V9.2 sleep and reboot

[Axident]

first of all a short summery of my system:
GA-P55-UD6 + i7 860 | Bios F11d_Mod2 from JZ| 16GB CORSAIR Vengeance Low Profile White (CML8GX3M2A1600C9W) 8-8-8-22-2T, 1370MHz@ 1,4V | HD5870 by VTX3D incl aquagratix | BeQuiet E6 450W | 6x Samsung Ecogreen 1,5TB in 2x Raid 0 @ P55 (50gig + 8 TB (config im P55))| Cine DD DuoFlex S2 PCIe (Twin Tuner DVB-S/S2)| MSI Star-USB3/SATA6 + Samsung 840 Pro 128 GB| watercooling by Aquacomputer/EK Supreme HF Copper | Win7 64bit

Primo chache:
8192MB, 4kb, LRU, Write only, defere-write 864000s, L2 Diabled
little question: is it possible to create a button or leave the fiel for seconds input on defer-write free that a write process is only done by hibernation, shutdown or pushed by my self? The only possibility to do so is to write big numbers in this field...

Bug:
After running a primocache on ssd, stopping it, creating a new cache for example changing parameters like size and going into standby (without hibernation) the system restarts automatically after approx 1 or 2 Minutes... pushing it into sleep again...system restarts... after 4 or 5 times the System doesn't restart with Windowsscreen, it restarts like a warm restart but then you cannot boot windows completly (black screen instead of passwordquestion) You have to go into safe mode, uninstall primocache, restart and reinstall it.

P.s.
It looks like the first setting you do after installation is extreme stable... stopping an creating a new cache will be unstable. And it doesn't matter if you restart Windows after recreation..it will be unstable in the discribed way...

[Support]

is it possible to create a button or leave the fiel for seconds input on defer-write free that a write process is only done by hibernation, shutdown or pushed by my self? The only possibility to do so is to write big numbers in this field...

Currently no, but we may add it.

And we'll check the issue you reported, thank you!

[Axident]

When I see a bug, first of all I try to reproduce it. And I am looking for every little info that can help you, because this is an amazing software... in my second community (members of gigabyte forum germany) we discuss the advantages and disadvantages too.

[ckwong]

I suspect stopping or pausing maycause crash or wake up hung. I did not have a full activity log but I do remember I did stop and pause the caching a few times before my last crash. It did not happen immediately after the stop or pause. In my vmshare disk expansion case, the second level cache was fully utilized. Hope this little bit of information may help.

[Axident]

@I suspect stopping or pausing maycause crash or wake up hung.

EXACT!!!
Whenever I do so, the system is instable and crashes after a cupple of hours during normal operation or it makes this automaic reboot after some minutes sleep!
Last night my system reboots by itself, the processor speed up to max but my software which controls the coolers didn't work because of incomplete wakeup caused by PrimoCache!
The only reason not to kill the system was my selfmade watercooling system! The pump ist softwareindependent and the system has enough cooling power without rotating wings!

My test for the next few days:
Looking for instabilities after the first install and fist creation of cash without normal windows reboot to see if the sleep and wakeup process is stable!
Then i will test the behavior after some normal windows reboots...

we will find the bug!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s
little info...my Windows 7 64bit has a 50gig working partition AND a 100MB bootpartition created by windows during installation on a clean drive.
There are some little write procedures on the bootpartition. When you make a Cache of the whole drive you can see it in PrimoCache window. I think these little kbs written from the operating system can make problems during wake up when they are in cache and not on the drive. Because of that idea my cache involves only the working area of windows and not the bootpartition too / the whole drive!

[ckwong]

I am glad that you agree with my observation. What you and I found is a very obscure and difficult bug. The more we share the more we can nail it. But make sure you do appropriate backup to protect your data.

[Support]

Thank you all for the very useful information!

According to your information, I think pausing cache might be the cause. Stopping cache completely removes cache, so it is lowly likely to cause the issue. Anyway, we will check both.

[Axident]

@ ckwong / Backup
Of course!!! During operating with Primocache I do nothing which is "very important" but it is the normal daly buisness. Whenever there is someting in cache necessary for my work I make a manual write to SSD.
And, which is very fine, my 6xHDD Raid 0 is in background (power off) carrying the 50 gig Partition too mirrored by Paragon. So I can test everything and / or backup in 2 minutes!

A very important test at the moment is a stress test with prime95 and Linx looking for instabilities / Ram errors that are not caused by primocache (Primocache is uninstalled at the moment).

A very nice option to uninstall Primocache quickly:
make a *.txt file, write in
"C:\Program Files\PrimoCache (Beta)\unins000.exe" /SILENT
compare this with your registry-entry to make shure that it's working
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall]
rename the text file to (for example) "uninst_Primo.bat"

@support / pausing
I only test settings explained down below, 8gig, defer-write 864000s, no L2 cache, no pausing, only manual write when necessary, (I think this is the genius setting to reduce writes on SSD to minimum and increase sytem performance to a high level)
When stopping I unistall / reinstall... when i see, that this is absolute stable, i check stopping an creating new + sleep/wakeup problem

it is how ckwong said.... we can nail it, but you have to remember what you did when system crashed... i dont want to change to much parameters...

[Axident]

next to check:
Instability after mounting esata HDDs and PrimoCache working.
(System was booted from SSD but 3 esata HDDs were online during boot - normally no problem!)

Normal operation on Windows (3 esata HDDs mounted) no read/write operation on it, system hangs and reboot... no login possible - safe mode / uninstall PrimoCache / reboot / install PrimoCache...

[ckwong]

If my memory serves me right, the crash happens when the cache is at a very high percentage of usage, i.e. almost full. However, I do not want to say this is the only reason. There is users use Primocache without problem for a long time, this will push up the cache utilization. I would conjecture that the condition needed to check out is when it is high and hit rate is low. This will trigger high swap rate. Some timing issue between the drivers, i.e. the Primocache driver and the OS file system driver and the physical device driver, can be out of synch that causes the crash. If this is the case, Primocache may not be the only source of the problem.

Another thing I would like to point out is that I use Primocache for read only but there is write activities reported. I would love to know why is it so? Could it because the algorithm read the page but write it when it is dirty. If this is the case, read only is not just read only. I re-attach an old screen short for this discussion. This screen shot has 272.16GB read and 270.80GB when the free cache (L1/L2) is 32.0MB / 33.33 MB with the size of 128M/39810MB and the hit rate is 0.81%.