Everything is functioning correctly with 2.2.0. I have been doing all the normal things, no lock-ups or unusual behaviour. Will continue to report.
I have noticed that the Sandisk (L2 cache) drive is now behaving 'normally' again, there are no periods of continuous 100% activity (with associated enormous latency times), which seemed to be accompanying the lock-ups. It is connected directly to a USB 3.0 port on the PC, not via any kind of hub.
Freeze problems when using primocache
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gotterdammerungly
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gotterdammerungly
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Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
Latest update: No freezes using 2.2.0. I suppose I need to try 2.3.0 again to see if the problem reappears, but I am reluctant to do so since it puts my computer at risk of a serious problem each time I have to hard re-boot.
Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
Many thanks for the updates! I think you may still run with 2.2.0 for one week or more to go sure that 2.2.0 version doesn't have this kind of problem.
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gotterdammerungly
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Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
The last freeze I had was very bad and I'm sure biggest part was the flash drive. Some flash drives go crazy when you read and write at the same time. The problem occurred after resume from hibernate. Initially it worked fine - it was reading a lot from disk, half of it from cache. Then I started a movie and watched few minutes of it. Then I stopped it and I noticed all the read from the second disk wasn't cached and was writing in L2 cache. Then the first program I started took long time to run. Even the start menu and task manager took long time. I paused caching but writing to L2 continued (that should be fixed) and the computer was still slow. after reboot (which took forever) it was working fine.
The attached image is the partition where the movie was. Somehow the write speed of the flash after resume was really slow. L2 cache was increasing with half a MB every 10-20 seconds. The problem is that reading was slow too.
I would like a few features:
1. writing to L2 should stop immediately when primocache is reading from the same disk. writing should continue if nothing was read for specific time.
2. I don't know why pausing cache didn't fix the problem. Can you check if it's possible that L2 writing on slow disk is blocking something when cache is paused?
3. a button to pause writing on L2. Does "lock L2 cache content" check box do that?
And could you tell me how pausing cache works? Obviously you still keep monitoring what's read from disk and update L1 and L2, because you can't know if the cache is valid or not. Or when you pause cache you just discard blocks that are updated?
The attached image is the partition where the movie was. Somehow the write speed of the flash after resume was really slow. L2 cache was increasing with half a MB every 10-20 seconds. The problem is that reading was slow too.
I would like a few features:
1. writing to L2 should stop immediately when primocache is reading from the same disk. writing should continue if nothing was read for specific time.
2. I don't know why pausing cache didn't fix the problem. Can you check if it's possible that L2 writing on slow disk is blocking something when cache is paused?
3. a button to pause writing on L2. Does "lock L2 cache content" check box do that?
And could you tell me how pausing cache works? Obviously you still keep monitoring what's read from disk and update L1 and L2, because you can't know if the cache is valid or not. Or when you pause cache you just discard blocks that are updated?
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Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
Well, for this problem with usb slow problem after hibernation, I think you may test the version 2.4.0 which has some improvements on this problem.
Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
Thanks. I will.
Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
That would be a very inefficient method for the cache engine to use, given that most drives have the capability. Perhaps an algorithm specifically for flash drives that pipelined reads/writes into a queue so they weren't simultaneous.npelov wrote:...
1. writing to L2 should stop immediately when primocache is reading from the same disk. writing should continue if nothing was read for specific time.
...
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gotterdammerungly
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Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
Hi again,
The PC has more or less survived the Win 10 Anniversary Update, throughout which 2.2.0 has performed flawlessly, although the update did somehow manage to remove its cache task. The cache is running perfectly again now. Still no lock-ups.
