than
outer tracks. Yes I have seen the commonly referenced articles on page
file
optimization.

"Jonny" wrote:

The idea of offloading the pagefile from other than the XP system partition
is multi-fold. Primarily, you're looking for an alternate bus to allow some
semblance of dual access as in scsi. That is, doing more than one thing at
one time. A single partition exclusively for the swapfile at front of a
hard drive on such a bus, will provide that. A hard drive reads outside
first, then inwards. Opposite on CD/DVD. Such a partition is created at
the beginning of hard drive by XP, msdos, and many 3rd party softwares. It
does not have to be relocated.

A secondary benefit is less fragmentation. The swapfile, over time, will
fragment the system partition, and cause new file or modified file writes to
be fragmented.

If photoshop is writing temp files of some sort, they do not have to be
relocated. If you have some other bus system with a hard drive attached,
moving the default location for these temp files to that may improve
performance and cause less fragmentation of both the temp files on that
location, and the system partition files as the temp files aren't in that
location any longer. Mixing these with the new swapfile location defeats
the purpose of.

If photoshop is using temp files to create a final product, leave the temp
files on the system partition. Rather, assign the location of the final
product in another location instead. When satisfied with the final product,
delete the temp files if not done automatically.

And, don't mess with the swapfile min/max sizes. Let it play in the sandbox
to its heart's content. 4GB partition works for me.
--
Jonny,

Good points. You did miss one significant point of "theory": The primary
gain to be had by locating to a non-system and essentially "used" disk, I
would create partitions for rarely used achives & such, is two fold: (1) the
idea the the head will always be at of very near the track that it wants to
use thereby miniminze trach search/seak time and (2) This is new, with the
newer NCQ features the command queuing really does promote concurrency
especially if they are on separate interfaces, in this case ones of Pata and
the other on an SATA..

I did implement my idea and tested it to a degree: that is, placed my swap
file at the beginning of a separate SATA drive. I tested with HD-Tuner,
PCMark05, and 3DMark2001 before and after with no other changes:
Observations:
1. The Maxtor Diamond 10 100GB SATA with 8M buffer is not such a hot
product. Thats one reason it was only $79. It does show an average
throughput of 56MB/sec, far from the "spec'd" 150 MB/s but considerable
better than by older PATA system disk which only does 27 MB/s. The HD-Tune
results are very disturbing, over several runs, it consistently showed HUGE
plunges in performance going from 65-ish to 10 MBS. None of my other disks
show that behavior and I am thinking about giginf it back.
2. There was essentially no improvement measured by 3DMark2001.
3. A few test in PCMark5 showed a significant improvement related to some
very disk centric tests like encryption/decryption BUT the WIn Boot time was
significantly slower. In all, nothing to really get excited about.
4. One thing that these tests don't appear to measure is context switching
time. I know that because it was so markedly improved that it didn't need
decimal points to express it. Let's call it a 50%+ improvement. Very snappy
task/context swapping - I'd have to say the Windows must use pagin
extensively in context swapping (just like you'd guess.)

Bottom line: I don't have any Photoshop related tests, but I don't see much
improvement at all.

Currently: I put the slower PATA drive in the Paging mode and transfered
the old image to the new SATA disk. Thinks seem a little better yet, but I
have not rerun the tests yet.

RAM Disk is starting to look pretty interesting Huh?

"Largelylivin" wrote in message
...


"Jonny" wrote:

The idea of offloading the pagefile from other than the XP system
partition
is multi-fold. Primarily, you're looking for an alternate bus to allow
some
semblance of dual access as in scsi. That is, doing more than one thing
at
one time. A single partition exclusively for the swapfile at front of a
hard drive on such a bus, will provide that. A hard drive reads outside
first, then inwards. Opposite on CD/DVD. Such a partition is created at
the beginning of hard drive by XP, msdos, and many 3rd party softwares.
It
does not have to be relocated.

