How fragmented is your hard drive

[ĄƦçɧąɳɠҾԼ]

Should be a conversion program in System Tools, START -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools.

Once you do that you can't convert it back to FAT32 without formating, but then, why would you even want to go back.

[[BTF]adam]

Aha.. okay.. well what proggy is it?

[X'tyfe]

thanks for the lniks solo, i learned some stuff

i have 1gb of ram, and im not sure what my page  file is set at
would it be safe for me to disable it then ?

[plastik]

absolutely, 1GB of RAM is more than enough to have no paging file. 

[X'tyfe]

thanks ill give that a go

[Art]

absolutely, 1GB of RAM is more than enough to have no paging file.

[plastik]

the unwritten rule (from my own experiences) is that for how much RAM you have, your page file should be 1/2-1/3 of that, that is, if you have 500+MB of RAM, if not, leave it alone!  but it all depends on what type of programs you run.  if you run programs that eat up RAM like crazy, you will have trouble using windows at a good speed, and windows will more than likely crash all the time.  there is an actual mathematical equation for your paging file versus your ram size, such as 1.5 * MB/RAM, but this is how windows calculates it, so your paging file is already set to those specifications most likely.  to optimize, we need to change that.  a little paging file history for you...it was only used in the 'good ole days' because the amount of RAM that people had on average was around 128-256MB or so at max.  it's still used as a buffer, but not really necessary. 
windowsXP itself, even with most of the unused services turned off takes about 100MB and some change to run effectively.  oh and another note, i noticed someone was using a 2GB HD partitioned to be their paging file system, this can help a little bit, but 2GB is nowhere near necessary because windows will never get close enough to using that much, so not only is it a waste, but it allows your paging system to get fragments, and still run slow. and also it's actually doing nothing but making your hard drive have to work more if it's a partition on the same drive, because it will have to seek out that partition, then access it, rather than accessing the partition attached to windows itself.  so all this is pretty much taking a step backwards from actual optimization.  if your going to do your paging file like this, only use it on a seperate hard drive, only make a seperate partition to exactly the same size as the paging file, and just use the rest of the partition left over for saving files or something, not running programs.

[plastik]

also, i thought you guys might love this example of what setting up different partitions for different programs can actually do for your system... hell if its even possible, the very best but most tedious thing to do is setup different partitions for EVERY program you have, leaving just a little extra room for things you may need to add or for temporary files created by the program, here is a picture of my Q2 partition...and i guarantee you probably haven;t ever seen your windows xp HD like this before except maybe on a fresh install.  note: this drive ALWAYS stays like this, unless you add files, which is why i had to defrag it.  the green is the paging file, and the blue is all q2 baby!

[Art]

My pagefile is 1280KB and is on the non boot harddrive (I have two seperate 40 GB hd's). win2kpro OS. What do you suggest ... maybe decreasing the pagefile size and moving it back to the boot drive ?

oh, and my q2 is a bloated 2.97 GB (3,192,225,792 bytes). I see your q2 is on a 2GB partition.

[ĄƦçɧąɳɠҾԼ]

Aha.. okay.. well what proggy is it?

I haven't seen the program in a long time, but I believe its called "Drive Converter" or something.  It doesn't get installed if you already have an NTFS drive, which is what I always use.

[plastik]

thats way too high art if you ask me, and not really necessary.  heres something to try out, try using a paging file of around 250MB or so to start out with, on one drive, then on both (yes both  each).  do the necessary reboots and then see if theres any improvements in your system performance...it wont work miracles, but you should notice it.   then try decreasing the paging file by 50MB each until you get to where there is no paging file.  you'll have to remember in trial and error which works best.  like i said before, you do not have enough RAM to completely leave the paging file off unless you don't use cpu/ram eating applications.  this is just to get you slowly notice the difference, then find the setting that works for you.  make sure you use the computer for a bit each time, testing out how your programs are running,etc.  i have 400MB of RAM and my paging file usage goes upto about 150 max, so you don't really have to do any of this stuff if you just want to set it and be done.   try just turning it off if you don't run hogging applications, if you have problems with that, turn it back on, but turn it to 100MB, its all about the difference you see.
don't do anyother tweaks (such as defragging)  until you see some performance differences so you know what settings actually worked.

[Om3ga]

hehe, thats useful coming from you, plastik, maybe your not as bad as i thought!

thx tho. i actually had my paging file upto 512 mbs (per partition)

[plastik]

well, paging files are usually ok to have large on seperate drives, but not partitions.  the reason why it does not matter on seperate drives much is because the hard drives can go as fast as their limits.  for example:  you are running windows on the same hard drive, and whatever program, not only does the hard drive have to read that program, but also it may have to write to the paging file on that drive at the same time.  that == less transfer speeds over all.  let alone if you are doing anything else such as downloading / running background processes.  its just spreading everything a bit thin.  partitions are best for keeping the files on them from defragmenting too badly.  heres an idea, if i haven't already mentioned it.  partition an area of your hard drive (local, but preferbly seperate) specifically for page file usage only, that will == to the exact size of your set paging file.  i haven't tried it, but im sure it will give improvement.   remember, when a hard drive has any partition on it and it is accessed, the hard drive only reads from the beginning and end of that partition, meaning it will take less time to read the file, versus a main drive defragment where the hard drive has to seek parts of the file and put them back together for you.


btw, im glad your beginning to 'come around'

and as anyone can tell, after i got hit by that drunk driver and became disabled, i have ALOT of free time.  dont you pity me tho! i can still slit ur throat with my katana! or beat you with my spiked chrome knucks!

[Om3ga]

dang!