12:11 p.m.
Here's one for you guys. On this old Proliant ML 330e (mentioned in
my previous posts this week) I only have 256mb of PC 133 ECC RAM.
It's a 1.0ghz P3 CPU. So, with this in mind would it be better
performance wise to have 'swap' as an entirely separate hard drive? I
found an old 1gb drive which is what made me wonder about this. It
would be good to upgrade the RAM and do have some non-ECC stuff but
the BIOS will not accept it and having gone through the settings (in
BIOS) there doesn't appear to be any way of allowing its use.
So. Any ideas? Anybody tried experimenting in this way? If so does
it make any 'significant' improvement or is it not worthwhile doing?
Take care.
--
==============================================
Kevan
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire
**********************************************
www.freeworld-recycling.org
'From me to you towards a sustainable future.'
**********************************************
5:02 p.m.
It would appear to make sense to have swap on a separate disk if you can if
you have apps that use the disk heavily.
On 15 October 2010 12:11, Kevanf1 <kevanf1(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Here's one for you guys. On this old Proliant ML 330e (mentioned
in
my previous posts this week) I only have 256mb of PC 133 ECC RAM.
It's a 1.0ghz P3 CPU. So, with this in mind would it be better
performance wise to have 'swap' as an entirely separate hard drive? I
found an old 1gb drive which is what made me wonder about this. It
would be good to upgrade the RAM and do have some non-ECC stuff but
the BIOS will not accept it and having gone through the settings (in
BIOS) there doesn't appear to be any way of allowing its use.
So. Any ideas? Anybody tried experimenting in this way? If so does
it make any 'significant' improvement or is it not worthwhile doing?
Take care.
--
==============================================
Kevan
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire
**********************************************
www.freeworld-recycling.org
'From me to you towards a sustainable future.'
**********************************************
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1:06 a.m.
It's only a benefit if you've run out of memory (and swap use is
on-going) at the same time that you're trying to read/write from your
regular partitions.
Swap is generally very bad over more RAM, given the insanely slow speed
of reading/writing to disk when compared with RAM.
There's something to be said for using NAND flash memory as swap space,
particularly better-performing devices, given the low access times.. But
in reality, more RAM is the way forward except in a very small few,
desperate circumstances.
Tom
On Fri, 2010-10-15 at 17:02 +0100, Chris Snow wrote:
It would appear to make sense to have swap on a separate disk if you
can if
you have apps that use the disk heavily.
12:06 p.m.
On 17 October 2010 01:06, Tom Hill <tom(a)ninjabadger.net> wrote:
It's only a benefit if you've run out of memory (and swap use
is
on-going) at the same time that you're trying to read/write from your
regular partitions.
Swap is generally very bad over more RAM, given the insanely slow speed
of reading/writing to disk when compared with RAM.
There's something to be said for using NAND flash memory as swap space,
particularly better-performing devices, given the low access times.. But
in reality, more RAM is the way forward except in a very small few,
desperate circumstances.
Tom
I'm inclined to class this as one of those very small desperate cases.
The machine only has 256mb of RAM. It's ECC RAM because it's meant
to be a server, makes sense. Supposedly it should accept non-ECC RAM
but for some reason it won't other wise I could double what is there
straight away. I'm not mixing the two types by the way as I know that
is a no no. I happen to have a couple of 256mb non ECC PC133 sticks
that are known good and it should accept this size. It doesn't so I'm
not going to messa bout and waste time. There is nothing in the BIOS
either to set it for non ECC RAM, again, I've gone through every bit
of it.
I just happened to come across a good working 1gb HDD the other day
and wondered about using it a dedicated swap drive.
All this has come about because I am sorting through the loads of old
PC's that I have sitting around doing nothing. Most are useless
unless I really want half a dozen PC's running Puppy or DSL; most will
not even run that because the power supplies are dead :-( I'm just
seeing what I actually do have, an inventory if you like. Then I'll
get rid of the stuff I don't want so that I can actually move in my
workshop :-)
--
==============================================
Kevan
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire
**********************************************
www.freeworld-recycling.org
'From me to you towards a sustainable future.'
