HOW TO CONTROL WINDOWS DISK CACHE AND IMPROVE SYSTEM OVERALL STABILITY What is Disk Cache?
Disk Cache is a part of Read Only Memory – RAM that acts as an intermediate buffer when data is read from and written to file systems on secondary storage devices. The Disk Cache driver stores the most recently accessed data in RAM. When a program needs to access new data, the operating system first checks to see if the data is in the cache before reading it from the disk. Because computers can access data from RAM much faster than from a storage device, disk caching can significantly increase performance. In Issue N° 12 – here available – I discussed how to adequately allocate Read Only Memory – RAM – to applications. A freeware had been then suggested to control such allocation – Free Memory Professional – in association with another one in charge of controlling Windows Disk Cache: CACHEMAN. Links to these utilities are given in Issue N° 12 above mentioned. I have both utilities installed on my system (Pentium 160 – RAM: 96 MB – Windows 98 Second Edition) with a heavy bundle of more
