disk cache

[Dead River Studio]

I keep seeing postings indicating that your disk cache should be set very low, possibly at 512k. I haven't really touched my disk cache and when I viewed it in the control panel>memory (right?) it was set near or at the highest setting (8000k).
Should I reduce this number to 512 for best performance? If so, does this affect other applications performance?
Thanks,
Steve

[DigiTechSupt]

The disk cache is a specified amount of RAM set aside to hold information that has recently been accesed from your disk. When you access new information from your disk, the new information replaces what is currently in the cache. By itself, this offes no benefit. If you request information that is already waiting in the cache, however, it is accessed directly from the cache rather than from the disk. Since RAM access is much faster than disk access, the disk cache speeds up the performance of operations that would otherwise require repeated reading of the same disk-based data.

As far as DAE is concerned, the disk (aka system) cache is a hinderance. Not only does the disk cache reduce the amount of available memory for other applications, it also interferes with the DAE buffer when accessing audio data from the disk. Therefore, a disk cache that is too large will essentially starve DAE of memory and result in the -6008 error.

Brent

[Dead River Studio]

So what I think I'm hearing is; when using protools set the disk cache to minimum (512k?), but if working in photoshop or other applications, reset disk cache to a higher setting. Correct?

[DigiTechSupt]

-If other applications specifically demand a higher cache setting, then yes, you will have to make the necessary change and restart. However, I have never noticed any change in performance with other applications when using a 512k Disk Cache setting.

Brent