I have a older laptop that comes with 4GB RAM (2slots are being used 2x 2GB DDR2)
now i have problems with running a virtualbox + darktable at the same time.
(On another system i see that i should have 7GB RAM to run this)
Because i don’t find 2x DDR2 4GB for this laptop i was thinking about the swap. (now he is on HD with 2GB)
Should it be possible to load swap on (fast) usb stick and how fast is that compare the HD swap.
p…a…i…n…f…u…l…l…y…s…l…o…w… 
swap is always terribly slow. If you don’t have enough RAM for what you do and you cannot get more RAM, don’t run so many apps 
Uwe
On Thu, 06 Mar 2014 05:56:01 +0000, heelstraf wrote:
> Should it be possible to load swap on (fast) usb stick and how fast is
> that compare the HD swap.
Unless you’re using USB3, a USB drive is going to be much slower than an
internal drive (and a USB3 drive is probably going to be about equal, not
faster).
What’s more, the nature of swap is such that you will wear out the flash
drive relatively quickly. Even with wear leveling, USB flash devices
aren’t intended for large amounts of write activity.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
On 2014-03-06 06:56, heelstraf wrote:
> Because i don’t find 2x DDR2 4GB for this laptop i was thinking about
> the swap. (now he is on HD with 2GB)
> Should it be possible to load swap on (fast) usb stick and how fast is
> that compare the HD swap.
No.
No, because usb2 is slow, flash sticks are slow write devices, and they
wear out with frequent writes.
Of course, it is possible to do it.
But if you need to use swap, use internal hard disk, or if external it
should be via eSATA or USB 3.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
Thx for clearing this out.
I have spend some dollars on a SSD drive instead of RAM, this is not wasted money 
This evening i will install this, 4GB RAM + 4GB swap on SSD, should be fast enough.
Even using a SSD for swap won’t by far result in the same speed than
using no swap and using real RAM instead.
On 2014-03-08 01:56, ratzi wrote:
>
> heelstraf;2629109 Wrote:
>> This evening i will install this, 4GB RAM + 4GB swap on SSD, should be
>> fast enough.
>
> Even using a SSD for swap won’t by far result in the same speed than
> using no swap and using real RAM instead.
Of course, but he said on the first post that he could not find the chips.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
I can confirm that a SSD drive is a good step.
The respons of apps are better, no waiting anymore and until now no freezes if both apps are open
openSUSE 13.1 @ KDE + Darktable with 50 RAW’s + virtualbox (winXP Basecamp software)