Windows: Swap

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From the course by Google

Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User

2005 ratings

Google

Operating Systems and You: Becoming a Power User

2005 ratings

Course 3 of 5 in the Specialization Google IT Support Professional Certificate

In this course, you’ll learn how to use the major operating systems, Windows and Linux, which are a core component of IT. Through a combination of video lectures, demonstrations, and hands-on practice, you’ll learn about the main components of an operating system and how to perform critical tasks like managing software and users, and configuring hardware. By the end of this course you’ll be able to: - navigate the Windows and Linux filesystems using a graphical user interface and command line interpreter. - set up users, groups, and permissions for account access. - install, configure, and remove software on the Windows and Linux operating systems. - configure disk partitions and filesystems. - understand how system processes work and how to manage them. - work with system logs and remote connection tools. - utilize operating system knowledge to troubleshoot common issues in an IT Support Specialist role. Except as otherwise noted, the contents on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

From the lesson

Filesystems

In the fourth week of this course, we'll learn about how filesystems work for Windows and Linux OS. We'll learn about filesystem types and why they're different for certain OS. We'll learn about disk partitioning and virtual memory and why these are so important for an IT Support Specialist's role. We'll also cover ways mount and unmount filesystems, read disk usage, and repair filesystems. By the end of this module, you will partition and format a disk drive yourself in both Windows and Linux.

Module Introduction0:49

Review of Filesystems2:33

Disk Anatomy3:02

Windows: Disk Partitioning and Formatting a Filesystem6:59

Windows: Mounting and Unmounting a Filesystem0:51

Linux: Disk Partitioning and Formatting a Filesystem6:01

Linux: Mounting and Unmounting a Filesystem3:42

Windows: Swap3:44

Linux: Swap2:18

Windows: Files6:02

Linux: Files2:56

Windows: Disk Usage3:46

Linux: Disk Usage1:44

Windows: Filesystem Repair4:20

Linux: Filesystem Repair1:45

Ben Passion1:16

Meet the Instructors

Google

One term you might have heard in relation to disks and partitions, is swap space.

Before we talk about swap space,

let's talk about the concept of virtual memory.

Virtual memory is how our OS provides the physical memory

available in our computer (like RAM) to the applications that run on the computer.

It does this by creating a mapping,

a virtual to physical addresses.

This makes life easier for the program,

which needs to access memory since it doesn't have to worry

about what portions of memory other programs might be using.

It also doesn't have to keep track of where the data it's using is located in RAM.

Virtual memory also gives us the ability for

our computer to use more memory than we physically have installed.

To do this, it dedicates an area of the hard drive to use

a storage base for blocks of data called pages.

When a particular page of data isn't being used by an application, it gets evicted.

Which means it gets copied out of memory onto the hard drive.

This is because accessing data on RAM is fast,

much faster than the hard drive where space is at a premium.

Because of this, the operating system wants to

keep the most commonly accessed data pages in RAM.

It then puts stuff that hasn't been used in a while on the disk.

This way, if a program needs a page that's not accessed a lot,

the operating system can still get to it.

But it has to read it from the comparatively slow hard drive and put it back into memory.

Almost all operating systems use some kind of

virtual memory management scheme and paging mechanism.

So how does it work on windows?

The Windows OS uses a program called The Memory manager to handle virtual memory.

Its job is to take care of that mapping of virtual to

physical memory for our programs and to manage paging.

In Windows, pages saved to disk are stored in

a special hidden file on the root partition of a volume called page file dot sis.

Windows automatically creates page files and it uses

the memory manager to copy pages of memory to be read as needed.

The operating system does a pretty good job of managing the page file automatically.

Even so, windows provides a way to modify the size,

number and location of paging files through

a control panel applet called System Properties.

You can get to the system properties applet by opening up the control panel.

Going to the system and security setting,

and clicking on system.

Once in the system pane,

you can open up the advanced system settings on the left hand menu.

Pick the advanced tab,

then click on the settings button in the performance section.

One last time, click on the advance tab and you should

see a section called virtual memory which displays the paging file size.

If you click the change button,

you can override the defaults Windows provides,

so you can set the size of the paging file,

and add paging files to other drives on the computer.

Microsoft has some guidelines for setting the page in file size that you can follow.

For example, on 64 bit Windows 7,

the minimum paging file size should be set to 1x,

the amount of RAM in the machine.

Unless you have a specific reason to change it,

it's generally fine to let windows automatically manage the paging file size itself.

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