swap file vs. swap partition

[Damian Menscher]

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005, Dotan Cohen wrote:

> I'm now prepearing to either create a swap file or a swap partition. I
> am interested in knowing if there is any difference in performance.
> Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks.

A swap partition would be faster (think about it -- no filesystem 
overhead).  The only reason for a swap file is if you didn't plan your 
partitioning scheme properly, and _need_ to add swap at a later date.

Sorry, I don't have specific benchmark numbers for you.  I'm not sure 
how one would even go about benchmarking such a thing.

Oh, you can also have multiple swap partitions, on different drives. 
If you set them to the same priority, it will use all at the same time. 
Kinda like a raid0 stripe, but without creating the software raid.  If 
you're concerned about stability, I think you can software raid the 
drives first, and then create a swap partition on them (haven't actually 
done this myself, since raid would damage performance).

Damian Menscher
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