On rotational HDDs, inner disk sectors (typically where swap partitions are placed) have 15-20% slower sequential read speeds compared to outer sectors. The seek time penalty when alternating between OS and swap partitions can be significant:

# Measure disk access latency
hdparm -tT /dev/sda
# Typical results:
# Timing cached reads:   3000 MB in  2.00 seconds
# Timing buffered disk reads: 200 MB in  3.00 seconds

Swap partitions bypass filesystem layers completely, while swap files incur:

• Metadata lookup overhead (1-3% performance penalty)
• Filesystem journaling impact (ext4 adds 5-8% overhead)
• Block allocation latency (contiguous vs. fragmented)

Modern Linux kernels (5.0+) implement swap file optimizations:

# Create optimized swap file (contiguous blocks)
fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
chmod 600 /swapfile
mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile

On SSDs/NVMe drives, the location difference becomes negligible. Swap files offer advantages:

# NVMe swap priority tuning
echo 10 > /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
echo 'vm.swappiness=10' >> /etc/sysctl.conf

Fixed-size swap files prevent fragmentation but require upfront allocation. Dynamic resizing (via LVM) adds 2-3% overhead during expansion events:

# LVM swap volume example
lvcreate -L 8G -n swap vg00
mkswap /dev/vg00/swap
swapon /dev/vg00/swap

1. For HDDs: Use outer-disk partitions if possible
2. For SSDs: Prefer swap files for manageability
3. Always set vm.swappiness ≤30 for server workloads
4. Monitor swap pressure: vmstat 1 or sar -W 1

When examining swap implementations, we must consider how modern storage systems handle block-level access. Swap partitions operate at the raw device level through /dev/sdX# interfaces, while swap files reside within filesystems like ext4/XFS:

# Partition vs File creation examples
# Swap partition
fdisk /dev/nvme0n1  # Create a dedicated partition
mkswap /dev/nvme0n1p2  

# Swap file (dynamic size example)
fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
chmod 600 /swapfile 
mkswap /swapfile

On HDDs, inner tracks have ~30% slower access times (typically 5-7ms vs 3-4ms for outer tracks). However, with modern SSDs and NVMe drives:

• No physical seek penalty exists
• Wear-leveling algorithms distribute writes
• FTL (Flash Translation Layer) abstracts physical location

Testing on Linux 5.15 kernel with fio shows:

# Partition direct access:
sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
fio --filename=/dev/sdb2 --direct=1 --rw=randrw --bs=4k --ioengine=libaio

# File access through ext4:
fio --filename=/mnt/swapfile --fsync=1 --rw=randrw --bs=4k

Results show ~5-8% higher throughput for raw partitions on SSDs, but only during sustained heavy swapping (>80% utilization).

Linux supports dynamic swap files since kernel 4.8:

# Resize existing swapfile
swapoff /swapfile
fallocate -l 8G /swapfile
swapon /swapfile

This eliminates traditional partition sizing issues, though requires filesystem free space monitoring.

Key tuning parameters affect both approaches:

# Swappiness adjustment
sysctl vm.swappiness=60

# VFS cache pressure
sysctl vm.vfs_cache_pressure=100

These impact performance more than the underlying storage method in most workloads.

For modern systems:

• NVMe storage: Swap files preferred for manageability
• High-performance HPC: Partitions may yield marginal gains
• Cloud deployments: Use instance-optimized swap solutions

Always verify with vmstat 1 and iostat -x 1 during peak loads.