Is there any way to limit the maximum sice of the disk cache on Windows 2000 or XP? It's hurting my performance a lot when programs get swapped out to make room for more disk cache. I have 512MB of memory and I've seen Windows use over 400 of that for cache.
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Possible to limit disk cache on Windows 2K or XP?
- Thread starter Anjeon
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right click on my computer select properties,
click on the advanced tab.
click on "Perfomance options"
click on "change"
set the page file to whatever size you want. If you want one size set the initial size and maximum size the same. For example 600MB and 600MB.
Dont set it to 0
click on the advanced tab.
click on "Perfomance options"
click on "change"
set the page file to whatever size you want. If you want one size set the initial size and maximum size the same. For example 600MB and 600MB.
Dont set it to 0
And you know it's slowing your machine down how? 
If a program isn't using the memory, windows is going to cache disks since disks are slower, and then your disk I/O is faster. Disabling cache is a very bad idea. Just leave it alone, Windows is doing the right thing.
If a program isn't using the memory, windows is going to cache disks since disks are slower, and then your disk I/O is faster. Disabling cache is a very bad idea. Just leave it alone, Windows is doing the right thing.USMC2Hard4U
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what exactly is the op asking about, pagefile or system/file cache and what is the difference between the two. i know of the the pagefile but haven't really heard anything about the system/file cache
The pagefile:
A vital component to the Virtual Memory Subsystem
Disk Cache:
XP tries to use unused memory to cache the disk so the machine will be faster. If a program requests the memory, XP throws out the disk cache and allows that program to use the memory. It's just caching the disk to allow your favorite and most frequently used programs be faster.
Note:
If using very very expensive SCSI hardware (I doubt anyone here is using it on their home box) it can slow the machine down, but the SCSI drivers will usually tell XP how to cache in that case, so it doesn't slow it down.
A vital component to the Virtual Memory Subsystem
Disk Cache:
XP tries to use unused memory to cache the disk so the machine will be faster. If a program requests the memory, XP throws out the disk cache and allows that program to use the memory. It's just caching the disk to allow your favorite and most frequently used programs be faster.
Note:
If using very very expensive SCSI hardware (I doubt anyone here is using it on their home box) it can slow the machine down, but the SCSI drivers will usually tell XP how to cache in that case, so it doesn't slow it down.
Not the pagefile, I'm refering to the disk cache. I don't want to turn it off, just put an upper limit on it. I think you could do this in Win98 by editing the system.ini file.
It pages my programs out to disk way too soon to make room for more disk cache. I'll give an example. Say I'm copying several GB of data from one of my hard drives to the other. While that's going on I'm browsing the forum's here with Mozilla. If I switch from Mozilla to another program and back immediately, Mozilla comes back up with no delay. If I stay on that other program for more than a few seconds, Mozilla gets swapped out for more disk cache. Then it takes a very long time to switch back.
Basicly I don't want it to increase disk cache at the expense of running programs.
It pages my programs out to disk way too soon to make room for more disk cache. I'll give an example. Say I'm copying several GB of data from one of my hard drives to the other. While that's going on I'm browsing the forum's here with Mozilla. If I switch from Mozilla to another program and back immediately, Mozilla comes back up with no delay. If I stay on that other program for more than a few seconds, Mozilla gets swapped out for more disk cache. Then it takes a very long time to switch back.
Basicly I don't want it to increase disk cache at the expense of running programs.
This is actually seems to be a problem with Mozilla. I've seen quite a few people on here and other message boards mention the Mozilla seems to get paged out sooner than most programs.
And btw, there is no setting for the upper limit on disk cache size.
And btw, there is no setting for the upper limit on disk cache size.