[This was sent directly to me, off-list, but I thought it interesting and informative enough to repost.
I've given Joe a couple of days to do so, and he hasn't, so I'm doing it myself.] Utilization of VM in OS X [forgive me if this is all old hat] is arranged in 80 MB chunks. At boot time an 80 MB swap file is created and goes up in 80 MB increments as needed, so 500 MB for a separate VM partition would accommodate 6 swap files. I have never seen mine go above 4 swap files. You can check this is /var/vm. In those cases where it has gone above this it has invariably been associated with a runaway app or some such. Restarting the OS has taken care of the problem. If you never see more than one or two swap files and if top does not show appreciable page outs there is really no need to have a separate swap partition. I sometimes see folks installing their swap files on a separate partition on the SAME physical drive as the OS X partition which makes no sense at all since the spindle and heads cannot read more than location at a time from the same physical disk. If you are going to use a separate swap partition it has to be on a physically separate disk to make much sense. This is particularly true with IDE drives whose queuing behavior for read/writes is distinctly inferior to scsi drives. I suppose the best of all worlds is a separate scsi hard drive for a swap partition with a modest size, perhaps 600-750 MB. Heavens knows these are cheap enough.I personally use, in a server based upon an 8500, a 17 gig SCSI drive for OS X and utilities, a separate 2 gig SCSI for OS 9.2, a separate 750 meg SCSI for a swap drive, a separate SCSI CDR for backup, a separate SCSI DAT for backup and for data an ultrawide SCSI RAID in an external box running off of an Initio Miles. Just my $0.02. drjoe -- Liam Proven � http://welcome.to/liamsweb -- Unsupported OS X is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Unsupported OS X list info <http://lowendmac.com/lists/unsupported.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/unsupportedosx%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