A secondary benefit is less fragmentation. The swapfile, over time, will
fragment the system partition, and cause new file or modified file writes
to
be fragmented.

If photoshop is writing temp files of some sort, they do not have to be
relocated. If you have some other bus system with a hard drive attached,
moving the default location for these temp files to that may improve
performance and cause less fragmentation of both the temp files on that
location, and the system partition files as the temp files aren't in that
location any longer. Mixing these with the new swapfile location defeats
the purpose of.

If photoshop is using temp files to create a final product, leave the
temp
files on the system partition. Rather, assign the location of the final
product in another location instead. When satisfied with the final
product,
delete the temp files if not done automatically.

And, don't mess with the swapfile min/max sizes. Let it play in the
sandbox
to its heart's content. 4GB partition works for me.
--
Jonny,

Good points. You did miss one significant point of "theory": The primary
gain to be had by locating to a non-system and essentially "used" disk, I
would create partitions for rarely used achives & such, is two fold: (1)
the
idea the the head will always be at of very near the track that it wants
to
use thereby miniminze trach search/seak time and (2) This is new, with the
newer NCQ features the command queuing really does promote concurrency
especially if they are on separate interfaces, in this case ones of Pata
and
the other on an SATA..

I did implement my idea and tested it to a degree: that is, placed my swap
file at the beginning of a separate SATA drive. I tested with HD-Tuner,
PCMark05, and 3DMark2001 before and after with no other changes:
Observations:
1. The Maxtor Diamond 10 100GB SATA with 8M buffer is not such a hot
product. Thats one reason it was only $79. It does show an average
throughput of 56MB/sec, far from the "spec'd" 150 MB/s but considerable
better than by older PATA system disk which only does 27 MB/s. The
HD-Tune
results are very disturbing, over several runs, it consistently showed
HUGE
plunges in performance going from 65-ish to 10 MBS. None of my other
disks
show that behavior and I am thinking about giginf it back.
2. There was essentially no improvement measured by 3DMark2001.
3. A few test in PCMark5 showed a significant improvement related to some
very disk centric tests like encryption/decryption BUT the WIn Boot time
was
significantly slower. In all, nothing to really get excited about.
4. One thing that these tests don't appear to measure is context
switching
time. I know that because it was so markedly improved that it didn't need
decimal points to express it. Let's call it a 50%+ improvement. Very
snappy
task/context swapping - I'd have to say the Windows must use pagin
extensively in context swapping (just like you'd guess.)

Bottom line: I don't have any Photoshop related tests, but I don't see
much
improvement at all.

Currently: I put the slower PATA drive in the Paging mode and transfered
the old image to the new SATA disk. Thinks seem a little better yet, but
I
have not rerun the tests yet.

RAM Disk is starting to look pretty interesting Huh?

As a general rule of thumb I have found the best performance by putting
Windows and programs on the fastest drive.

I think you have maxed out your current technology. Disk performance above
what you already have gets very expensive. You need better controllers and
hard drives and a motherboard that can take advantage of them. If you want
to stay with SATA here are some links.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2003/11/...take_out_scsi/

http://www.3ware.com/

http://www.intel.com/design/servers/...0af2/index.htm

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc....ted=1112716146

Here's another interesting twist

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Peripherals/Products/Products_GC-RAMDISK%20(Rev%201.1).htm

Kerry

"Jonny" wrote:


A secondary benefit is less fragmentation. The swapfile, over time, will
fragment the system partition, and cause new file or modified file writes to
be fragmented.

Swapfile fragmentation as a performance issue is right up there with
Santa Claus, Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy - lots of hype but very
little if any substance.

The basic truth is that if a computer is using the swap file so
extensively that swap file fragmentation has a measurable impact on
overall performance then the fact that the swap file is being used at
all (even if totally unfragmented) will have a performance impact that
is hundreds of times greater than any effects of fragmentation.


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca