I believe that PrimoCache is the best when it comes to enhanced drive caching software on the Internet today. In an effort to improve my hard drive performance, I have methodically tried and discarded a whole variety of “deferred write” (enhanced drive caching) software utilities. Finally, I found PrimoCache. This software finally satisfied my yearning for improved disk I/O. When dealing with large files (or even lots of small ones), drive I/O becomes the main bottleneck for time sensitive operations. When configured correctly, PrimoCache may utilize the systems RAM and improve disk performance threefold.
The best disk I/O is observed when the hard drive is only performing a full read or a full write operation at a time. Not Both. Once a hard drive is tasked into performing multiple/read write operations at a time, a significant amount of the drive performance is lost. This is especially true when it comes to spindle hard drives. No matter how fast those drives spin, milliseconds of time is lost due to the head searching for data. PrimoCache allows the system to utilize unused memory as a write deferred buffer allowing the hard drive to concentrate on a single task at a time. On my system, this was a huge performance windfall. When copying a large file utilizing one drive, a drive without PrimoCache, my throughput was only about 150 MB/s. Once I enabled PrimoCache and assigned 10 GIGS of available memory in the native write differed setting, the system would first read the data into memory at around 550 MB/S and then flush the data at roughly the same speed. This effectively doubled my throughput!
In order to put PrimoCache to the test, let us take an everyday example that we all can relate to. Defragmentation of the hard drive. Defragmenting a hard drive may take a long time depending on any number of variables, but the main restriction is the drive’s own inability to perform two tasks at the same time (reading & writing). PrimoCache, with its deferred write feature, will read a grouping of file modifications into memory and then, write the modifications to disk. This process is relatively straightforward and easy to implement. Install PrimoCache on the computer of your choosing, enable deferred write cache on a volume that has not been defragged, assign as much RAM as you can, and let PrimoCache go to town!
I have found that PrimoCache works well inside a virtual environment as well. PrimoCache supports level I and II read caching modes. My own computer, running Windows Hypervisor combined with PrimoCache, has the ability to boot a virtualized guest OS (running Windows 10) in less than two seconds. A great caching system inside a guest OS will help alleviate costly disk I/O on the host server.
Just recently, I have found out about the command line interface that PrimoCache supports. This opens the door for those computer savvy people out there to configure PrimoCache for different runtime environments or operational tasks. For me, I have one configuration for normal everyday operations, another configuration for when running backups and a third configuration for running defragmentation operations.
I am one of those computer savvy people. I love to tweak the computer to see how fast it can go. With PrimoCache, I am able to obtain disk speeds never before possible.
My Opinion of PrimoCache!
Re: My Opinion of PrimoCache!
Thank you so much for your kind words, IonOasis. We really appreciate you taking the time out to share your experience with us, and we're happy to hear PrimoCache helps in your scenarios. 