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User profile for user: m0ng
m0ng Author
User level: Level 1
75 points

Swap files

I recently downloaded a widget that tells me how many swap files there are and how much space they're taking up...I was quite shocked to see that most of the time there are 6 equalling just over a gb of space. My question is firstly: how can I prevent so many swap files appearing and taking up so much space? and secondly is there a way to get rid of them without restarting my ibook everyday? (they appear to get to about a gb in size after roughly ten minutes of use).

???

Posted on Sep 20, 2005 8:41 PM

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3 replies
User profile for user: Allan Sampson
Allan Sampson
User level: Level 10
123,677 points

Sep 20, 2005 8:59 PM in response to m0ng

If you are running a number of Widgets in the background, these take up RAM and virtual memory in addition to other running applications. Depending on the Widget, it may have a memory leak.

OS X makes automatic/dynamic use of virtual memory or swap files regardless the amount of RAM installed which cannot be manually adjusted. To fully recover virtual memory utilized requires logging off or restarting.

Check Problems from Insufficient RAM and Free Hard Disk Space under Memory management in Mac OS X for more information.

The following was copied from Tuning Mac OS X Performance.

While Dashboard Widgets do not use the CPU unless Dashboard is open, they consume both Real and Virtual Memory (VM) at all times after you open Dashboard. You can see this by reviewing the data for each widget in Activity Monitor. You can reclaim these resources by closing nonessential Widgets.
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Swap files

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