topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Wednesday November 12, 2025, 2:36 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Recent Posts

Pages: prev1 ... 72 73 74 75 76 [77] 78 79 80 81 82 ... 122next
1901
General Software Discussion / Re: Macrium Reflect Question In Re: To FAT32 drive
« Last post by kyrathaba on September 01, 2011, 05:33 PM »
Thanks for mentioning convert.exe; I don't recall hearing of it before.
1902
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on September 01, 2011, 05:32 PM »
I prefer chugging enough memory in my system and not worry about the pagefile - but it's only an option if you can always having enough physical memory available.

It sounds, then, like I could easily get by with no swap file.  I have 6 GB RAM, and run pretty light in terms of both the number of simultaneously running apps I use, and the heftiness of those apps in terms of memory usage.  About the heaviest app I use is Firefox, and I've got it under control with Firemin.
1903
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« Last post by kyrathaba on September 01, 2011, 05:18 PM »
I've read "The Scar".  Loved it!
1904
General Software Discussion / Re: Macrium Reflect Question In Re: To FAT32 drive
« Last post by kyrathaba on September 01, 2011, 07:34 AM »
Unless Macrium imposes a 4GB max filesize/segmentation rule to for compatibility or technical reasons.

I don't believe it does.  It didn't appear to do so when I created a backup of my desktop PC OS partition.
1905
General Software Discussion / Re: Macrium Reflect Question In Re: To FAT32 drive
« Last post by kyrathaba on September 01, 2011, 07:32 AM »
I've successfully reformatted the 500Gb drive to NTFS, and am creating another image with Macrium Reflect Free.  I anticipate it will be a single file, and should work fine.
1906
General Software Discussion / Re: Macrium Reflect Question In Re: To FAT32 drive
« Last post by kyrathaba on September 01, 2011, 07:13 AM »
Thanks, 40hz.

Now I guess what I'm wondering is if the Memorex drive could be formatted as NTFS.  If it can, that would get around this issue, right?
1907
General Software Discussion / Macrium Reflect Question In Re: To FAT32 drive
« Last post by kyrathaba on September 01, 2011, 06:34 AM »
Didn't see this particular question covered in any of the other Macrium Reflect threads.

I've used Macrium Reflect on a Win7 laptop to create a backup image.  I had Reflect write the image to a 500Gb Memorex external drive, which apparently is formatted as FAT32.  Therefore, because of the FAT32 limitations, Reflect created multiple 4Gb images sequentially, rather than one larger image as it did on my NTFS MyBook that's attached to my desktop PC.

My question is, if ran another backup and had it write the image to my laptop's NTFS drive, it would create one large image file.  And if I then copied that to the Memorex drive, would that image be functional in the event that I needed to use it in an emergency?  In other words, if I copied a larger-than-4-GB image to a FAT32 drive, could it be accessed and used successfully in an emergency to restore my Windows partition?  Or, do I instead need to format the current FAT32 drive as NTFS and re-run Reflect, creating the backup on the newly formatted external drive?

I realize that the multiple images as they currently exist on the FAT32 drive can be used as-is with success.  I just prefer a single image file.
1908
Living Room / Re: G-Male -- Google's creepy, perfect boyfriend
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 31, 2011, 06:31 AM »
Haha!  Love it!
1909
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 30, 2011, 05:34 PM »
Nope, it's Book 5, I see.  I guess I've only read the first four...
1910
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 30, 2011, 05:34 PM »
I've read the first 5 books in that series.  Is the one you're reading #6, skwire?
1911
Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 30, 2011, 05:15 PM »
I just finished The Omega Point, by Whitley Streiber.  Pretty entertaining.

