Moving cache to ram?

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llmercll

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 17, 2010
Messages
1,369
Hello!

I've been tweaking out win7 to complement my new crucial m4 ssd and while I feel I've done most everything I can, I'm still a bit confused on how to move my google chrome cache to ram. I hear doing this will speed things up, and increase the life of my ssd, which is fantastic.

http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2...efox-or-chrome-cache-to-a-ram-disk-and-speed/

I found this but it's a year old, and seems to involve steps that I hope are unneccessary at this point. is there a simpler way to do this? has google added it as an option yet?

Thanks a lot!
 
Would you mind expanding on that? I've read that you need to be careful with your SSD since it has a limited number of write cycles.

thanks!
 
llmercll said:
Would you mind expanding on that? I've read that you need to be careful with your SSD since it has a limited number of write cycles.

thanks!
Click to expand...

They do have a limited number, but it is enough to write gigabytes a day to them for years, so it really isn't a concern in any practical way.
 
Intel rates their drives at a life of at least 5 years if 20GB/day were written to it. They will last longer, especially with TRIM, wearleveling, etc.
 
Oh thats great! I don't intend to write anywhere near that to my drive and 5+ years is more than enough =)

is wearleveling done automatically by the drives controller or is there something manually I need to do? Also, do reads wear out the nand flash or only writes?

thanks again!
 
llmercll said:
Oh thats great! I don't intend to write anywhere near that to my drive and 5+ years is more than enough =)

is wearleveling done automatically by the drives controller or is there something manually I need to do? Also, do reads wear out the nand flash or only writes?

thanks again!
Click to expand...

Only writes, and wear leveling is done automatically.
 
Once everything on a system is installed, I've noticed that Google chrome will write the most. You can select the columns that task manager displays, then you can see how much a program writes. I was writing about 10GB a day just from Chrome. What I do now is have chrome reopen the last tabs from when the session closed. When I get done with Chrome I close it. Then I can reopen it later. I've gone from writing 10+GB a day to around 1GB a day.

It's important to note that 10GB is still nothing. Even on a 40GB drive, 10GB a day is nothing. With a 128GB and up drive, it's less than nothing. I just do it because that's what I do. It's like chrome is just minimized, but its not writing hundreds of GB an hour.

I just don't see a reason for it to be open and writing all damn day, even while I'm away from the system.

I tried using Firefox and moving the cache to ram, but it was not worth the trouble of having to use a browser I don't prefer anymore, especially since pages loaded slower.
 
What the hell is Chrome writing so much? I seriously doubt you are viewing 10 GB of webpages in a day, are you?

Edit: Are you sure you are reading that right? All I see in Resource Monitor is B/sec, nothing for total writes.
 
Chrome seems to be writing 2GB's a day for me, left open. It doesn't seem to write when I'm not browsing. What concerns me more is the number of writes, which is 500,000+. Although I guess TRIM and wear leveling should be taking care of that.

As I've been reading I have a few more questions...

1. is there any way I can see the number of write cycles my drive has been through?

2. Asides from initial loading, will putting games on the M4 make any actual difference as opposed to being put on my Samsung F4 (2tb 5400rpm). From what I've read it helps for MMO's and open world games mostly and can give a higher minimum fps.

I would just like to use my drive as sparingly as possible.

thanks!
 
Found a reference for google chrome browser. need to verify since I do not use Chrome

http://www.walkernews.net/2008/12/26/how-to-relocate-or-change-google-chrome-cache-folder-location/

remember it is "two dash" for command line option

I can add comment for IE9 since I do use IE9 on Windows 7. For example.

1. Download and install dataram ramdisk software. Free upto 4GB ramdisk. Admin right needed.
2. Create a 384MB ram disk. the number is an example only.
3. In IE9, click the icon and select to go Internet Option--General--Browsing History -- Settings
4. After clicking settings, another menu pop up and you have Current location -- set this to your RAMDISK location.

