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Root swap on sd card?

pworcester said:
What does it buy you?
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4. The ROM Manager will then ask if you would like to create another partition to use as SWAP, I would NOT recommend creating one (select 0mb) unless you have a Class 6 SDCARD. The constant writing to SWAP can cause problems with class 4 cards. If you still have the card that came with your Ally. Its Class 4
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from HOWTO: Partition Your SDCard for A2SD

is that what you would like to know?
 
Putting swap on SD has mixed results, based on my understanding it wouldn't free up any internal storage space as you already have a dedicated swap partition.

it does however give you more swap. This could potentially make large applications run more smoothly and since the ally has very little RAM it isnt a horrible idea. It is however MUCH slower than RAM so it is recommended if you add a swap partition to your sdcard to make it small, it is suggested to make it between 16 and 32 mb.
 
im gonna try to make a swap partition right now and see if it speeds up my phone drastically. I have an upgraded sdcard tho so idk what everyone else has. I have a 16GB class 4, out of prolly another droid from Verizon. Thank you nice lady for switching out my 4GB for this one for free :)
 
so im using a 32MB swap partition on my sdcard now and i cant tell tooo big of a difference. I did notice that Angry Birds loaded quicker than usual so i think that is the difference. And the more apps you install, it shouldnt start slowing down like it usually would. I set it up just like this guys Amazing droid performance increase but didnt get the increase like he described as "quite simply blown away with the performance increase on my Droid. It feels like I have a new phone." Also, idk exactly what kind of damage it is doing to my sdcard. its definately working though because before i added the partition, i used
Code: 
cat /proc/meminfo
and it said there was 0KB swap cached and swaptotal. Now i have memory usage there.
 
ok, this is how I got swap working;
create a swap partition on sdcard
mkswap on swap partition
downloaded Swapper2
with Swapper2 used advance settings and selected "Use Swap Partition"

You don't have to create a swap partion. Swapper2 will create a swap file.

Power cycled and it came back running my swap partition
 
pworcester said:
ok, this is how I got swap working;
create a swap partition on sdcard
mkswap on swap partition
downloaded Swapper2
with Swapper2 used advance settings and selected "Use Swap Partition"

You don't have to create a swap partion. Swapper2 will create a swap file.

Power cycled and it came back running my swap partition
Click to expand...


Yes but what is your performance like?
 
A swap file generally works differently than a swap partition does...but on something other than a hard drive and something so small in size, I don't know if it would make a difference. That would be interesting to find out. Regardless I think I would still prefer a partition... especially if the card is almost full. But I guess we need to see if either one really helps before comparing.
 
pworcester said:
I set up a 512MB partition through Drellisdee's recovery 1.24
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ur swap size is 512??? i redid everything and set up a ext3 partition of 640MB and swap partition of 128MB and decided to start from scratch on velocity3 with turbo4 and Drell's new OC Kernel. So far i put most of my apps back on and its still AMAZINGLY fast but ill find out for sure as i add more to the home screen and install more apps.

Noob question alert: How does the ext3 partition work? When i go in setCPU and look at memory info, it says my total memory is about 180MB with only 4MB of MemFree. What happened to the ext3 partition? isnt it supposed to make this number bigger that 180MB?

Also, when i use a task killer and kill a bunch of apps, my free memory doesnt change so i kind of understand but id appreciate it if someone could explain how the ext3 patition works or direct me to somewhere where i can find out.
 
I tried a swap file and it cut my linpack score in half. Can't imagine that doing a partition would be any better. After looking everything over it seems that a file should be the better way to go because it writes to a different sector each time. Anyway with results like that, its safe to say the experiment is over and I am uninstalling swapper 2. Maybe when I get a class 6 card I will give it a go again or try using a partition instead... maybe its more a problem with swapper 2 than anything else.
 
dumbteentarget: a partition is a space configured on a disk. It does not have anything to do with memory. Ext3 is a type of linux filesystem format. It uses a journaling system to allow quick checks.
 
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