omegaPoint.png

Now, I'm reading the Kindle edition of China Mieville's Perdido Street Station:

perdido.png
1912
Enjoy, Perry, and be safe!  Don't forget snake-bite- and first-aid- kits...
1913
N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Kyrathaba's Hangman
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 27, 2011, 08:43 PM »
Welcome to the contest, Richard!
1914
N.A.N.Y. 2012 / Re: NANY 2012 Pledge & Early Beta: Kyrathaba's Hangman
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 27, 2011, 08:42 PM »
Reminder: anyone wishing to win the August highscore award, you've got some work to do... 4 days remaining before DonationCredits are awarded.
1915
General Software Discussion / Re: Your most used SPECIAL programs
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 27, 2011, 09:51 AM »
Found CobIT today, and felt several site members would find it to be a useful special-purpose program:

CobIT is a collection of internet utilities, organized and implemented into an easy to use interface. The program is fully multi-threaded and all the utilities can be used at the same time, independently of each other. The program contains several utilities: Ping, Trace route, DNS resolver, Whois, Finger, Quote , Echo and Time client. Favorite addresses and all settings all saved.
1916
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 07:54 AM »
I moved the Windows TEMP directory to the ramdisk via the Windows environment variable.  I would think surely that makes sense, in that it will automatically ditch unneeded temp files when I reboot.  Although, considering that I don't make heavy use of my machine, I'm leaning toward not using the RAMdisk at all.
1917
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 07:52 AM »
Okay, thanks guys.
1918
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 07:40 AM »
So, vlastimil, you think I need to ditch the RAMdisk altogether?
1919
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 07:33 AM »
Right now, here's what I've got:

I have 6 GB RAM installed on this Win7 Home Premium 64-bit machine.  I have a 1.5 GB RAMdisk installed, but I'm allowing Windows to manage the pagefile.  I've tweaked the registry to force Windows to keep it's kernel solely in RAM (no reads from disk).

Before doing any of these steps, I've created a restore point each time and I backed up my registry before applying the tweak.

Do you think I'm in good shape?
1920
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 07:25 AM »
What's your opinion on this:

Windows willingly swaps its own code from memory to make room for your other programs. But since Windows code is the most often used when you run your system, swapping it can slow things down. You can save swap time by making Windows lock its own kernel in RAM, as long as you have enough memory (512MB).

Note that the Registry controls all swapping of the kernel, and any erroneous alteration in the Registry can make your PC inoperable. Use the program Regedit (usually found in your Windows or WinNT folder). Click on My Computer | Local Disk (C:) | Windows | Regedit.

Expand the listings to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management in the left-hand half of the window. Highlight DisablePagingExecutive on the right-hand side. Then click on Edit | Modify and enter the value 1. Click on OK, close Regedit, and reboot your computer.
1921
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 07:09 AM »
Do you guys agree with the following, taken from a page on Lockergnome:

Myth - "Disabling the Paging File improves performance."

Reality - "You gain no performance improvement by turning off the Paging File. When certain applications start, they allocate a huge amount of memory (hundreds of megabytes typically set aside in virtual memory) even though they might not use it. If no paging file (pagefile.sys) is present, a memory-hogging application can quickly use a large chunk of RAM. Even worse, just a few such programs can bring a machine loaded with memory to a halt. Some applications (e.g., Adobe Photoshop) will display warnings on startup if no paging file is present."

"In modern operating systems, including Windows, application programs and many system processes always reference memory using virtual memory addresses which are automatically translated to real (RAM) addresses by the hardware. Only core parts of the operating system kernel bypass this address translation and use real memory addresses directly. All processes (e.g. application executables) running under 32 bit Windows gets virtual memory addresses (a Virtual Address Space) going from 0 to 4,294,967,295 (2*32-1 = 4 GB), no matter how much RAM is actually installed on the computer. In the default Windows OS configuration, 2 GB of this virtual address space are designated for each process' private use and the other 2 GB are shared between all processes and the operating system. RAM is a limited resource, whereas virtual memory is, for most practical purposes, unlimited. There can be a large number of processes each with its own 2 GB of private virtual address space. When the memory in use by all the existing processes exceeds the amount of RAM available, the operating system will move pages (4 KB pieces) of one or more virtual address spaces to the computer's hard disk, thus freeing that RAM frame for other uses. In Windows systems, these "paged out" pages are stored in one or more files called pagefile.sys in the root of a partition. Virtual Memory is always in use, even when the memory required by all running processes does not exceed the amount of RAM installed on the system."


