Build 479- updating no problems so far.

By Tom | December 21st, 2008 | 1:23 pm

I have been testing now on build 479, on my portable desktop replacement (overgrown laptop) and have a couple of questions 

My system:

HP P4 3.4 GHz Intel chip

2 gig ram,

128 meg video,

100 gig (very slow 4200 rpm HDD)

Several external DVD and HDD ranging from 250 gig to 750 gig.

Running XP media center with sp3

 Is a very good machine and I have no major issues or problems in system just push it very hard.

 OK,  I have tested using a Compact Flash 8 gig card, (in a HIGHSPEED  32bit card bus reader) and a 2 gig high speed SD card on the build in a reader.  Current set up is build 497 beta, using four 2 gig lexar usb drives. 

First of all, I have noticed huge boot and application load speed increase, I think this is one of the best programs for XP I have used.

Now to my questions.  I am not understanding how the Cache is setting up the files when there are multiple drive volumes configured. 

1)      Is every part of the cache mirrored or duplicated on both drive, and if so how does using more than one speed up things. Or is there file balancing between the drives?

a.       The reason I ask this, as I have this set up on a USB hub, 4 high-speed 2 gig flash drives (for a total of 8 gig of cache)?

b.      Will this set up actually net me 8 gig or 4 mirrored smaller 2 gig cache’s?

c.       What is the ultimate best set up? (IE: four 4 gig super fast flash drives or what?)

d.      Where is the total drive size sweet spot, or is there to much of a good thing?

e.      Is the cache software look ahead intelligent so it continually adds frequently used files/application or is it static once the build of the cache is complete, and is this tied into the exclude list.

 I like the product and I look forward to hearing back from you on how is the best way to setup eBoostr.

 Thanks

 Thomas

One Response to “Build 479- updating no problems so far.”

  1. Andrey Zarudnev
    Dec 22, 2008

    Hi Thomas, thank you for the feedback.

    1. Cache contents is mirrored on each device except RAM. It is much faster so the most frequently read files goes to RAM cache exclusively (however with some exceptions that I am not aware of. May be Ily will elaborate on this.)

    a) Using a hub for cache devices is not recommended, cause you limit the load balancing mechanism to a single USB port. There will be no parallel reads in this configuration. Please plug at least one flash drive into a dedicated port.

    b) 4 mirrored 2 gig caches.

    c) The best configuration is: RAM cache (at least a small sized 128-256MB), one or two fast USB flash drives (1-2GB sized cache files enough in most cases) and an optional large 4-8GB sized cache on a flash drive (better) or another hard disk (please note that an external USB connected hard drive is not a good option here–external SATA only.)

    d) It depends on the software you are using frequently and OS you have. Vista has more files compared to XP.

    e) eBoostr constantly gatheres frequently read files and data statistics. Cache contents is automatically updated once in an hour on idle time.



«
»