New Purchase Questions

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cpjet64
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New Purchase Questions

Post by cpjet64 »

I have been using Enmotus Fuzedrive for a while now but it seems like they are ending support so I am looking for a autotiering replacement. Can anyone tell me the differences between these two softwares? It looks like Primocache is far superior when it comes to increasing performance and is much more configurable when I read about it. With the specs I am posting below would I be able to increase performance even more by utilizing Primoramdisk as well? I normally do not use more than 20GB ram. Also, I have 2 home servers that I use for hosting some personal websites and game servers, would this software work for them as well? Thanks in advance!

My system specs are as follows:
i7-8700k
GTX 980ti
32GB 3200Mhz DDR4
Samsung 970 Pro 1TB
Western Digital Black 6TB 7200 RPM
InquiringMind
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Re: New Purchase Questions

Post by InquiringMind »

Welcome to the forums Cpjet64,

Enmotus Fuzedrive looks very similar to PrimoCache's L2 cache feature (which uses an SSD to store most frequently used data from an HDD) - PrimoCache also offers a L1 cache where RAM is used to cache SSD/HDD data for faster performance still (this does duplicate Windows' file cache, but has a fixed memory allocation so cached data is not given up to a memory-hungry application - and it caches at block level so cannot be bypassed by benchmark software).

Primo Ramdisk can offer better performance but you need to spend time identifying which files and folders benefit from being placed on a ramdisk (obvious candidates may include temporary files or database indexes, but you may need to run diagnostic software like Process Monitor to find which files are most heavily used by an application). Primo Cache is far less work to set up - but you can run the two together.

End of support doesn't necessarily mean you should need to give up on software though. Fuzedrive certainly has the problem of requiring online activation (removing your ability to reinstall on a new system if they drop support), but that applies to PrimoCache/Ramdisk also (see the Registration key query thread for more on this). I would certainly recommend you evaluate PrimoCache, but unless Romex offer more flexible licensing, switching to PrimoCache could leave you in a similar position 5-10 years form now.
cpjet64
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Re: New Purchase Questions

Post by cpjet64 »

Licensing is not that much of a worry for me but since I have started looking into other software I have started to realize just how little control over everything and how limited I am by using FuzeDrive. Another very promising alternative that I have found is eBoostr. It looks like it works the same as PrimoCache but the documentation makes a bit more sense to me.
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Re: New Purchase Questions

Post by InquiringMind »

eBoostr has similar licensing restrictions but is also not currently developed (the most recent version, 4.5, was released in 2012). It doesn't offer many of PrimoCache's configuration options (cache block size, read/write settings, pre-fetch/delay write for the RAM cache) though it does allow you to select individual applications to prioritise.

It's probably worth a look, but it seems strange to move from one application due to lack of support to another which hasn't seen updates for the last 10 years.
cpjet64
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Re: New Purchase Questions

Post by cpjet64 »

You just potentially saved me a huge headache! THANK YOU! I had no idea the most recent version was from 2012!!! Going over the website there was no indication. I think I will just install PrimoCache and see how well it handles for me. Any suggestions for configuration with my setup?
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Re: New Purchase Questions

Post by InquiringMind »

Glad to be of help.

There is a configuration discussion thread, but that seems to have been hijacked by RAM uber-geeks. :)

The biggest decision is whether to use L1 and/or L2 caching. L1 should be used if you have RAM to spare (which seems to apply in your case - if you're maxing out at 20GB usage out of 32GB, then I would suggest a 10GB L1 cache). L2 is useful if you are making heavy use of HDDs, but having your program files on SDDs and leaving non-speed critical data (backups, media files, downloads) on HDDs should avoid the need for L2 - this is the better option if you can arrange it.

When setting up level 1 caching, I would suggest making it a read/write cache, set the block-size so memory overheads are modest (16KB would seem the best for 10GB) but consider enabling defer-write only if you have a solid backup system (including automated backup of critical files). Pre-fetch is useful for systems that are rebooted frequently.
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Jaga
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Re: New Purchase Questions

Post by Jaga »

What InquiringMind said. With a caveat: you can enable deferred writes without a UPS attached to the machine if you are absolutely sure it's rock solid (never BSODs, reboots on it's own, etc). If you do, keep the deferred time to 10s or less - it will help overall with write coalescing and keeping drive activity in check.
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