Romex Software Forum

Hawing a system configured in this way

C: SSD with Windows 10 Pro, boot disk, grub for dual boot choice
(no drive letter assigned): spare SSD, used as cache
(no drive letter assigned): SSD with KDE Neon (Ubuntu) installation
F: HDD with data, NTFS, accessible both from Windows and Linux

want to use the spare SSD as cache both for win and also Linux, want suggestions to have in the safest way.

My idea is to divide the SSD in two partitions with NTFS / EXT4 format, use PrimoCache in the first one and bcache in the second. HDD is shared so cached between the two OS.

Need I to use only read cache in PrimoCache? There is anything else I need to do?

Only way to make it work is use only read cache in PrimoCache, AND mount as read-only F: filesystem under Linux. All other options will lead to corrupt filesystem and loss of data.

Thanks for your answer.
Limiting Linux to read data and write only in a specific directory in F shared drive, where Windows will never write, will work?
Otherwise I simply can't use any caching system.

It won't work. Problem is Windows reading from that part of drive.

Simplified example:
You read file 'X' under windows. It's now also in L2 cache of PrimoCache.
You reboot to Linux and modify file 'X'.
You reboot to Windows, and try reading file 'X' - it will read from L2 cache, so what it was before you modified it.

This is simplified, more complex part is that PrimoCache works on block device, how free space is freed/used, etc, etc... basically - if you do ANY writes under Linux, you'll end up with corruptions.
You *can* use PrimoCache, but not with persistent L2 cache (so, disable L2).

Thanks again.
I think in this way didn't make sense at all.
I need to share data btw Windows and Linux, and having just a RAM disk would not accelerate the read task that's the most intensive activity.
The only solution will be Primocache to have a Linux version also, so to read the same data to continue his work.
I will uninstall the whole thing and just purchase a new NVMe drive where to store most used files.

Nick7 is correct. This only works when the target volume is read only on both Windows and Linux system.