Help with initial Cache setup of System wide Drives

[dja2k]

Hi I am new to PrimoCache though I did install it yesterday and played around with it. I am getting to know its basic setup, but benchmarking does show high numbers though realtime transfer rates are lower than normal. I have 2-128GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD's (1 for Windows 8.1 and another to hold my Virtual Machines). Documents and other storage are done on 2-3TB Western Digital Red HDD's. What is the appropriate setup on PrimoCache for theses?

I just setup PrimoCache for SSD's as 4096MB\4k and 1024MB\64K for HDD's. The problem is that the WD Red transfers are lower than without PrimoCache enabled using standard Windows File Transfer. Should I be using some other File Transfer Method? The same goes for the SSD's as benchmarking is off the roof, but realtime transfer rate isn't as high as it should be also using Windows File Transfer.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

dja2k

[InquiringMind]

Welcome to the forums Dja2K,

I assume you are talking about L1 (RAM) cache when you mention using 4096MB and 1024MB rather than L2 (SSD). If you use your HDDs heavily, then allocating more RAM to their L1 caches and experimenting with the block size would be a good move. A 4KB block size is too small and may be the cause of your bottleneck - 64KB blocksize for both SSD's and HDD's would likely offer better performance.

If you do a lot of file copying then Raymond.cc's 15 Free File Copy Tools Tested for the Fastest Transfer Speeds may be of use.

[dja2k]

Thanks and I will do more testing. By the way I tested with Teracopy before and it had the same results as I had seen, lower transfer rates with PrimoCache enabled.

dja2k

[robertcollier4]

The first time you read (the copy source location) something - it will not be in the cache.
The benefit only comes if you are reading it for a second time.

Thus - PrimoCache is not to speed up all transfers.
But it is to speed up transfers for things that are accessed more than once.

[CrypEd]

Thats it robert. PrimoCache as a (standard) block-layer Cache is meant to increase the speed of block-data, that you either frequently or recently use(d) - by costum algorythm definition BTW. It does not need to load any data at boot, the driver just loads and hook in the PrimoDevice as the defined cache and you are ready to go. A Cache-layer by design is impossible to increase speed of first read-access, since you demand unknown data from the original device.

The non-standard "Defer Write"-feature on the other definetly should increase speed of first write-access, since the driver reads all the writes directly from the CPU into the RAM and only passes it on to the original device after a defined period of time (timeout).

Surely both read and write can slow down speed, especially with non-highend CPU is bottlenecking and/or too low block-size is defined.
Remember that Cache, especially the read-algorythms and the sorting-agorythms for maintaining such layer is additional "calculation" on your system.

One good thing about "Cache" is that it is size-indepentend for proper functioning (performance terms aside). I mean whatever your L1-R/W Cache is only 512MB or 6GB...if your application for example WinRAR needs to write 16GB, to say in general "with an unknown capacity demand" to a disk temp-folder... then it's probably the best idea not to put it into a RAM-Disk...because when the RAM-DIsk runs out of space you have a big problem in your application.

Cache is a transparent block-abstraction-layer.

So in conclude:
Do not put your Apps like WinRAR-temp or either temp-files, that may easily run out of space, into a RAM-disk, use PrimoCache with defer-write instead, thats fast and secure.
Instead use RAM-DIsks to load exactly that data permanently into RAM, which would need a higher first-read speed, for example Game-Ressource-Folders or Application Caches that you can limit in the APplication-Options to a fixed size (i.e. Google Earth Cache if us might use it often).

When you put a fixed size real-cache folder of certain App onto RAM-disk, - dynamically new data -, you should make it auto-save at shutdown.
When you put a fixed size Game-Ressources folder onto RAM-Disk, - static data -, you should save it one times and may load it at boot (increases boot time) or also invoke it manually before playing.

Edit: BTW TerraCopy has big performance problems, i found it beeing partly 40% slower accessing and transfering both for small and big files on various newer fast HDD compared to windows default explorer transfers after completely removing TerrCopy. I didn't noticed for about half a year, and didn't believe until a friend of mine proofed me on my own system. The more faster your HDD is, the more TerraCopy is limiting, it's devastating. Sadly. I liked that tool.

[InquiringMind]

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