Write Caching

[Caladon]

Can anyone tell me if anything determental will happen is i disable write caching and what IS write caching?

[lisaj]

Write caching is the process of writing data to fast memory (as opposed to slow disk), and then letting you get on with what you were doing while the operating system continues to write out the data to disk in the background. It gives you speed. The problem is that if your machine dies (crashes/power-cut/etc.) the data will be lost - sometimes this data is important without you ever knowing it (system files being read and written in the background), rather than you actually choosing to write something. Anyway, you get the idea... :-)

[Caladon]

UH HA! got it! thanks lisa.

Thing is...I play a computer game called Battlefield 1942 Desert Storm, which I play against other online losers; It takes a while to load each game and someone suggested, on the bf/dc website, disabeling the write caching. So in theory I COULD disable it for the time I am playing it, then re-enable it once I have finished?

[lisaj]

How much memory have you got? if you've got shed loads (or at least enough) you could just load up the entire game onto a temporary ramdrive and play from that. I imagine it'd be similar to the performance achieved using hot shovels.