Romex Software Forum

Here I found some details for the standard Windows cache:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

Is the Windows cache off for the drives that Primo Cache takes care of? Otherwise I have a cache on the cache.

Yer i would like to know same thing.

What about the registry entry LargeSystemCache and the NTFSMemoryUsage entries?

Stubi wrote:Is the Windows cache off for the drives that Primo Cache takes care of? Otherwise I have a cache on the cache.

It's on, as far as I can tell. Doesn't really matter or do any harm since windows releases the memory used for caching if other processes require it.

See the pic below. Windows 8 and I would assume other relatively new windows (e.g. windows 7) uses all the memory it can for caching.

GunnzAkimbo wrote: What about the registry entry LargeSystemCache and the NTFSMemoryUsage entries?

What about them? If you don't know for sure you need them, I would recommend not using them. Same goes for most of the performance tweaks you can find on the internet.
See http://www.tweakhound.com/2011/09/20/bad-tweaks/ for LargeSystemCache and http://www.tweakhound.com/2009/12/11/nt ... ge2-tweak/ for NTFSMemoryUsage.

it's like having windows firewall on and then installing a 3rd party firewall.

You don't need 2 firewalls.

On most disks I configure Primocache for Read and Write with a 10s delay. If a large write operation occurs most of the L1 data (much if it from previous reads) will be flushed to accommodate the temporary write cache. Keeping the Windows cache enabled helps insure some portion of recently read data remains in memory.

GunnzAkimbo wrote:it's like having windows firewall on and then installing a 3rd party firewall.

You don't need 2 firewalls.

Windows is very good about releasing memory if needed elsewhere. Unlike multiple firewalls (or anti-virus) there are unusually no incompatibilities or significant performance hit keeping the Windows cache enabled alongside a 3rd party caching solution. Note the opposite is not necessarily true as Primocache, ramdisks, etc typically will not release memory once allocated. That said, if system memory is constrained it's probably better to go with a smaller L1 cache anyhow.

Another option is to disable Superfetch although I personally would not go this path. One can tinker with the Windows system and file cache sizes (and other parameters) via registry entries; personally I have never seen much benefit other than controlling page writes on memory staved systems. A simply utility like CleanMem that correctly utilizes Windows APIs to move cached items to the Standby list will usually provide some limited relief in these situations.

I suppose its like a cpu and it's cache levels.
Anyway, it's helped get my PC into the Top 100 for Passmark Performance Test
Using 8GB sometimes 16GB cache.

So the answer is that the Windows cache is on despite (in addition to) Primo Cache for the selected cached drives if I understood it correctly. This just creates some not useful system overhead whatever argument you bring. But at least we know now. Despite this Primo Cache is still a great product. I just wanted to understand.

Correct and nothing to worry about, respectively.

You can turn it of via the device manage, remember to check Intel RST too if you use it.