Speed up your CD-ROMs


Tip
Ever wonder if you're getting the best performance from your CD-ROM drive when running multimedia discs? As with your hard drive, Windows sets aside a certain amount of memory to store information likely to be needed next from your CD-ROM drive, and sometimes Windows doesn't create a big enough cache for the drive. Or perhaps you've added more memory to your system (never a bad idea), and Windows didn't adjust the cache size for your CD-ROM drive.
To see if you can increase the cache size Windows 95 uses, right-click My Computer and choose Properties. Click the Performance tab, the File System button, and the CD-ROM tab. Experiment by changing the supplemental cache size and CD-ROM optimize access pattern for speed settings to see if you get better performance. If appropriate, set the supplemental cache size to Large and the speed settings for Quad-speed or higher. Click OK to finish. Now go back to your multimedia disc and see if the performance has improved. If not, go back and change the CD-ROM settings to the defaults.
- Richard Jantz

Category: Win95
Issue: Jun 1997
Pages: 175

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