Myth - "Moving the Paging File to a different partition on the same drive improves performance."

Reality - "Moving the Paging File (pagefile.sys) to a different partition on the same physical hard disk drive does not improve performance. Simply using a different partition on the same drive will result in lots more head-seeking activity, as the drive jumps between the Windows and paging file partitions. Even though moving the paging file in this case can have the positive effect of defragmenting it, the loss in I/O performance out weighs any gains. It is better to simply defragment the paging file using PageDefrag and keep maximum I/O performance by leaving the paging file where it is with a single drive setup.

Notes - However you can enhance performance by putting the paging file on a different partition and on a different physical hard disk drive. That way, Windows can handle multiple I/O requests more quickly. When the paging file is on the boot partition, Windows must perform disk reading and writing requests on both the system folder and the paging file. When the paging file is moved to a different partition and a different physical hard disk drive, there is less competition between reading and writing requests."


Myth - "Putting the Paging File on a RAMdisk improves performance."

Reality - "Putting a Paging File in a RAM drive is a ridiculous idea in theory, and almost always a performance hit when tested under real-world workloads. You can't do this unless you have plenty of RAM and if you have plenty of RAM, you aren't hitting your paging file very often in the first place! Conversely, if you don't have plenty of RAM, dedicating some of it to a RAM drive will only increase your page fault rate. Now you might say "yeah, but those additional page faults will go faster than they otherwise would because they're satisfied in RAM." True, but it is still better to not incur them in the first place. And, you will also be increasing the page faults that have to be resolved to exe's and dll's, and the paging file in RAM won't do diddly to speed those up. But thanks to the paging file in RAM, you'll have more of them. Also: the system is ALREADY caching pages in memory. Pages lost from working sets are not written out to disk immediately (or at all if they weren't modified), and even after being written out to disk, are not assigned to another process immediately. They're kept on the modified and standby page lists, respectively. The memory access behavior of most apps being what it is, you tend to access the same sets of pages over time... so if you access a page you lost from your working set recently, odds are its contents are still in memory, on one of those lists. So you don't have to go to disk for it. Committing RAM to a RAMdisk and putting a paging file on it makes fewer pages available for those lists, making that mechanism much less effective. And even for those page faults resolved to the RAMdisk paging file, you are still having to go through the disk drivers. You don't have to for page faults resolved on the standby or modified lists. Putting a paging file on a RAMdisk is a self-evidently absurd idea in theory, and actual measurement proves it to be a terrible idea in practice. Forget about it."
1922
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 07:04 AM »
I understand now (I think).

Both page file (hard disk space treated as memory) and a RAMdisk (memory space treated as some hard drive space) can be advantageous under certain conditions, right?
1923
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 06:55 AM »
But the RAMdisk just causes some hard drive space to be treated as extra memory, right?  It isn't hurting anything, and might possible be beneficial some of the time?

1924
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 06:49 AM »
The original YouTube video I watched suggested that allowing Windows to manage a pagefile worked against the efectiveness of the ramdisk, and suggested that disabling pagefile altogether would force the system to use the Ramdisk instead, which was supposedly faster/preferable.  But I take it that this is a bad idea?

I have re-enabled Windows management of a pagefile on C drive.  Will the RAMdisk still significantly benefit me?

pagefilePlusRamdisk.png
1925
Living Room / Re: Anyone else using Ramdisk in Windows 7?
« Last post by kyrathaba on August 26, 2011, 06:41 AM »
So I should return pagefile management to Windows, and let it manage it on my C drive, but it's okay to leave RamDisk on E ?
Pages: prev1 ... 72 73 74 75 76 [77] 78 79 80 81 82 ... 122next