--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Thomas Miller <tmiller@...>
wrote:

>
> What do these tmp files do?

Sorts etc, expecially when you run out of RAM. It is a double insult
though if it is on the same hard disk(s) because the head has to keep
jumping around between the database file and the tmp space.

Look at the spec for any hard disk, and 'seek time' is significant.
Most of them can pump data at an extremely high rate, yet seek time
can be nearly 10ms! In 10ms, my laptop does 14 million clock cycles.
So as you can see, this jumping is very expensive.

> Would it be advisable to get another hard disk
> just for the Linux OS and Tmp files and then use the RAID for the
> database files.
> That is often suggested for Oracle.

It really depends on situation to situation. For some databases, it is
overkill, but it can really reduce bottlenecks in others.

Adam