<B>Q1:-</B>
When setting the virtual memory in NT4 what are the recommended settings? I know NT recommends a minimum (RAM +10% usually) but what is the best for the maximum?

We have a PC with 128Mb RAM, virtual mem set to 139min 170max but get virtual memory warnings. Is there a correleation between Min and Max?

<B>Q2:-</B>
How do you get NT4 to recognise large partitions? The largest I can get Disk Admin to go to is 4Gb using 64Kb clusters, yet when we bought new NT PC's the partions were 6 gig or some even bigger - how do they do this?? Is this something you set up in Ghost when your installing a clone image? I tried with Partition Magic but that won't set any bigger either.

Any help gratefully recieved.

Dr Hu

 

Hmmmm,

The actual recommendations for page file are something like 2 * Ram plus 12 i believe, but you shouldnt need to go that high! i would set your higher than it is though, if you are hitting errors, double the bottom up and add some for the top limit. This is fine if space is not an issue !

NT4 CANNOT be installed onto a partition greater than 4GB (or maybe even 2 blimey im forgetting loads of this stuff ) but you can resize the partition after its installed i think !

This is probably all wrong, as i am very tired

 

Amount of ram + 12mb. I have used this rule on servers of any size or configurations. The same amount applies to workstations. I have never seen an app have problems like that unless it's on a server with a memory leak. The only way to fix that is to find and fix the leak, then reboot.

If you're getting virtual memory errors, it's likely your PC is low on actual ram or drivespace. MS recommends the pagefile be placed on a non-boot partition if I remember rightly.

The boot partition can only be 4GB if you use regular setup procedures. A drive up to 2 terrabytes can be formatted in disk administrator after setup. So, if you've got a 30GB drive, you can make a 4 gig and a 26 gig partition. If you have problems, verify you're running at least SP4.

One trick I've seen to install NT on larger partitions was to format a drive for a NT workstation using another NT box's disk administrator to its full capacity, then installing NT, or ghosting an existing NT configuration on to a drive formatted with NTFS over 4GB.

Does this helps?

--john

 

Try running SAP you are looking a 3 * ram minimum!!!

 

Thanks for the replies so far....

I should have given you more details:-

The PC is running Workstation with SP6a

I know the max limit for the bootable partition is 4Gb but any further partitions could be much larger using FAT? - You can go as big as you like using NTFS.

I know there's a FAT 16 limit - partition magic lists it as FAT16B or FAT 16X depending on cluster size. Is 4Gb the FAT16 limit?

(n.b I like FAT as you can boot off a DOS floppy if it all goes pear shaped.....!)

 

Dr Hu,

If you create your system partition as FAT then it will not matter if the other partitions are NTFS, you can still recover the machine using a dos boot disk because your system partition is FAT. There are utilities out there that will let you access NTFS partions from DOS such as NTFSDOS.

Regards

Sean

 

Dr Hu,

Q1) Hate to get picky with the answers that others have given, but I will!!!

On any NT course/exam/etc, they say that the minimum should be the system memory + 12mb, although when NT works it's it out, the recommended size is always system memory + 11mb!

128mb is not a lot of memory considering the memory hungry Micr*soft applications!! What are you running on the PC?

I agree with John, try and keep the pagefile off the C drive, if you have another drive in the machine.

Q2) Personally I agree with Sean. The system partition, 4gb FAT16 fair enough. Stuff can be recovered etc, if the worse happens.

That said I would have NTFS on the other partitions.

Also with the cost of disks now (very cheap), I'm surprised that this is really an issue and you're not running a mirrored pair!

What sort of fault tolerance do you have?? If the data is that important, maybe get some sort of backup device, again not a great cost considering some of the data our clients have lost!!!

 

I agree with Andy those are the minimum sizes for the pagefile and if you "need" more then you need more RAM anyway. I do make the minimum and maximum size the same however to avoid the pagefile being fragmented.

Problem with creating your bootdrive as FAT is one of security, anyone can come along with any old bootdisk and get in.

John was right that you could format the disk larger in another NT box (as long as it has SP4 on it). This is the easiest way to do it, there is a screwy way by copying the atapi.sys driver from ntsp4 to a floppy disk and then when setup asks for "any other devices" select other disk and use that file. Does need playing with tho'

 

Re. Pagefile - it is very worthwhile setting a pagefile with same min/max settings (2-2.5 x RAM) on a volume which is completely defrag'ed.

But if you change an existing pagefile to be same min/max you'll need a 3rd party defrag util before you get full benefit.

Also - I think it's only worth moving pagefile to a non boot volume. Moving it to a different partition on the same disk makes no difference.

As said, 128Mb RAM is not really enough for NT4

Of course - performance tuning mostly depends what you need to do with the box.....

Richard