**********************************************
1:14 p.m.
On Sun, 2010-10-17 at 12:06 +0100, Kevanf1 wrote:
I just happened to come across a good working 1gb HDD the other day
and wondered about using it a dedicated swap drive.
Which will be slow - disgustingly so - given its age.
If your 'main' hard disk in that machine is anything newer, you are
still far better off having a swap partition on that disk. Perhaps you
could gain more from having the swap partition on the outside area, but
this is a minuscule difference.
A 1GB *flash* drive would be a different story, but 1GB of rotating rust
isn't worth the power it would take to spin it up. :)
There is no benefit to be had under these circumstances.
Look at Ebay: £10 for a gigabyte of PC133 ECC memory (inc. postage).
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m570.l1313&_nkw=P...
+ECC&_sacat=See-All-Categories
It's not like that's an expensive upgrade.
Tom
6:52 p.m.
On 17 October 2010 13:14, Tom Hill <tom(a)ninjabadger.net> wrote:
On Sun, 2010-10-17 at 12:06 +0100, Kevanf1 wrote:
> I just happened to come across a good working 1gb HDD the other day
> and wondered about using it a dedicated swap drive.
Which will be slow - disgustingly so - given its age.
If your 'main' hard disk in that machine is anything newer, you are
still far better off having a swap partition on that disk. Perhaps you
could gain more from having the swap partition on the outside area, but
this is a minuscule difference.
A 1GB *flash* drive would be a different story, but 1GB of rotating rust
isn't worth the power it would take to spin it up. :)
There is no benefit to be had under these circumstances.
Look at Ebay: £10 for a gigabyte of PC133 ECC memory (inc. postage).
http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m570.l1313&_nkw=P...
+ECC&_sacat=See-All-Categories
It's not like that's an expensive upgrade.
Tom
Yeah but this is purely a tat around, mess about with machine. I
don't even want to spend £1 on it let alone £10. Crikey, I must have
known Dick Turpin for too long.... It could be fun to actually
experiment and see how disgustingly slow it is. Just for the sheer
novelty of it :-)
Take care.
Oh, I've just unearthed a 3.2gb drive now also...
--
==============================================
Kevan
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire
**********************************************
www.freeworld-recycling.org
'From me to you towards a sustainable future.'
**********************************************
7:40 p.m.
Yeah but this is purely a tat around, mess about with machine. I
don't even want to spend £1 on it let alone £10. Crikey, I must have
known Dick Turpin for too long.... It could be fun to actually
experiment and see how disgustingly slow it is. Just for the sheer
novelty of it :-)
Take care.
Oh, I've just unearthed a 3.2gb drive now also...
Kevan,
Firstly, you must have a LOT of free time!!
It does seem somewhat pointless to keep old drives, especially when
you're aiming to play with/benchmark old hardware... it will perform
at its best (and perhaps achieve what you're aiming for) with a new
(i.e. spun for less hours) or modern hard drive.
But if you're really up for some read/write based laughs, start using
old rom chips - they're bound to take forever.
A
--
Andrew Edwards
9:15 p.m.
On 17 October 2010 19:40, Andrew Edwards <edwards.andrew(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Firstly, you must have a LOT of free time!!
Erm, yes. Come on Andrew, keep up. I retired 10 years ago :-)
It does seem somewhat pointless to keep old drives, especially when
you're aiming to play with/benchmark old hardware... it will perform
at its best (and perhaps achieve what you're aiming for) with a new
(i.e. spun for less hours) or modern hard drive.
These are purely ones that have sat on shelves hidden away in my
workshop. It is purely a fun exercise to see if they firstly work at
all and secondly if they can indeed be put to some use.
But if you're really up for some read/write based laughs, start
using
old rom chips - they're bound to take forever.
Some of the old BIOS chips on these old mobo's take longer to POST
(even on fast POST) that a modern Ubuntu loads to desktop...
I happen to love old cars too you know ;-)
--
==============================================
Kevan
Linux user #373362
Staffordshire
**********************************************
www.freeworld-recycling.org
'From me to you towards a sustainable future.'
**********************************************
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