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Subject: Re: Looking for help with computer problem.

Author: Jeremiah Penery

Date: 16:27:19 11/28/02

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On November 28, 2002 at 17:11:08, James T. Walker wrote:

>On November 28, 2002 at 16:54:25, mike schoonover wrote:
>
>>could it be that the master drive determines the access speed?
>>or,the system gives the master priority,hoging resources?
>>regards
>>mike
>
>Hello Mike,
>The only problem with that theory is the computer where the TB's are on the
>"Master" drive is the slow one.  The fastest one uses the 8G/5400rpm as drive C
>(Master) and the 40G/7200rpm as drive D (Slave).  The chess programs are on the
>"C" drive in both cases.
>Jim

I would guess that the reason for the slowdown is because the virtual memory
(pagefile) is on the same drive as the tablebases.  So, when it caches
information, it's copying on the same disk, while also trying to access other
tablebases.  On the other machine, it copies to a different disk, which will be
much faster.

Other things that can affect the access speed of tablebases are disk
fragmentation and the physical position of the tablebase files on the disk.  If
the files are heavily fragmented on one system, and are contiguous on the other,
the fragmented ones should be quite a bit slower.  Files near the beginning of
the disk have faster access times and faster transfer rates than files near the
end of the disk, as well.



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