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Reprinted at Rick Wise’s request
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I do daily backups of C: only. My projects are on an E: drive and I back them up as needed at the end of each edit sessions.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
>>My Vista 64 system has 8 GB of RAM and a 6 GB swap file. It is very easy to eat up memory and having swap space allows the OS to move less important tasks to secondary storage.
OK.
However, what is the initial size of your swap file?
Is the initial size set at 6GB? Or does one set the initial figure lower (like 500 MB)?
The only reason I ask is that I have always been taught to pack as much RAM as one can in one’s machine, and then to minimize the paging file, in order to improve performance. But if the machine eats all of that memory, and then asks for more….
Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org
servant@nazareneisrael.org -
>>I do daily backups of C: only. My projects are on an E: drive and I back them up as needed at the end of each edit sessions.
How does one set projects to E:?
Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org
servant@nazareneisrael.org -
> How does one set projects to E:?
I use File | Save and select a project folder on E: as my destination. I capture to E: also. That’s my RAID 0 drive for video projects. You should never be working on your C: drive. Especially having your footage on C: because access to it is contending with the Windows swap file which is also on C: by default. It is a good practice to use a separate drive for video.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
> However, what is the initial size of your swap file? Is the initial size set at 6GB? Or does one set the initial figure lower (like 500 MB)?
The initial size is 6GB. When you are looking for performance you never want the initial to be smaller that the total. We call this a “fixed size” swap file. You want to totally preallocate it because the last thing you want windows to do is to have to go looking for empty space on your hard drive to extend the swap file during a time critical task (like capturing video). So my swap file is fixed and I defrag it so that it is laid out contiguously on the hard drive. (another reason to have it preallocated is so that it doesn’t get fragmented)
> The only reason I ask is that I have always been taught to pack as much RAM as one can in one’s machine, and then to minimize the paging file, in order to improve performance.
That only makes sense if you can add more RAM then you’ll ever need. What good is performance if you run out of memory? (I guess you can run out of memory “faster”) 😉
If the page file is not needed it will not be used (although Windows does overuse it sometimes). It is an insurance policy against running out of memory. It can also give you more memory during every day activities. For example, if you are working on a large 3D project and video project at the same time, and you have no page file, Windows has to keep them both in memory all the time even though you’ve been heads down in your video editor for the last hour. If you have a swap file, Windows can swap the 3D application out of memory to make more room for your video editor as needed.
There are no good reasons that I can think of to not have a swap file unless you are doing some time critical specialized work where you know you have enough memory and don’t have a nanosecond to swap.
> But if the machine eats all of that memory, and then asks for more….
Exactly!!! …Feed me Seymour.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
>>There are no good reasons that I can think of to not have a swap file unless you are doing some time critical specialized work where you know you have enough memory and don’t have a nanosecond to swap.
So, like, if you are working on a Z800 with 192GB of RAM, then minimize your swap file. But if “all you’ve got is 8GB” (that sounds really funny to my ear), then you still want a swap file?
But if 6GB is good, then why not 8? Or 12? Considering that C: is not really all that full….
Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org
servant@nazareneisrael.org -
>>I use File | Save and select a project folder on E: as my destination. I capture to E: also. That’s my RAID 0 drive for video projects. You should never be working on your C: drive. Especially having your footage on C: because access to it is contending with the Windows swap file which is also on C: by default. It is a good practice to use a separate drive for video.
OK, what is your D:, then?
Norman Willis
http://www.nazareneisrael.org
servant@nazareneisrael.org -
> OK, what is your D:, then?
D: is all of my stock media, ACID loops, backgrounds, images, video stock footage libraries, royalty free music, etc. It also is the place that I backup C: to. So there is a backup folder that the daily incremental backups go to. Both D: and E: are 1TB in capacity. C: is 640GB split 50/50 XP32 and Vista 64 (dual boot). Then I have an external ESATA enclosure with 2x 1TB drives that I backup my projecst on E: to.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
> But if 6GB is good, then why not 8? Or 12? Considering that C: is not really all that full….
Yea well… 12 would have been the norm because it’s 1.5x my real memory but I didn’t have a 640GB drive when I first set up Vista 64. I had a 74GB 10K drive so 12GB was a big portion of the drive and I have about 60GB of programs. Then I bought the 640GB drive and now you are correct, there is lots of room. Clearly if I was getting low memory errors I would push it up but I’m not getting any so far.
~jr
http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com -
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