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Using a fast usb drive as cache drive?


chcguy88

Question

I own a speedy usb 3.0 flash drive and would like to use it as the cache drive for one of my cloud drives. The software limits me to only using internal drives. While I understand that this is so that someone doesn't just yank out the flash drive while in operation and corrupt the cloud drive, my use case would be that the drive stays mounted as it was cheaper than buying a full on internal ssd drive. Is there anyway to bypass this limitation. 

 

My internal hdd gives me less than 5-10mb/s read/write at the best while my flash drive gives me 70-120mb/s read/write.

 

I am not interested in spending another $100 just just use it as an internal drive because of a software limitation. 

 

 

 

Thank you for any help!

 

 

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The problem isn't just "yanking out the drive".

 

The main problem is that USB is inherently, and allowed to be flaky.  The drive can (will) periodically spontaneously disconnect form the system, and that is a serious issue. 

Ever had a USB drive plugged in and heard the disconnect and then reconnect chimes in rapid succession?  That's what I'm talking about.  This is rather common and actually PERMITTED by the USB specification. 

 

The problem is that if this happens while writing to the cache, the only thing we can do (that won't guarantee corrupt, basically) is to BSOD.   And BSODing every time the USB drive disconnects? That's .. really not good for system stability, in general. 

 

There is a request to add this ability, anyways, but it would be an advanced setting, at best. And even then, we're still not sure it's a good idea.

 

That said, if you don't mind hacky solutions, you could create a VHD file, store it on the USB drive, mount it and then use that for the cache.  I'm not even sure that would work, though. 

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I can understand these concerns for a cheap crappy drive/cheap hardware. I have some drives I would never dream of using as a cache. There are more stable drives out there but it is for a price. 

 

But if you say it is more risk than reward, I trust you guys know what you are doing with this system. (You did write the software after all). 

 

Time to go looking into getting an ssd.

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Well, thank you for the understanding! 

 

And yeah, we wish it would work on any drive, but from a stability standpoint, this is the best way to handle it.

 

If it helps, the API calls we make are similiar to "paging" commands, and very dependant on the disk working properly. 

So really, if the drive isn't a valid target for the Windows Paging file, it shouldn't be for the Cache, as well. 

 

 

That said, an SSD isn't a bad idea at all. Since data is written to the cache, this may speed up write speeds a great deal. 

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