On 13/12/06, Les <hlhowell@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On some disks, sectors are added as the diameter increases. At least I should say, they used to. Today most disks write to a small band of the overall disk, so I don't know if any of them do dynamic sectors based on track location. However the speed difference was minimal anyway, since all tracks rotate at the same speed. In fact, you could argue that in the dynamically sectored disks, having the swap at the outer segments would be faster since more data storage would exist without moving the head ( a time consuming process).
Makes sense.
On trick I have done on heavy processing tasks is to put swap on a totally separate drive. Thus the seeks were swap relative and required less access time. In some cases this can provide dramatic increases in through put. Also having a separate disk for tmp will provide you with some benefits depending on the type of software you are using. But again, YMMV.
I'ld be unable to add another physical hard drive to the machine. I could barely afford it with one drive!
Today, if you wish to "tune" your system, you have to look at the overall task, the requirements and the architecture that addresses those requirements. For general use (not intensive scientific computation or heavy duty 3d graphics manipulation) you will not see much difference with an OOB (out of the box) PC and Linux or Windows setup. But if you are heavy into MMRPG's or VR, or scientific array manipulation or high level visualization (graphics), the picture changes, but then so does the level of personal knowledge and software analysis that is needed to make it all play nicely.
Well, I'll be using the machine for piloting interstellar craft while recreating 3D renditions of their environment every 1/1000000 second, a nessecity as they travel at .98 C. Well, maybe not, so I guess that I could pass on the fine tuning :) Dotan Cohen http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/581/p_diddy.php http://what-is-what.com/what_is/virus.html
