Double Buffering To Speed Up Computer

[Harry]

I just found out about some programs that do something called Double Buffering that create a disk cache to speed up your computers performance. Has anyone ever tried this and does it really work.

Here is some information I collected on one such program below.

SMARTDrive (SMARTDRV.EXE) creates a disk cache in extended memory. This significantly speeds up MS-DOS disk operations. Therefore, if you're installing Windows from the DOS level, place a copy of SMARTDRV.EXE onto the boot floppy disk that you boot with. After you boot your PC with this disk, execute SMARTDrive by typing SMARTDRV from the A prompt. It will only take a couple of seconds to load. You can then proceed with your installation of Windows. For both Windows 2000 and Windows XP, you begin the installation routine by executing WINNT.EXE, located in the i386 folder of the installation CD.


How does SMARTDrive work?

SMARTDrive is a disk caching program that intercepts system calls to the hard disk to control read/write access to the disk. SMARTDrive intercepts any calls to the hard disk and loads the needed data into a cache it establishes in RAM. (Unless specified otherwise, SMARTDrive automatically determines a reasonable cache size based on the amount of free extended memory available when it initially loads; the maximum amount it will take is around 2 MB.) Subsequent calls to the hard disk are intercepted by SMARTDrive, which scans the cache for the requested data. If the data is already present in the cache, SMARTDrive can access it directly in RAM. If the data is not in the cache, SMARTDrive accesses the hard disk and loads the necessary data into the cache. The least recently used data residing in RAM is cached back to the hard disk to make room for the new data. By loading blocks of data from the hard disk into RAM, SMARTDrive helps decrease the number of calls to the hard disk. This can dramatically speed up applications that repeatedly access the hard disk for data because accessing the hard disk is considerably slower than accessing RAM. Essentially, SMARTDrive attempts to maintain information in RAM that an application needs at any given time from the hard disk.

[doctorgonzo]

Yes, if you have a lot of memory it can work fine for loading Windows. I have also heard of people creating a Ramdrive (which is what SMARTDrive does) and using it for web cache files, which also speeds things up.

[glc]

Smartdrive hasn't had any real benefits since the DOS/Win 3.x days. Win9x has native 32 bit caching and double buffering built in.

The proper way to install Win2K/XP is to boot with the CD and let the setup do its thing. The recommendation to boot with a floppy and load Smartdrive is a kludgey workaround for when the CD is not bootable for whatever reason, all it does is avoid the need to boot with the 4 or 6 setup floppies to do it right.