Selecting Virtual Memory targets under OS 8.x (functionality applies for all versions of the OS)

For the purposes of this article, the terms 'hard disk drive', 'HDD', 'volume' and 'partition' are interchangeable.

Procedure

In the selector box of the Memory Control Panel, you can see I have seven choices for targeting my Virtual Memory, as is reflected by the icons on the Desktop image slice on the left.

Each is a volume (partition) on a hard disk drive (there are three hard disk drives on this machine). The volume titled 'scratch' is a volume with nothing else on it, and is formatted on the fastest portion of the hard disk drive (HDD). You cannot select more than one volume (partition) for VM.

As you can see in the example above, I have selected 'scratch' as the target hard disk (one volume of a HDD) for the Virtual Memory map to be written.

You can also see that I have a RAM Disk, as well as a dynamic RAM disk (AppDisk) created, but it cannot be used for Virtual Memory (kind of a self-defeating circle).

However, I can select the RAM disk as a 'scratch disk' target from within Photoshop, if I desire, which makes for the fastest possible scratch disk use in Photoshop, Quark, and like-applications.

The RAM Disk in this example is too small to be of any use for that purpose, this one is created to use for browser cache files. Make yours considerably larger if you intend to use it for Photoshop or Quark, typically about the size of the files you're working on, and then some.

(Observant folks will have noted that the Disk Cache and RAM Disk setting varies between screenshots. This is because they are from two different machines from older artcles. Isn't recycling great?)

Related Articles

• Modern Virtual Memory: This is not your father's old, slow-feel (coming soon!)
• Partitioning Your Hard Drives   revised 10 August 1999
• Using Apple Drive Setup revised 14 August 1999
• Using RAM Disks for Fun and Profit (coming soon!)
• RAID! It Kills Bottlenecks Dead (coming soon!)
• Macintosh Drives and Performance   revised 12 August 1999
• Drive and Volume Configuration (coming soon!)
• Optimising Versus Defragmentation (coming soon!
  

Article first revised on: 14 August 1999
Article last revised on: 05 November 1999
Author: Frederico
Editor: WebClub '99

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