SSD usage and other suggestions
Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 9:41 pm
Hi Guys
Thank you for this wonderful Cache. I wanted to share a few thoughts and experiences.
Firstly, I'm using the cache to reduce the overall writes and reads to my SSD thereby reducing writes and power consumption. So far it's working very well with a typical usage as follows:
1GB Cache with 60seconds to 1200seconds write delay. This saves up to 30% of the writes typical cases and more in some cases (such as installing, where files are written and then removed and therefore trimmed). It also saves on average 20-40% of reads in typical use which is pretty awesome.
There are a few suggestions I have in terms of the interface which would make it more useable for me:
1 Open the performance monitor immediately when starting the cache (maybe via a tickbox?). This way I won't miss any info!
2 Background monitoring of stats (so that when the performance monitor is not open we still get the info when we bring up the window). This would help when booting with the cache active, to see what impact it has during the boot process.
3 Collective stats - would it be possible to add a cumulative view of cache savings - past 24hours, week etc?
4 Read and write cache graphs - to show more information about trimmed blocks etc - also please increase the resolution or add options, so that the graph doesn't only show the last few seconds but could be updated once per second and move 1 pixel at a time. This would show the cache info from the last few minutes which would be very useful.
5 Graph redesign - at the moment it only shows reads from cache where it could show all kinds of info such as percentage of reads and writes saved including peak informations.
6 Standard settings interface - perhaps a low-medium-high standard settings could be implemented for those that are not so familiar with cache activity.
7 SSD-based package - you could design a less technical SSD-cache for those of us with SSD's (especially older, non sandforce SSD) where even 128MB of write-cache would improve performance immensely and reduce stutters to zero.
8 Separate size settings for read and write cache - I don't like the interaction between read and write cache - because the LRU read cache would be more useful with say 256MB standard and 768MB allocated only for writes.
9 A tweak to reduce or disable windows caching - we can disable write caching in some cases but not read caching - it's pointless to have two read cache's available and I manually tweak windows read cache to use as little as possible. Perhaps your app can auto optimise this or maybe I don't understand the relationship enough between windows reads and fancycache reads.
Just some initial feedback, thanks again for a wonderful cache - it's the best I've ever used (was using Supercache before).
Well done! and I'm looking forward to further developments. I really think if you repackage the cache as SSD-cache with some standard settings you will make a lot of sales (perhaps even OCZ and others would bundle the software)..
Greetings from the UK
Pras Anand
Thank you for this wonderful Cache. I wanted to share a few thoughts and experiences.
Firstly, I'm using the cache to reduce the overall writes and reads to my SSD thereby reducing writes and power consumption. So far it's working very well with a typical usage as follows:
1GB Cache with 60seconds to 1200seconds write delay. This saves up to 30% of the writes typical cases and more in some cases (such as installing, where files are written and then removed and therefore trimmed). It also saves on average 20-40% of reads in typical use which is pretty awesome.
There are a few suggestions I have in terms of the interface which would make it more useable for me:
1 Open the performance monitor immediately when starting the cache (maybe via a tickbox?). This way I won't miss any info!
2 Background monitoring of stats (so that when the performance monitor is not open we still get the info when we bring up the window). This would help when booting with the cache active, to see what impact it has during the boot process.
3 Collective stats - would it be possible to add a cumulative view of cache savings - past 24hours, week etc?
4 Read and write cache graphs - to show more information about trimmed blocks etc - also please increase the resolution or add options, so that the graph doesn't only show the last few seconds but could be updated once per second and move 1 pixel at a time. This would show the cache info from the last few minutes which would be very useful.
5 Graph redesign - at the moment it only shows reads from cache where it could show all kinds of info such as percentage of reads and writes saved including peak informations.
6 Standard settings interface - perhaps a low-medium-high standard settings could be implemented for those that are not so familiar with cache activity.
7 SSD-based package - you could design a less technical SSD-cache for those of us with SSD's (especially older, non sandforce SSD) where even 128MB of write-cache would improve performance immensely and reduce stutters to zero.
8 Separate size settings for read and write cache - I don't like the interaction between read and write cache - because the LRU read cache would be more useful with say 256MB standard and 768MB allocated only for writes.
9 A tweak to reduce or disable windows caching - we can disable write caching in some cases but not read caching - it's pointless to have two read cache's available and I manually tweak windows read cache to use as little as possible. Perhaps your app can auto optimise this or maybe I don't understand the relationship enough between windows reads and fancycache reads.
Just some initial feedback, thanks again for a wonderful cache - it's the best I've ever used (was using Supercache before).
Well done! and I'm looking forward to further developments. I really think if you repackage the cache as SSD-cache with some standard settings you will make a lot of sales (perhaps even OCZ and others would bundle the software)..
Greetings from the UK
Pras Anand
