File system
 Name cache
 Path cache
 Read-ahead
 Disk cache
 Wizard
 IMPORTANT

 The Manager
 Statistics
 Settings

 Table of Contents
 Questions

File system role

The file system role is an internal Windows setting that affects the overall performance of your computer. The choices--Desktop, Mobile and Server--are pre-defined by Windows. Of course, you probably use your computer for a more specific role than one of these; these are the only ones defined by Windows, and are therefore so restricted in MemoryBoost.

The Desktop setting is the default. It does little to speed up your hard disk, which after networking is the slowest part of your computer. For this reason, we recommend that you choose Mobile or Server, which give you greater flexibility in improving your hard disk's performance.

The name cache

The name cache is like a dictionary of file names. Each entry in the name cache is like a word in a dictionary; the more entries you allow (with the slider) the more words in the dictionary. The name cache helps speed up your computer by giving Windows a very fast way to find files. If the name cache is small or not used, or if a file is not in the name cache, Windows has to use the hard disk to find the file. This, because hard disks are relatively slow, can hurt your computer's performance. If the file is in the name cache, Windows can go straight to it. This speeds up your computer, sometimes significantly. The only downside to the name cache is that it takes up memory. You can set the size of the name cache to whatever you wish; we recommend setting it around 2048 entries for good performance.

The path cache

The path cache is just like the name cache; it works like a dictionary, but for folders instead of files. Like the name cache, the path cache speeds up your hard disk and the larger the path cache, the greater the speedup. But the path cache lives in memory like the name cache, and the larger it is the more memory it takes up. We recommend setting it to around 64 for good performance.

Read-ahead optimization

Windows can by tricky in trying to speed up your hard disk. Read-ahead optimization will read more than your computer needs when it accesses the disk; if it later needs information that was read in the earlier access, it can take it from memory instead of the disk and thereby achieve an important speedup. Read-ahead optimization only works when it reads something you need, so it's most important with large files that are read in bits and pieces. In general this is how your computer works anyway, so the more read-ahead optimization the better.

Read-ahead optimization does consume some memory, but not much. It also slows down your computer if you work with a lot of little files. We recommend a value of 64K, the maximum, for good performance.

The disk cache

The disk cache is by far the most important optimization in speeding up your hard disk's performance, and makes a very large impact on your computer's overall performance. However, choosing the right size for the disk cache is much more touchy than the other settings, and should be done with care.

The disk cache is basically a memory copy of your hard disk. Every time you need to access a file and it's in the cache, your computer doesn't have to access the hard disk. The key about the disk cache is that it's typically very large--maybe 20 megabytes, maybe even larger. This means that whole files, even whole programs can be stored there. And so when you run these programs or access these files, the hard disk is never used. This will result in a huge speedup, because memory is hundreds of times faster than the disk is.

The downside, and it's a big one, is exactly the same as the upside: the disk cache is typically very large. That means it's taking memory away from your programs, making them work harder, and in an ironic Catch-22, causing them to access the hard disk to store their data that would have been in memory otherwise. The way your computer works is, when it runs out of memory it puts extra information on your disk. It's not running out of memory that's a problem at all; it's having to use the disk. The overarching goal is that you want to use the disk as little as possible. For this, you need to balance the memory needs of your programs against the potential size of the disk cache.

Windows, by default, has two sizes for the disk cache. A maximum size lets you get good disk performance as long as there's enough memory on your computer. The minimum size lets Windows cut down the size of the disk cache when it needs more memory for your programs. When this happens, you lose stuff that you could have accessed from memory-- now you need to access it from disk--but if you're lucky, you weren't going to use that stuff anyway. However, Windows' default strategy often hurts your computer's performance. Since it's constantly resizing the disk cache, it's losing files stored there and it's doing extra work to manage the constantly changing cache. You may wish to consider setting the minimum and maximum to the same value. This will improve your computer's performance, but give Windows less freedom to recover memory when it needs it.

When choosing a maximum size, you want to look at how much memory your computer has. We recommend using around 20% to 25% of your memory for the disk cache. However, if you have a lot of memory (256 megabytes or more) and the programs you use don't need that much memory, you may wish to have a larger disk cache. If you have little memory (64 megabytes or less) you may want a smaller one. As a general rule, if you have extra memory you should use it for the disk cache and set the minimum and maximum to the same. If you don't have enough memory, you should set a modest maximum size and a small minimum size.

Finally, the chunk size affects how Windows accesses the disk cache. This setting does not make a big difference in performance; we recommend your using a value around 256K.

The Optimizer Wizard

The Optimizer Wizard will choose appropriate settings in this window for your computer by asking you questions about how you use your computer, and what you use it for. The Optimizer Wizard is included to help people who don't want to take the time to understand what each option means; it will select values based on more general instructions like, "my programs load too slowly;" "I like to play games on my computer." You can read more about the Optimizer Wizard in its help section. To run the Optimizer Wizard from within the Manager, you may click on the "Run wizard" button. This will close the Manager.

IMPORTANT: Resetting your computer

Since these optimizations are at the core of how Windows uses your hard disk, none of the changes you make in this window will take effect until you restart your computer.