This may be slightly off topic but I couldn't find a better place to post.
Can anyone think of a reason NOT to use a USB 2.0 drive as a swap partition rather than an ATA 7200 rpm hard drive?
Here's the situation I have a machine that has a max of 1 GB of ram that I'm trying to make into a media server. Since this type of server does better the more RAM it has I'm considering using a larger swap file. I figure that since USB drives are solid state memory rather than HD based and they are fairly cheap I would get a 2 GB stick and create my swap file on it.
Does this make sense or am I missing something?
obviously once the "swap stick" was put in it wouldn't be removed for any reason.
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Well lets just say that Microsoft thinks its a great idea.
In fact the functionality is built into Vista.
Check Sandisks website. They have a blurb about one of their new usb drive supporting the functionality.
SmithTech
"Because they stand on a wall and say, 'Nothing is going to hurt you tonight. Not on my watch.'" (A Few Good Men)
Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.(Albert Einstein)
Dont let the flash in USB flash drive fool you. Your hard disk can read at over 60mb/sec while a flash drive tends to be more like 3mb tops.
Vista has something called ReadyBoost, this is where it uses a FAST USB 2.0 flash drive to speed up your system. It works by paging smaller files to the Flahsh drive instead of the hard disks swap file. Flash drives are better for this than a hard disk.
So a flash drive can help but cannot replace a hard disk swap file.
Microsoft thinks it's a greate idea, but in general is it a GOOD idea? Microsoft thought BOB was a good idea too
Anyway thanks for the headsup about Sandisks blurb if anyone is presently running this way w/ a non-vista machine (XP or linux) please give me a shout w/ any problems or qwerks you've found.