Dual Boot Disaster

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B00ze64
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Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2020 6:26 am

Re: Dual Boot Disaster

Post by B00ze64 »

Hi Jaga,

I actually learned of PrimoCache on the DrivePool forums, from you ;-) We discussed performance a little over there.

The problem as I see it, is that anything can happen to invalidate the L2, and PrimoCache is oblivious to it. I cannot predict when I will be forced to boot into something else and mount the disks for troubleshooting; so long as I remember to pause and flush the cache beforehand all good, but I might not have that opportunity. And I bought the Tower I have now specifically so I would not have to run a network server, as it can hold a lot of disks. I might re-enable permanent L2 cache one day, but I will have to remember to disable it every time I need to do some offline work. The hit rate with a permanent L2 is just amazing, it's hard for me to resist enabling it. What I need is a way to invalidate the L2, should I forget to disable it prior to doing some offline work one day. Even better if PrimoCache were to find some way of validating L2 consistency (there's gotta be some way to do this without having to compare the entire L2 with the disk).

SUPPORT ->

Can Support CONFIRM that booting into SafeMode invalidates the L2? Because when I do boot in SafeMode, PrimoCache does not SEE the caches, it does not allow me to tell it to reset the caches, it just loads an empty window and says that you cannot use it while in SafeMode. I guess I could uninstall it from there if I needed it, but I'd prefer being able to invalidate the cache. I could always erase the L2 partition with some tools that I have, but that's just a pain. How do we invalidate the cache prior to booting into Windows?

Thank you.
Best Regards,
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Support
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Re: Dual Boot Disaster

Post by Support »

B00ze64 wrote: Fri Dec 25, 2020 11:50 pm Can Support CONFIRM that booting into SafeMode invalidates the L2?
Yes. If the OS where PrimoCache is installed goes into the safe mode and then you successfully restart the computer, L2 cache will be reset. You can verify that by checking the "Free L2" value which should be almost same as the L2 cache size.
B00ze64
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Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2020 6:26 am

Re: Dual Boot Disaster

Post by B00ze64 »

Thank you!

So since I frequently do offline work, here is what I did: I used BCDEDIT to add a (fake) O/S entry to both Win7 and Win10 to boot in SafeMode. This way I am reminded about PrimoCache every time I reboot, in case I did offline changes, and it's especially useful for Win10 where F8 is difficult. Once I fully move to Win10 I will no longer need this but I kinda like it anyway...

windows 7 ->

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 7 Safe Mode"
The entry was successfully copied to {952937ea-0356-11e9-ba49-f32accd89b39}
bcdedit /set {952937ea-0356-11e9-ba49-f32accd89b39} safeboot minimal
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes
bcdedit /timeout 15

Windows 10 ->

bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Windows 10 Safe Mode"
The entry was successfully copied to {2d5fcca9-813e-11e6-9fcb-8c354e661a79}
bcdedit /set {2d5fcca9-813e-11e6-9fcb-8c354e661a79} safeboot minimal
bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes
bcdedit /timeout 15
bcdedit /set {current} bootmenupolicy Legacy
bcdedit /set {2d5fcca9-813e-11e6-9fcb-8c354e661a79} bootmenupolicy Legacy

Best Regards,
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Support
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Re: Dual Boot Disaster

Post by Support »

Thanks for sharing your experience! We will try to improve PrimoCache for this scenario in future.
B00ze64
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Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Dec 21, 2020 6:26 am

Re: Dual Boot Disaster

Post by B00ze64 »

Well, in the meantime I have purchased PrimoCache :)
Thank Jaga, he's the one who brought PrimoCache to my attention, and thank you Support for answering my questions.
Regards,
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Jaga
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Re: Dual Boot Disaster

Post by Jaga »

:thumbup: :thumbup:
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