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PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:28 pm
by Guestify
So I'm trying primocache thinking it's increasing my drives' speed but it isn't
I'm using L-2 cache on 2 hard drives (1tb + 500gb) 32GB of cache
So I try using CrystalDiskMark and I run it on the drives
The reads and writes are 51MB/s then I turn off the cache and run it again and I get 150MB/s
Am I doing something wrong?

EDIT: the game boot times are also the same or worse while using primocache

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 2:44 am
by Jaga
For your specific scenario, the test parameters matter a lot. If you have a test size larger than your cache size, it will "spill over" and go to urgent writes, which drops the performance of the target drive.

Additionally, how full are your two cached drives (1TB + 500GB)? I typically have a cache size of no less than 10% of total data size to get decent hit rates. That means if each of your two target drives are 50% full, your cached data size would be 750GB, and your "data coverage rate" would only be 5% of your total data (32GB / 750GB).

Posting some screenshots of your Primocache configuration and your CrystalDiskMark test scenario might help us understand why you are getting reduced performance.

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:41 am
by Support
By default, PrimoCache set the cache poliy to "100% read" for level-2 cache. That is, level-2 cache only cache read-write and ignore write-data. This is best policy for most real scenarios. However, this default setting will show no performance boost in benchmark testings. If you want to check the benchmark performance in tools like CrystalDiskMark, you need to allow L2 cache to cache write-data. Follow steps below to enable it.
1) In the cache configuration dialog, click the icon button "Advanced L2 Cache Options",
2) Uncheck the option "Individual Read/Write Cache Space".
3) Click OK to apply the change.

It is recommended that you change the setting back to 100% read after the benchmark testing.
Guestify wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:28 pm EDIT: the game boot times are also the same or worse while using primocache
You may play your games and let PrimoCache populate the data. You may check the statistics "L2Storage Write" which indicates how much data has been cached into L2 storage in this Windows session. Then you may reboot your computer and play the game again to see if the loading time is improved.

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:09 am
by Guestify
Jaga wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 2:44 am For your specific scenario, the test parameters matter a lot. If you have a test size larger than your cache size, it will "spill over" and go to urgent writes, which drops the performance of the target drive.

Additionally, how full are your two cached drives (1TB + 500GB)? I typically have a cache size of no less than 10% of total data size to get decent hit rates. That means if each of your two target drives are 50% full, your cached data size would be 750GB, and your "data coverage rate" would only be 5% of your total data (32GB / 750GB).

Posting some screenshots of your Primocache configuration and your CrystalDiskMark test scenario might help us understand why you are getting reduced performance.
My 1TB drive is 51% full my 500GB drive is 85% full
I read somewhere that 32/64GB is enough for gaming I'm not buying another SSD to make my hard drives faster
My SSDs speed is about 450-510MB/s while my hard drives are 80-150MB/s
and my primocache config is just on Read Only-100% Read didn't change anything from the default config
Also I tested 512MiB on CrystalDiskMark pretty sure that isn't larger than my cache size

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:12 am
by Guestify
Support wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 3:41 am By default, PrimoCache set the cache poliy to "100% read" for level-2 cache. That is, level-2 cache only cache read-write and ignore write-data. This is best policy for most real scenarios. However, this default setting will show no performance boost in benchmark testings. If you want to check the benchmark performance in tools like CrystalDiskMark, you need to allow L2 cache to cache write-data. Follow steps below to enable it.
1) In the cache configuration dialog, click the icon button "Advanced L2 Cache Options",
2) Uncheck the option "Individual Read/Write Cache Space".
3) Click OK to apply the change.

It is recommended that you change the setting back to 100% read after the benchmark testing.
Guestify wrote: Wed Jul 29, 2020 8:28 pm EDIT: the game boot times are also the same or worse while using primocache
You may play your games and let PrimoCache populate the data. You may check the statistics "L2Storage Write" which indicates how much data has been cached into L2 storage in this Windows session. Then you may reboot your computer and play the game again to see if the loading time is improved.
Why would I want to turn on write when I also might just want my read speeds to be boosted
And my write is 0% because I don't want to reduce my SSD's lifespan
Also I tried rebooting my PC the game's boot time is still the same as the hard drives

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2020 12:24 pm
by user4653453
Ive been wanting to post for a while, similar to OPs question, but not really at the same time.

When i use my SSD as L2 cache for 2x mechanical drives, write only, the READS from those disks is decreased by like 50% when doing certain tasks, i dunno why

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:13 am
by Support
Guestify wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:12 am Why would I want to turn on write when I also might just want my read speeds to be boosted
And my write is 0% because I don't want to reduce my SSD's lifespan
That's just for checking the L2 performance in Benchmark tools like CrystalDiskMark, otherwise their testing data will not be cached and you don't see the cache performance in CrystalDiskMark.
Guestify wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:12 am Also I tried rebooting my PC the game's boot time is still the same as the hard drives
Could you upload a screenshot of your PrimoCache main dialog which shows the cache configuration and statistics by highlighting the target volume item?

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:17 am
by Support
user4653453 wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 12:24 pm When i use my SSD as L2 cache for 2x mechanical drives, write only, the READS from those disks is decreased by like 50% when doing certain tasks, i dunno why
Write only means that L2 cache only stores write-data. When system or applications request to read these data, PrimoCache can provide these data from L2 cache instead of reading from source disks for better performance, since these data has already been in cache. I think that's why see READs from disks are also decreased.

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Thu Aug 06, 2020 5:12 pm
by Guestify
Support wrote: Fri Jul 31, 2020 4:13 am
Guestify wrote: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:12 am Why would I want to turn on write when I also might just want my read speeds to be boosted
And my write is 0% because I don't want to reduce my SSD's lifespan
That's just for checking the L2 performance in Benchmark tools like CrystalDiskMark, otherwise their testing data will not be cached and you don't see the cache performance in CrystalDiskMark.
Yeah so I put some 2GB write cache and enabled deferred write and it increased the speeds highly but disabled it because I don't need/want writes
I still have a question
Will old/unused cache be discarded? and how do I test the speed of the cache without the write thing you should put some sort of benchmark tool in primocache or smth like that
Thanks!

Re: PrimoCache is making my hard drives slower..

Posted: Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:46 pm
by Support
Guestify wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 5:12 pm Will old/unused cache be discarded?
Yes.