To npelov: My experience of Primocache now goes back about three years, and I have tried all kinds of USB drives and SD cards in experiments with it. All my PCs have fairly slow HDDs, so the L2 cache is especially useful for me. A decent USB 2.0 drive is good, makes an improvement over just the HDDs, but USB 2.0 (and all but the very fastest SD cards) is not really fast enough to do Primocache justice. USB 3.0 however is fantastic, especially if you use a Sandisk Extreme drive (I use a 64gb one that I have measured running up to its claimed 240mb/s maximum). If you use one of these drives, via a USB3.0 socket you are really going to notice a massive performance increase. My 'slow' AMD laptop takes 180 seconds to boot Win10 without Primocache, and 62 with it. Plus, the desktop and all apps become immediately usable thanks to the Sandisk's amazing ability to shift data, in both directions, very rapidly. It's a very modest laptop, but with USB3.0/Sandisk and Primocache it becomes a completely different animal, and infinitely better to use. So I would say, you do need to use a good, measurably fast drive for L2, otherwise it's not really going to make a lot of difference, and indeed the slower drives (especially SD cards!) can get bottlenecked causing momentary locks.
On my 'fast' laptop, which also has an HDD, albeit a quicker one, I use a USB3.0 docking bay into which is slotted a Sandisk (no I don't work for them!) 120gb SSD, allocated to Primocache as l2. As you can imagine, everything happens very rapidly on that machine!
Also, block size! Makes a considerable difference to Primocache/USB performance. For speed I would say go for 32 or 64 kb, for cache efficiency 16 or less. This will affect the data transfer rate to your device, as well as the speed at which Primocache gathers the L2 data.
The PC has more or less survived the Win 10 Anniversary Update, throughout which 2.2.0 has performed flawlessly, although the update did somehow manage to remove its cache task. The cache is running perfectly again now. Still no lock-ups.
To npelov: My experience of Primocache now goes back about three years, and I have tried all kinds of USB drives and SD cards in experiments with it. All my PCs have fairly slow HDDs, so the L2 cache is especially useful for me. A decent USB 2.0 drive is good, makes an improvement over just the HDDs, but USB 2.0 (and all but the very fastest SD cards) is not really fast enough to do Primocache justice. USB 3.0 however is fantastic, especially if you use a Sandisk Extreme drive (I use a 64gb one that I have measured running up to its claimed 240mb/s maximum). If you use one of these drives, via a USB3.0 socket you are really going to notice a massive performance increase. My 'slow' AMD laptop takes 180 seconds to boot Win10 without Primocache, and 62 with it. Plus, the desktop and all apps become immediately usable thanks to the Sandisk's amazing ability to shift data, in both directions, very rapidly. It's a very modest laptop, but with USB3.0/Sandisk and Primocache it becomes a completely different animal, and infinitely better to use. So I would say, you do need to use a good, measurably fast drive for L2, otherwise it's not really going to make a lot of difference, and indeed the slower drives (especially SD cards!) can get bottlenecked causing momentary locks.
On my 'fast' laptop, which also has an HDD, albeit a quicker one, I use a USB3.0 docking bay into which is slotted a Sandisk (no I don't work for them!) 120gb SSD, allocated to Primocache as l2. As you can imagine, everything happens very rapidly on that machine!
Also, block size! Makes a considerable difference to Primocache/USB performance. For speed I would say go for 32 or 64 kb, for cache efficiency 16 or less. This will affect the data transfer rate to your device, as well as the speed at which Primocache gathers the L2 data.
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gotterdammerungly
- Level 4
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- Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2014 2:04 pm
Re: Freeze problems when using primocache
Hi again,
Still running 2.2.0 here, with no problems at all. Perhaps I should try 2.4.0 again. Would you suggest that I completely uninstall 2.2.0 first, or shall I just run the installer for 2.4.0 to auto-update? I'd rather do the latter, since it requires less tedious reboots!
Still running 2.2.0 here, with no problems at all. Perhaps I should try 2.4.0 again. Would you suggest that I completely uninstall 2.2.0 first, or shall I just run the installer for 2.4.0 to auto-update? I'd rather do the latter, since it requires less tedious reboots!