where to put PAGEFILE >>>???<<<

Depends on the specs on that drive. You are saying you want the OS to sit on the 10giger and have the Pagefile sit on that drive?

my guess is that it will be faster.
even though the drive is a 5400rpm one, it's only task will be to read/write the page file.
If you keep the page file on your OS disk, the disk will have to read your apps and the page file.
Oh, i'm supposing you have your os installed on the 160GB drive

just do the test, it's not that hard.

Yeah like the previous guy said. It might be faster. It'll definitely help for programs like Adobe Photoshop because you can throw the scratch pad on that drive too. If it was a 7200 rpm drive it would definitely be faster.

Tonight when my system is fully built, WinXP and its pagefile are going on the Raptor. Access time and transfer rates matter most when you're talking about quick access, so put your pagefile, cache, anything that needs as close to memory-like speed as possible on your fastest drive.

Or if you have enough RAM disable your pagefile.

xp is installed on the 160gig (should of said that be4)
i will experiment and find out

what tests can i do to test pagefile performance

to test it, use anything thats a memory hog. Photoshop would be a good one

mozilla firefox hahahaha
it eats up a lot of memory. open several tabs with several sites. These forums consume a lot of memory, by the way.
mssql server also consumes a lot of memory.
if you dont have these apps, you can open those auto refresh sites (a lot) and leave them open in the background and load a heavy game, for instance

You could test our your theory on your computer, jap0nes...pac-man would be a good stress-test for that Pentium.

it hangs when i try to load it  

so long as the drives are on different ide channels you should put the pagefile on a different hd form your os. not sure if the same hold true mixing sata and ide though. hte pagefile should be set 2.5 times the amount of ram you have min and max available.

i dont think the fact that one is ide and the other is sata is an issue, as both are connected to the same bus and there's no need for translation or something.
but you were absolutely right about they being on different channels

The size also depends on how much ram you have avaliable. If you have 2 gigs, there's really not a need for a swap. But, if the drive is going to be used for nothing else but swap, i'd set the entire drive as a swap, IMHO. It would be great for a server to do that, for a gaming desktop too.

Microsoft actually recommends using a separate drive for the pagefile. It odes speed up the system somewhat because it gets less fragmented as the system drive does.

Why not set a pagefile on each drive? That way you could reap the performance benefit of reading/writing to/from 2 separate drives simultaneously. Additionally, you will get better performance from setting the pagefile size manually versus allowing the the OS to size/resize it on the fly. Generally pagefiles should be between 1.5 to 2 times the amount of physical RAM.

I am not sure that setting an entire 10gig drive as a pagefile is a good idea. Would you really want your OS to spend all that time reading across 10 gigs? I know that you will never use the entire 10 gigs, but not limiting the size would allow the OS to use any part it. It just doesn't sound like a good idea to me, but then again, I am Noobtastic.

Peace

does windows do that? this kind of swap balancing?

Since the drive is going to be good for nothing but VM, I would just have a single drive set up for it. Most servers, esp in linux, do just that. It really just helps speed things along. This relates directly to the new drives coming out by Samsung and others where they have the flash mem in them. the swap will be on the flash mem.

hmmm yeah, but 10GB of swap is a lot... I mean, it depends on the server, but if you need 10GB of swap it wouldnt be on a ide drive  

I've heard of doing this since Win98. I have never tested the actual performance difference, but it makes sense.

An old 10GB drive would be much slower and prone to errors. Theese drives are old and slow, not only because they have lowwer rotational speed, but they have ugly access times very low transfer rates.
Many people take on account only the rotational speed and latency, but there are many other things that count: remember that an HD is the only mechanical part in your system, so go for the latest technology if you want best performance.

And the swap file needs very high transfer rates and low access times. Put it on your fastest HD, on a separate partition on the beginning of the disc: the first external tracks are much faster than inner ones.

I agree. Placing it on a separate partition will keep it from getting as fragmented as the rest of the drive and you can make sure it will get the fastest part of the drive.

Lately, I've followed the advice I found in a book (Build the Ultimate Gaming PC) and it has worked well. I'm making a 5GB partition when loading XP and make that the pagefile. I set it up on the same drive that the OS is on. I later found a Microsoft tech tip advising the same setup.

Put a page file on both drives, and Windows will always page to the drive that has the lowest queue. This will allow it to stick with the fastest drive, or offload to the slower drive, when the fast one is being used heavily.

-And Windows only allows 4GB of swap per volume.

i wont be using the whole 10gig for the pagefile(just 1.5-2GB)

also both drives are ide

sorry, i'm used to large SAN stuff. 10 gigs for swap isn't much for that kinda work ya know?

yeah windows does swap balancing on xp and server editions. Just for easy run balancing.