# I have no swapfile. Huh????

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 17, 2001, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911 "2001-02-17T21:25:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Doubleclick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Doubleclick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doubleclick)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2001, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911/1 "2001-02-17T21:25:42Z")

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Before I go on…here are my PC specs as of this morning.

PII-233  
Win ME  
192MB  
4G HD  
6G HG  
Voodoo5 5500  
(And so on…)

I just installed another 128MB giving me a total of 320MB.

Everything works great! But when I went into Explorer, I noticed my swap file is 0(Zero)k.

(I have my system tweaked right up adn the only things I have running at boot up are Zone Alarm, GetRight!, and MemTurbo. I have ICQ and two browser windows running now and still no swap file.)

Is this something I should be worried about??

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**Author:** ![Doubleclick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Doubleclick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doubleclick)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2001, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911/2 "2001-02-17T21:31:09Z")

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BTW: I have Windows set to manage the swap file itself.)

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**Author:** ![Mikahw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Mikahw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mikahw)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2001, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911/3 "2001-02-17T21:50:05Z")

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I think you have so much ram, you don’t need a swapfile.

If you never run out of ram while doing operations, Virtual RAM doesn’t need to be used, now does it?

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**Author:** ![Doubleclick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Doubleclick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doubleclick)\
**Post date:** [February 17, 2001, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911/4 "2001-02-17T22:05:19Z")

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That is exactly what I was thinking. I just ahve never seen this before, so I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong…

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**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2001, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911/5 "2001-02-18T00:42:13Z")

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IIRC from a cnet artical. No matter how much ram you have, you should have some swap file. I think the reason is that parts of the mem (low, conventioal mem) are easier to access then other (higher mem add’s). windows swaps out rarely needed code to swap file leaving more mem available for apps. If you are using an OS that is not based on the DOS kernal then I don’t think it matters.

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**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\
**Post date:** [February 18, 2001, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-have-no-swapfile-huh/54911/6 "2001-02-18T16:56:10Z")

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having no swap file can make some applications faster. But hey, if it works fine then you don’t need one.