RAM upgrade and swap space

English Hardware
#1

My Thinkpad R61i came with 1GB of RAM installed, and I have just purchased new SODIMMS to upgrade it it to 4GB, which is the maximum for this system,

I have no problems with installing the memory, but before I do so I wanted to ask whether there was likely to be any resulting configuration issues.

I am running Opensuse 11.0_x86-64, and currently have 1.5GB of swap space. The partitioning mini-HOWO says that “conventional wisdom creates swap space equal to the amount of RAM”, but notes that this may not apply if there isn’t much demand for swap space, and my idea in getting 4GB of RAM is to eliminate swapping. However, AFAICS suspend-to-disk uses the swap space, so to continue using suspend-to-disk, do I need to expand the swap space? And if so, what size would be appropriate?

And while I’m at it, what’s the best approach to the necessary partition juggling (I’ll need to shrink my windows partition). Should I just use the installation DVD?

#2

Shrinking the windows partition from SUSE is not generally recommended. But I can tell you, I have done so in the recent past without any problem. Wisdom suggests caution. And I note from other threads, you have had issues with a recent 11.1 install.

As it is though, any change you make will actually only be small so the risk is reduced. I personally have 2GB swap and 3GB RAM, but I never use suspend to disk, but I have read comments to the fact that this could be an issue.

#3

I shrank my Windows partition using Gparted. But before shrinking, I booted into Windows and turned off paging (under My computer -> properties -> advanced settings ?) and then deleted the page file. Then I ran defrag to compact the data towards the lowermost sectors. If disk paging is enabled, the page file is immovable under defrag. After resizing, I booted into Windows and enabled paging.