Recommendations for disk caching software?

[Canned Noodles]

I have this old workstation that boots from a hard drive, and it just seems sluggish, especially when I try to open games. It has 72GB of memory so I thought I might as well make use of it. Does anyone have any experience with this or suggestions you would like to share?

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

more details, asking for a museum.

 

[Regeneration]

Unreliable. Just buy a cheap SSD.

 

[Canned Noodles]

more details, asking for a museum.

Dell Precision T5500 9x8GB PC3-10600R ECC memory

Unreliable. Just buy a cheap SSD.

That's probably what I'll do later on. It's just cheaper (free) to play with a ram caching solution for the time being, rather than buying a new SSD.

 

[W1zzard]

Windows will automatically use all memory a disk cache. The problem is that you need to read from disk first to fill the cache.

Just buy a cheap SSD

 

[Regeneration]

Even if you setup a RAM disk, you'll need to load it from the HDD at startup, and dump it to the HDD on shut down.

It's gonna take a while each time... can be a matter of minutes, depends on the size.

Oh, and if you get a BSOD or a tiny power failure, you should expect to lose a lot of data.

 

[Bill_Bright]

I am curious as to how you got to 72GB? That is not a common amount. While certainly possible, it would take an unusual combination to get to 72GB.

9 x 8GB, for example would get you there- assuming the board supports that many sticks. Or 4 x 16GB + 1 x 8GB. There are other combinations that could involve 4GB and 32GB sticks as well.

But most, not all, but most systems have an "even" number of sticks - again, depending on the board. I don't remember having ever seen 72GB before.

How much free disk space do you have?

 

[Canned Noodles]

Thanks for the replies, I think I’ll get an SSD

I am curious as to how you got to 72GB? That is not a common amount. While certainly possible, it would take an unusual combination to get to 72GB.

9 x 8GB, for example would get you there- assuming the board supports that many sticks. Or 4 x 16GB + 1 x 8GB. There are other combinations that could involve 4GB and 32GB sticks as well.

But most, not all, but most systems have an "even" number of sticks - again, depending on the board. I don't remember having ever seen 72GB before.

How much free disk space do you have?

Sorry I didn’t see your message earlier, I hadn’t refreshed the tab in a while so it did not show up. The computer in question uses dual xeons with triple channel memory, and it’s from the same generation as the first generation i7s. The disk is 2TB and <25% filled

 

[Bill_Bright]

So it has 9 x 8GB installed?

 

[Canned Noodles]

So it has 9 x 8GB installed?

Yes

Dell Precision T5500 9x8GB PC3-10600R ECC memory

 

[Frick]

Yes

Google says it has 6 RAM slots, meaning 3x16GB and 3x8GB.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

Google says it has 6 RAM slots, meaning 3x16GB and 3x8GB.

According to Dell

6 DIMM slots on motherboard; an additional 3 DIMM slots available on optional riser

 

[80251]

The only disk caching software still sold commercially is primocache -- all their other competitors seemed to have died off.

I was using an NVME M.2 1 TiB SK-hynix P31 Gold to cache my 2 TiB applications/games/music Toshiba 2 TiB HDD. It was great while it lasted, but the HDD died and so now I'm using it to cache my much slower 4 TiB Samsung QVO SATA SSD, mostly because I have no other use for it and don't want to go through the hassle of removing it.
The load times for my games off my 2 TiB HDD when cached by primocache to the sk-hynix P31 Gold and my Samsung QVO 4 TiB SATA SSD differ by less than 2 secs.

 

[2wick_10029]

Windows: PrimoCache
Linux: native tmpfs