To allow users to objectively test the effectiveness of their disk caching software. Cache Test is an independent product and is not supported by any manufacturer.
GROUNDWORK:
Cache Test tests drive performance by writing data to a specified, or the default, drive. Sequential tests are performed by writing randomly generated fixed length strings to a DOS Text file. Each record consists of n number of identical characters plus a carriage return (ASCII 13) and line feed (ASCII 10). By default, the program writes 513 byte records. This translates to 511 bytes in the record plus the CR and LF. If we were to imagine 8 character records, and that ^ is a CR and + is a LF then the data looks like this.
aaaaaaaa^+
33333333^+
--------^+
zzzzzzzz^+
The characters that make up the record are randomly generated. The random routine is seeded by the timer tick every time it is called to increase the random selections. Characters range from ASCII 32 to ASCII 252.
Random records are written to the disk using a random access file structure. Each record consists of randomly generated bytes and two record separator characters. As with the sequential file structure, the number of characters written to the disk is the specified record size - 2 + 2 record separators. It is very similar to the sequential except that it allows random movement through the file.
