Help with configuration.

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chwhnd
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Help with configuration.

Post by chwhnd »

Please see the attached pics. I halve an:

HP Z440, 1680 3.4GHz 8 core CPU, 64GB RAM
500GB SSD with 271GB as L2 Cache for drive D: and F:
Drive D: is the Data drive
Drive E: is for True Image Backups only
Drive F: is for WinRar Archive files only

Drive C: cache is 20GB W/R shared perfected at boot
Drives D: & F: cache L1 is 32GB RAM W/R shared perfected deferred write;
L2 271GB Partition on the SSD RAM W/R shared

Does anyone have any suggestions on my setup or another better setup?

I can only upload 3 pics. If anyone wants more screen shots of my setup let me knoy.

Thanks.
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Jaga
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Re: Help with configuration.

Post by Jaga »

With two L1 caches (20GB and 32GB), that's too much of your RAM being used, and leaves little left for the OS and programs. And the block size set in Primocache (at 512KB) is too high for drives formatted with 4KB clusters - your random read performance is going to be abysmal with that config.

I would drop your 32GB L1 allocation down to 20GB, and change the block size in both cache tasks to 16KB (each time Primocache reads it'll pull in 4 4KB clusters). See if you get a little extra free RAM so that you aren't starving Windows and applications with just 12GB space to run in.
chwhnd
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Re: Help with configuration.

Post by chwhnd »

I have reconfigured my system. I now have my HP z440 system : E5-2687W v4 @ 3.00GHz, 128GB RAM, SAMSUNG 2TB PM981a NVMe, 2x Hitachi Ultrastar 12TB, GeForce GTX 1080 8GB, Windows 11 Pro N WS, Samsung QN75Q90R 75” QLED TV, Samsung HW-Q90R Soundbar, PrimoCache 4.2.0, and PIA. I also have a 1500 UPS. This is a major upgrade in CPU, RAM, Boot SSD, and Data Drives. I have lower hit rates than before.

I am 74 years old and my synapses might not be snapping as fast as they once were so I find configuring my cache confusing. I use my system for accounting, email, web browsing, tormenting, and video watching on the system. The SSD has a Boot Partition and a 1TB Level 2 Cache Partition. Drive C: has a 16GB L1 R/W Cache and Drive D: has 52GB L1 Cache split 50/50 R/W and a 1TB L2 Cache split 50/50 R/W. That leaves 64GB RAM for the operating system.

I can’t seem to get decent cache hits. I had thought with this much RAM and a 1TB L2 I should be getting great hits. I even tried a 32GB Li for the boot drive thinking that Windows would remain in the cache, but I still didn’t get good results.
I do daily use Acronis True Image to backup of C: & D: to E: daily and weekly backups of the entire system (all partitions) to a QNAP NAS.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
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Support
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Re: Help with configuration.

Post by Support »

I think the reason is that backup drops a lot of cache hits. During the backup, all data in the disk might be read and then will fetched by the cache.
This makes the cache store useless (code) data, thus reducing the hit rate. You may pause the cache before backup, please check the following thread.
viewtopic.php?t=4738
chwhnd
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Re: Help with configuration.

Post by chwhnd »

Thanks. I installed the program and will monitor.
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