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Which drive to put the virutal memory on is a compromise.... unless you can dedicate a drive for it. Even then, that drive would ideally be your fastest one...
Generally, when your PC starts using virtual memory it is becsause it is loading another application or data for a loaded application from disk. With a single drive this results in a lot both reading and writing, almost certainly on different parts of the drive. The worst access time for a hard drive is when the read/write head has to jump all over the place.... so if you can put the virtual memory on a different drive, the head movement is dramatically reduced, resulting in much better transfer speeds. This is true even with IDE where the two drives share a channel. The tricky bit is when the virutal memory shares a drive with other stuff... 'cause as soon as your PC starts using virtual memory for apps/data on that drive the heading thrashing kicks in.
(BTW: Note that I said two DRIVES, not two partitions on the same drive!).
Also: A relatively small amout of additional RAM can make a big difference. If you add even 128MB to the 512MB you already have you will notice an improvement.
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