Win98 won't let me hide my swap file

[Barry]

I have a problem and a question. First my situation. I have a P166 with 32MG RAM and a 2GB hard drive, and I have done a clean install of Windows98. I wanted to put the swap file on its own partition at the beginning of the drive, and have separate partitions for software and data. I started by creating three primary partitions (using a DOS utility called PDisk), making the first one small for my swap file, and then activated and installed Win98 on the second. Next I transferred my swap file (using a utility called VoptXP) to the first partition, D:\, and set its min and max to the same value. My final step was to hide D:\ (using PDisk), so that no one could accidentally delete the swap file or save data on that logical drive (this PC is for the use of my sister and her two children who are all novices).

My problem is this. When I hid D:\, Windows changed the drive letter of my data drive, which was E:\, into D:\, and at the same time put my swap file into it! There is now a copy of pagefile.sys in both my hidden drive and my data drive, but Win98's Virtual Memory dialog confirms my data drive to be the location of my swap file. How can I get my swapfile to stay in its hidden drive and not be transferred to my data drive?

My question is about a related issue. My swapfile is set to 77MB, which is the size I want it to be, but to get 77MB of free space I had to create a partition of 118MB. Why is this? There are no other files in that partition. With a data partition of only 671MB I don't want to waste 41MB.

[glc]

Can I give you my opinion without offending you? I would forget all the partitions with only a 2 gig drive and just leave it all as a single FAT32 partition for everything, and let Windows handle the swapfile by itself. Keep it simple - especially when novices will be using the machine. Multiple partitions are for advanced users who want more control over their machine. You are just asking for confusion the way you want to do it.

[Barry]

Thanks for your opinion glc, and perhaps you are right, but I would still like to solve this if I can, and I'll keep trying for a while yet before I give up.

[TwoRails]

Hi Barry,

Welcome to PC Mechanic !!!!

First, I'm a strong promoter of multiple logical (partitions) drives, but I have to agree with glc 100% on the above. Three logical drives on a pure DOS machine would be OK on a 2 gig drive, but diffinately not on a Windows machine.

Second, Windows stores Swap file info in several places, such as the System.ini file (where it's location is recorded). The problem is that when you Hide a drive (logical or physical) then Windows can't see it because, well..., it's hidden. So, even if you changed the location in the System.ini file, it will always point to that drive letter designation that it can find. In other words, you will not be able to put it on a hidden drive.

To answer your last question, it's a matter of "slack" and cluster sizes (one of the reasons glc recommened FAT32). Go to PC Mechanic's home page, the click on Hard Drives, then on File structure for indepth reading on the subject.

HTH

TwoRails