# Swap on a separate drive--still a good idea?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swap-on-a-separate-drive-still-a-good-idea/222144
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 1, 2004, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swap-on-a-separate-drive-still-a-good-idea/222144 "2004-01-01T18:12:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 4
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2004, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swap-on-a-separate-drive-still-a-good-idea/222144/1 "2004-01-01T18:12:52Z")

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Does it matter any more if your swap space is on a separate drive? I’m talking home PC here, running Windoze. Back in the bad old days, when drives were slow, it helped–especially if you had an old, spare drive lying around–to put the swap space (whatever they call it in Windoze) on that left-over drive and all your data+programs on a different one. Is that still a good idea?

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### Author: ![Alereon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@Alereon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alereon)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2004, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swap-on-a-separate-drive-still-a-good-idea/222144/2 "2004-01-01T19:36:51Z")

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Sure it’ll help, but most modern PCs aren’t actually struggling for RAM like they were back in the day, so it’s less of an issue. If your system is hitting swap, it’s a good idea to just buy enough RAM that you don’t have to worry about running out. It’s cheap enough.

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### Author: ![foxymoron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d26b3c/32.png) [@foxymoron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foxymoron)
#### Post date: [January 1, 2004, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swap-on-a-separate-drive-still-a-good-idea/222144/3 "2004-01-01T23:57:14Z")

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It won’t hurt anything. But unless the disk was a bottleneck, you won’t notice the difference.

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### Author: ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)
#### Post date: [January 2, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/swap-on-a-separate-drive-still-a-good-idea/222144/4 "2004-01-02T01:58:09Z")

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The rule of thumb is that your swap space should be on the most used partition of the least used drive. But memory is so cheap these days that you’re better off buying that instead.