5. The content on ramdisk is cleared everytime you restart Windows. However, if you need it, dataram ramdisk software has option where you can "save and restore" the ramdisk content automatically.

I test dataram ramdisk software after seeing comments from some fine folks in this forum.
 
llmercll said:
I would just like to use my drive as sparingly as possible.

thanks!
Click to expand...

The problem with using the drive sparingly, is that you are wasting the speed you paid for. If you aren't going to use it, why get it? Seriously, it'll last longer than you will care about it.
 
That's a good point. I'm neurotic about keeping my things in shape, but not at the cost of their usefulness.

@lighthtp2: Do you know if this is possible without the use of a ram drive (like in firefox)?

thanks!
 
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llmercll said:
2. Asides from initial loading, will putting games on the M4 make any actual difference as opposed to being put on my Samsung F4 (2tb 5400rpm). From what I've read it helps for MMO's and open world games mostly and can give a higher minimum fps.
Click to expand...

It also, depending on the game, can help with pop-up. Like as your moving along the world and the game needs to convert the texture of a mountain from low resolution to medium resolution. On HDD's you might get a little stutter as it accesses the drive for that texture. I remember World of Warcraft was really noticable with an SSD, but a game like Lord of the Rings Online still had the stutter issue, but to a much less degree.

The thing about SSD's, is that its easier to notice when its not there then when it is. Meaning when you get one you might be like well this is cool and all, but I don't see the big deal. Its after you used one for a while and you get a computer with a platter drive and your just giving the HDD light the evil eye. You remember how accustomed you became to the waiting game.
 
Thanks for the replies, I'm pretty sure I got it now =p

I just got an Intel 320 Series 160GB for $155 after a rebate and a free copy of battlefield 3. The price was incredible basically 99cents/GB. It's only SATA II though, and benchmarks a bit slower than the M4. Will it be noticeable?

thanks again!
 
llmercll said:
I just got an Intel 320 Series 160GB for $155 after a rebate and a free copy of battlefield 3. The price was incredible basically 99cents/GB. It's only SATA II though, and benchmarks a bit slower than the M4. Will it be noticeable?
Click to expand...

No, it won't be noticeable. Great price.
 
lightp2 said:
Found a reference for google chrome browser. need to verify since I do not use Chrome

http://www.walkernews.net/2008/12/26/how-to-relocate-or-change-google-chrome-cache-folder-location/

remember it is "two dash" for command line option

I can add comment for IE9 since I do use IE9 on Windows 7. For example.

1. Download and install dataram ramdisk software. Free upto 4GB ramdisk. Admin right needed.
2. Create a 384MB ram disk. the number is an example only.
3. In IE9, click the icon and select to go Internet Option--General--Browsing History -- Settings
4. After clicking settings, another menu pop up and you have Current location -- set this to your RAMDISK location.

5. The content on ramdisk is cleared everytime you restart Windows. However, if you need it, dataram ramdisk software has option where you can "save and restore" the ramdisk content automatically.

I test dataram ramdisk software after seeing comments from some fine folks in this forum.
Click to expand...
Sweet, going to give this a try later on, thanks for the info.
 
I've done what you are trying to do.

I have both my Chrome and Firefox caches on a 300mb Ram disc and not on my SSD.

I did it to reduce the amount of writes to my SSD and also because RAM is much faster than a SSD.

For firefox it was easy to move the cache but chrome was alittle more difficult as they don't have a menu option you can just go to and change the location.

I'm at work I will post some screenshots when I get home if your still interested in doing it.
 
Does a ramdisk noticeably increase browsing speeds? Is there any downside to using it over just leaving your cache on the SSD?

thanks!
 
llmercll said:
Does a ramdisk noticeably increase browsing speeds? Is there any downside to using it over just leaving your cache on the SSD?

thanks!
Click to expand...

