SSD usage and other suggestions

[MrPras]

Hi Guys

Thank you for this wonderful Cache. I wanted to share a few thoughts and experiences.

Firstly, I'm using the cache to reduce the overall writes and reads to my SSD thereby reducing writes and power consumption. So far it's working very well with a typical usage as follows:

1GB Cache with 60seconds to 1200seconds write delay. This saves up to 30% of the writes typical cases and more in some cases (such as installing, where files are written and then removed and therefore trimmed). It also saves on average 20-40% of reads in typical use which is pretty awesome.

There are a few suggestions I have in terms of the interface which would make it more useable for me:

1 Open the performance monitor immediately when starting the cache (maybe via a tickbox?). This way I won't miss any info!
2 Background monitoring of stats (so that when the performance monitor is not open we still get the info when we bring up the window). This would help when booting with the cache active, to see what impact it has during the boot process.
3 Collective stats - would it be possible to add a cumulative view of cache savings - past 24hours, week etc?
4 Read and write cache graphs - to show more information about trimmed blocks etc - also please increase the resolution or add options, so that the graph doesn't only show the last few seconds but could be updated once per second and move 1 pixel at a time. This would show the cache info from the last few minutes which would be very useful.
5 Graph redesign - at the moment it only shows reads from cache where it could show all kinds of info such as percentage of reads and writes saved including peak informations.
6 Standard settings interface - perhaps a low-medium-high standard settings could be implemented for those that are not so familiar with cache activity.
7 SSD-based package - you could design a less technical SSD-cache for those of us with SSD's (especially older, non sandforce SSD) where even 128MB of write-cache would improve performance immensely and reduce stutters to zero.
8 Separate size settings for read and write cache - I don't like the interaction between read and write cache - because the LRU read cache would be more useful with say 256MB standard and 768MB allocated only for writes.
9 A tweak to reduce or disable windows caching - we can disable write caching in some cases but not read caching - it's pointless to have two read cache's available and I manually tweak windows read cache to use as little as possible. Perhaps your app can auto optimise this or maybe I don't understand the relationship enough between windows reads and fancycache reads.

Just some initial feedback, thanks again for a wonderful cache - it's the best I've ever used (was using Supercache before).

Well done! and I'm looking forward to further developments. I really think if you repackage the cache as SSD-cache with some standard settings you will make a lot of sales (perhaps even OCZ and others would bundle the software)..

Greetings from the UK

Pras Anand

[Support]

Hi MrPras,

Thank you for your testing and suggestions!

Suggestion 1~5 is regarding "performance statistics". We'll improve it later. But to be frank, "performance statistics" is not our current focus.

6 Standard settings interface - perhaps a low-medium-high standard settings could be implemented for those that are not so familiar with cache activity.

mmm...the program automatically set the default options according to the volume/disk size and current available memory.

7 SSD-based package

Yes, great! We can simplify something for SSD users.

8 Separate size settings for read and write cache

Sorry, I think we'd pay too much if we implement this...Anyway, I'll forward it to the R&D team.

9 A tweak to reduce or disable windows caching

I am not sure if there are already this kind of tweaks. But windows caching is file-level caching, ours is block-level caching. They are not same.

[MrPras]

Hi

Thanks for your response.. I was excited about the idea using the app to support the SSD.

Here's a link to the OCZ thread where the discussion took place, just in case you are interested. Most people don't seem to understand how these things work, I hope my perspectives are accurate.
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum ... -idling-GC

It saves power and reduces writes to the drive which are both desirable of course. Lately I discovered that on older SSD's it also improves (or completely removes) the stuttering.

If you plan to re-package the app as an SSD-optimiser or something like that, please keep me in mind for beta testing.

[horizon]

(Don't want to be the annoyance.)
In terms of 1-5 I have to gently remind myself with idea of perfmon counters. Having small gui integrated into FC itself is good (or how about Windows Gadget?).
However possibility to access data via other (standardized) ways in case of enterprise environment is crucial.

Ad SSD-optimizer: Having OEM FC (no gui, highly standardized and suboptimal configuration, but still giving considerable performance advantage over other disk vendors) is an interesting idea

[MrPras]

I guess yes, the perfmon counters are the way to go, since most of us who want that information are either geeks or enterprise geeks

Good luck with the SSD optimizer, I'm getting read reductions of up to 20% and write reductions of up to 30% with only 512MB cache (which I imagine would be the Large setting).

From my experience, using the write-cache is the best option since the read savings are usually based on reading previously written data still in the cache.

Using a 1GB cache recently while integrating SP1 into Windows 7 I saved a huge amount of write cycles. - 30GB written, only 20GB actually written.. THANK YOU!!

[magic-man]

(Don't want to be the annoyance.)
In terms of 1-5 I have to gently remind myself with idea of perfmon counters. Having small gui integrated into FC itself is good (or how about Windows Gadget?).
However possibility to access data via other (standardized) ways in case of enterprise environment is crucial.

As soon as the feature set is finalized and the API is standardized, I plan to create a free app that is similiar to the monitor built in to FancyCache but runs from boot time on in the background. It will either be in the form of a standard app (autorun) or a gadget... haven't decided.. I know that I can control the CPU usage if it is a stand-alone app (or service). Dunno about gadget, though. Personally, I am leaning towards stand-alone app since although I would wish everyone were running Windows 7, Realistically that is not gonna happen. A gadget would not be able to be used unless the user runs Windows 7 or (barf) Vista.

[MrPras]

I hate the gadget framework to be honest, and you're limiting the reach. I think the idea of trimming blocks (although it gets confused with the TRIM command for SSDs) would be a big plus for XP users. Since Fancycache is compatible across the board, I hope you go with a stand-alone approach

Probably the average SSD user wants to only see two pieces of info - Reads saved and writes saved (in percentages and megabytes (switchable). I love it, more power savings and less write cycles - an SSD-combo to die for. I'm surprised they don't put 1GB cache on the SSD itself with a little battery to keep it alive for a few seconds after the computer shuts off (to empty the cache to the nand).