Need help with setting up a 16GB SSD cache for 1TB HDD drive.

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vunguyentuananh93
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Need help with setting up a 16GB SSD cache for 1TB HDD drive.

Post by vunguyentuananh93 »

I've got a 16GB Optane M10 module from a friend. I have tried to set it up with my system but failed to enable it due to unsupported system. Now I decide to use PrimoCache instead but don't know how to set it up correctly and effectively. It can be seen that PrimoCache helps my system with faster booting time (around 20-30s) and I did some benchmark using Crystal Disk Mark v7.0.0. At first I tried the read only cache config and there was no boost up in the score. After using the read and write cache config I saw a huge increase in read score. I tried to use several read/write cache space setting (with write belows 50%) and there was not much change in the score.
I wonder why there is a big change in the CDMark score between Read only and Read/Write setting.
Does it only work with that Read/Write setting?
What are the relationships between read cache and write cache with read and write score/performance?
What configs should I use or change? Should I stick with read only caching or enable read/write caching? If yes how should I spend the read/write cache space?
How should I set other setting like block size, or defer write, prefetch...?
I want to increase the overall performance like faster windows booting time, copy time, apps start time .etc.
My specs: core I5 7200u, 12GB 2133 DDr4 Ram, 1TB HDD WD10SPZX, 16GB NVME M2 Intel Optane M10 memory.
Below are some screenshots of the benchmarks with settings.
Thanks a lot!
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Re: Need help with setting up a 16GB SSD cache for 1TB HDD drive.

Post by Support »

Please see viewtopic.php?p=14797#p14797
In summary, you may just use read-only (100% read) for L2 cache in most scenarios. As 16GB cache size is quite small, you may just use it as L2 cache to speed up the system/boot drive.
vunguyentuananh93
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Re: Need help with setting up a 16GB SSD cache for 1TB HDD drive.

Post by vunguyentuananh93 »

Support wrote: Fri Aug 14, 2020 8:37 am Please see viewtopic.php?p=14797#p14797
In summary, you may just use read-only (100% read) for L2 cache in most scenarios. As 16GB cache size is quite small, you may just use it as L2 cache to speed up the system/boot drive.
Thanks for your help!
Do you have any recommendation on the block size? The cluster size is 4kb
What block size should I set if I cache my 300GB windows/boot partition only?
And what block size should I set If I cache the whole drive (300GB windows/boot partition + 600GB data partition)?
Thanks again!
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Re: Need help with setting up a 16GB SSD cache for 1TB HDD drive.

Post by Support »

The performance will be best when the block size equals to the cluster size. If the memory overhead is too much, you may increase the block size. In your case, 4KB block size is the best.
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