Swap files

Question

Swap files

I have a widget that tells me how many swap files I have and also the MB of what they have used. I know they are to do with RAM but I still don't know what it really means, is it a bad thing and do I have to restart before they get too large?

Can someone just enlighten me a bit.

Thanks
Craig

Posted on Oct 20, 2005 3:23 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 20, 2005 5:02 AM in response to Craig Ramsden

Hi Craig

I assume you're referring to the OS X swap files. In 10.4 if you run Activity Monitor in the Applications\Utilities folder and click on the System Memory tab you can see how many page ins and outs have occurred, for example, on my Mac it's currently 13016/0. In an ideal world the number of page outs (the second figure) would be zero. When a page out occurs a page (or block) of memory is paged (or swapped) out to a swap file on the hard disk, which results in a performance hit. If the page out figure is too high more memory would be beneficial, although what too high is isn't black or white. In OS X virtual memory is always on, so there will always be swap files.

I hope this helps a little.

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Answer 2

Oct 20, 2005 9:29 AM in response to Craig Ramsden

Hello Craig.

In addition to what Rodney provided, check Problems from Insufficient RAM and Free Hard Disk Space under Memory management in Mac OS X for more information.

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