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External Game Drive loses cache every time it is unplugged

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 11:10 am
by Hyatice
Hey folks,

I have a 512 TB SSD in my laptop, and have allocated a 64 GB partition of it as L2 cache for my external game drive - which at the moment has less than 100GB of games installed. Letting it cache for a few hours of gaming, rebooting and relaunching games, it gets up to an impressive 90+% caching.

My only problem is, no matter what I seem to do, the L2 cache gets lost the instant I power up the machine without the External plugged in.

I saw complaints/requests about this elsewhere, but all of them were in reverse - unable to keep the cache, which was being written to the external drive, stable.

I understand that this is to prevent possible corruption or mismatches of cache to the actual data, but can't some method of checksumming the data be implemented to confirm that no changes have been made? I literally don't use this drive for anything else, just gaming when I'm at home.

Let me know if there's anything I can do to improve this situation, as this is really the only reason I have to consider getting a license for this software.

Re: External Game Drive loses cache every time it is unplugged

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2018 8:19 pm
by Jaga
Have you tried pausing the L2 cache before shutting down? I'm not sure if it resets it to active automatically on reboot, but I'd think it holds across boots as paused. It might preserve the contents that way.

Re: External Game Drive loses cache every time it is unplugged

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2018 5:44 am
by Support
Please turn off Windows Fast Startup in Windows Power setting and see if it helps.

Re: External Game Drive loses cache every time it is unplugged

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 5:23 pm
by Hyatice
Hey guys - Sorry, I didn't see either of these recommendations until today.

I have tried pausing the cache tasks before disconnecting the drive and it still clears upon being reconnected, with or without a reboot.

I have turned off Windows Fast Startup, it does not help with this issue, unfortunately.

Re: External Game Drive loses cache every time it is unplugged

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 5:50 am
by Support
@Hyatice, I'm sorry for the wrong answer. Today my R&D colleague checked the code and found that this is a design problem. At computer shutdown, PrimoCache will update L2 cache index and if a target volume is not attached, its cache index will be overridden.
We'll check if we can find a solution for this problem.

Re: External Game Drive loses cache every time it is unplugged

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2018 11:13 am
by Hyatice
Thanks! If it helps troubleshoot, the same thing happens if I (safely ejecting) remove the drive and then plug it back in, with or without a shutdown.

Re: External Game Drive loses cache every time it is unplugged

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2018 6:52 am
by Support
It is also by design to clear cache content at eject. All these issues are related to the sync mechanism protection.
We're currently redesigning this mechanism and your problems will also be considered. Thanks.