I would highly doubt it would be visibly much faster than a SSD would be.
The only downside is that the data would be wiped when the system is powered off, but that's only if you care about your cache, which most people do not.
 
Sounds good, I probably won't bother with the ramdisk then =p

Now, since I have 8GB of ram, I'm wondering if it's worth disabling the pagefile and/or prefetch? Anything to gain there besides a few GB of disk space?

thanks for the help everyone! =)
 
1. A web cache on ramdisk with SSD OS disk combination will reduce write-wear on your SSD. There's no downside if you have enough DRAM available.

2. Many times, as web-based technologies get ever more sophisticated, web-apps write more and more to your local disk to keep state info. For example, even the browser itself continuously write to temp disk for temporary things it deems necessary

3. Heavy web users who open 2 millions tabs. Couple with point 2 above, you have a potential useful scenario

4. If you are engineering-type or embeded development type of person who value preserving every tiny bit of the running system.

5. note : as some say, many do not feel persistent need for web cache, meaning losing the web cache is not a problem for them.

5.1 If that is the case, then you can consider next logical step, if keeping permanent webcache is not necessary, why waste SSD write-cycle on them? Hence some proceed to put webcache on ramdisk.

The key point is how easy to run such config.

Cheers
 
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http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+can+I+move+the+cache+folder+for+chrome


You can specify the location of your User Data Directory by adding a flag to your Chrome shortcut. Instead of simply calling chrome.exe, append the following (customized with your desired location):

chrome.exe --user-data-dir=c:\Whereever\You\Want

Please note that this moves the *entire* user data directory, not only the cache. This includes your history, bookmarks, cookies, etc.
Click to expand...



llmercll said:
Sounds good, I probably won't bother with the ramdisk then =p

Now, since I have 8GB of ram, I'm wondering if it's worth disabling the pagefile and/or prefetch? Anything to gain there besides a few GB of disk space?

thanks for the help everyone! =)
Click to expand...

leave page file alone, there is zero reason to touch it anymore, this isnt the days of XP, i am sure MS knows better for your OS if you should have a page file or not, as rare as they are, some apps still make checks to see that there is a page file to operate.
 
I'll agree that MS knows better if the OS should have a page file or not but I certainly don't agree on how big it should be. Seems the windows default pagefile settings came from the old windows 3.1 days when RAM was a premium and you never had enough, so the default page size is 1.5x RAM. This was cool back in the days when you had 4MB RAM, you needed at least 6MB swap file to even begin to function, but when you have 16GB RAM, 24GB swap is a bit excessive (and that IS the recommended size for 16GB RAM).

So I recommend setting the swap file to say, 2GB min and max size, reboot the computer to force it to make it that size, then increase the max to something higher, I just use the recommended. Now windows has the option to increase the swap file size if needed, and the swap file is still there, just as small as it needs to be.
 
-Dragon- said:
I'll agree that MS knows better if the OS should have a page file or not but I certainly don't agree on how big it should be. Seems the windows default pagefile settings came from the old windows 3.1 days when RAM was a premium and you never had enough, so the default page size is 1.5x RAM. This was cool back in the days when you had 4MB RAM, you needed at least 6MB swap file to even begin to function, but when you have 16GB RAM, 24GB swap is a bit excessive (and that IS the recommended size for 16GB RAM).

So I recommend setting the swap file to say, 2GB min and max size, reboot the computer to force it to make it that size, then increase the max to something higher, I just use the recommended. Now windows has the option to increase the swap file size if needed, and the swap file is still there, just as small as it needs to be.
Click to expand...

I agree with you my page file is 1GB on a platter disc on my 12GB of ram system. I never touch the page file so might aswell make it small.
 
Eisenblut said:
Intel rates their drives at a life of at least 5 years if 20GB/day were written to it. They will last longer, especially with TRIM, wearleveling, etc.
Click to expand...
And the fact that most of the time most people probably won't even write more than a couple or few GBs per day (perhaps even just in the few to several hundred MBs).
 
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