Caching logical drives

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jozamm
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Joined: Sat Aug 17, 2013 9:25 am

Caching logical drives

Post by jozamm »

Hi all,

What is best for get the best performance from primocache, shall i use one cache for all the logical drives or a separate cache for each logical drive?

What is the ideal size of the cache in relation to the HDD size?

Thanks,

Regards,

Joseph
InquiringMind
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Joined: Wed Oct 06, 2010 11:10 pm

Re: Caching logical drives

Post by InquiringMind »

It is probably best to use one cache per physical drive (rather per logical drive) since that should ensure that each logical drive is cached according to its usage (i.e. the drives accessed the most get the most cache). Only if you are sure that some logical drives need less (or more) caching should you consider separate caches for them - or if you want different caching strategies (e.g. read/write on a system drive but read-only on a documents drive to minimise the chance of data loss there).

The "ideal" cache size will depend on your data usage rather than your disk size. If you are running 32-bit Windows though, it makes sense to allocate all "unmanaged" memory to caching since that memory would be unused otherwise.

64-bit Windows systems can have unmanaged memory also (anything above the rather low limits imposed by Microsoft, like 16GB for Windows 7 Home Premium) in which case that can all be allocated. However care should be taken if allocating system memory - too much may result in lost performance overall if applications end up with less than they need. In this case check Task Manager to see your maximum usage (after running your most demanding applications) and only allocate what is left after that.
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