# Advice on swap size?



## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

Searched, but can't find a discussion on this ..

Can anyone tell me what impact the swap size has on an upgraded drive?

Is bigger better? 

(I know what swapping is in general for computers, but I don't know how Tivo uses it)

More specifically, as the size of the target hard drive gets larger (e.g. 500GB, 750GB, 1TB), should the swap file size grow too?

Thanks !


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## windracer (Jan 3, 2003)

From the MFSLive FAQ:



> How much Linux swap space is right for my drive?
> TiVo hard drives can have up to 16 partitions. Partition 8 is called linux swap partition. A bug in the old mfstools is fixed in this release so you can setup size greater than 127MB without using other tools. There are few schools of thought on this. Older Series 1 guide line was to set it 1/2 of the hard drive size and use MB. So, for a 300GB hard drive use 150MB. The reason is if there is a GSOD error (green screen of death), it requires proper size to be able to recover from the error. If there is not enough swap space, your Tivo will go into GSOD cycle and never get out of it. But for Series 2, it's not clear anymore. For new Series 2 with big hard drives(250GB), TiVo sets up at 128MB. For linux guide lines, swap space is set at 2x ram size. If you have a hacked Tivo, you can run "free" and get the swap size and ram size.


_edit:_ ah, I see you posted over in the MFSLive forums as well.


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## ciper (Nov 4, 2004)

I can tell you with 100% confidence that 127mb of swap is not enough for 400gb of disk space. The GB/2000 method mentioned about seems to be the consensus but I went for a GB/1000 ratio to be safe. 

Think of the drive size you are using. Even setting up 1gb of swap is only a tiny percentage of your overall space so why skimp?

What type of Tivo are you asking this question in regards to? Realize many of the early kernels do not support version 1 swap headers.


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## jfh3 (Apr 15, 2004)

The boxes I'm most interested in are the Tivo HD and Series 3.


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## captain_video (Mar 1, 2002)

The general concensus on swap size is 1MB for each 2GB of storage. Therefore, for a 500GB drive you'd want a 250MB swap file.


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