[sf-lug] Ubuntu 7.10 Video Problem

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ted Nebus (x351912 at gmail.com):

> If that's the current conventional wisdom I will go with 2.  A friend
> of mine also said that its a good idea to have you swap on a different
> physical drive than you / I do have a spare non-SATA drive lying
> around, do you think the gains from using a different drive would be
> lost by using a slower non-SATA?

Actually, if you have two spindles (physical drives) to allocate space
on, your best bet is to put some swap space on _each_.  The swapper
process will be happier, and will split swap activity between them.
(The swapper's pretty smart.  Give it space to work with, and leave
usage up to it.  However, if one disk is markedly slower than another,
you can clue the swapper into that fact through the priority field in
/etc/fstab.  See "man 2 swapon" for details.)

Remember, the slowest thing a hard disk is called upon to do is "seeking"
(moving the read/write arm in and out between concentric tracks).  Your
objective for best disk performance and lightest disk wear is to
minimise average seek distance (and thus time), through the order in
which you arrange partitions.  Naturally, the best way to do that is
debatable.