Development stopped?

[supercilious]

Hi,

I'm very interested in using PrimoCache as I have a new job which requires me to use Windows rather than Linux and under Windows, VMware Workstation benefits HUGELY from caching writes with something like PrimoCache. I used the trial version on a test computer (my old PC), and I was very pleased with the performance.

However, with deferred writes enabled, I noticed some bugs, like the large write buffer not writing out entirely on reboot (particularly apparent when installing lots of Windows updates). Its like Windows reboots before the driver is finished writing out its cached blocks and this naturally results in disk corruption (and a failed update). For example, a 16GB write buffer deferred for 300 seconds, writing to a relatively slow mechanical RAID-0 (240MB/s sequential) takes longer than the system waits before rebooting.

I am unwilling to trust my work machine to software which appears to be abandoned. Can someone please let me know the current state of PrimoCache, and what, if anything, will happen in the future? Are there any good alternatives?

Thanks

[Chozo4]

To provide piece of mind if you feel this is occurring - you could set the write commits to run as part of the shutdown script routines. Can add it through scripts in GPEdit.msc (the group policy editor) so upon either logout or shutdown the system will commit all writes before continuing further. In my case I find running a batch file to handle the shutdown tasks as follows quite beneficial to avoid any possible issues.

Rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks
C:\progra~1\primoc~1\rxpcc.exe dwflush -sc 1

Replacing -sc 1 with the 'group' you are committing.

[supercilious]

That's not going to help. For example, the shutdown scripts run before the Windows Update mechanism patches files. The only way to do it with shutdown scripts is to delete the cache in the script, and re-create it in the start-up script.

Its a silly workaround for a serious flaw in the software. I'm not willing to trust my machine to such workarounds.

[supercilious]

Also, judging by the levels of activity in this forum, this software is in fact abandoned (or at least nearly so).

[Support]

Hi supercilious,

I have delivered your case to our R&D team. Generally by design, Windows shall wait until PrimoCache finished flushing deferred-write data. What's your Windows OS?

Thanks.

[supercilious]

It has been my experience that Windows will only wait a short time for the cache driver. Perhaps windows times-out the cache driver and thus the drive is left in a semi-written state. No updates ever fail to install correctly on an identical non-cached system.

My tests have been conducted on Windows 8.1 Enterprise x64 (which is then patched with the huge "Update 1" patch, among many many others). I specifically became interested in PrimoCache because I am deploying some bitlocker encrypted Windows-to-Go workspaces on Sandisk Cruzer Extreme USB3 flash drives for some people at work, and though the flash drives are the fastest available, they're still quite slow compared to internal SSDs.

With a large cache (16GB in my case) and a slow drive (~10MB/s random 4KB IO write, ~60MB/s sequential write) installing Windows Updates WILL CAUSE CORRUPTION. This is the flaw that removed PrimoCache from consideration for our company.

[Support]

Thanks for the information!

[Bjameson]

Also, judging by the levels of activity in this forum, this software is in fact abandoned (or at least nearly so).

Although I understand your disappointment, negative remarks aren't going to help.

With the most recent version of PrimoCache I have never experience data loss during updates or otherwise. Windows 8.1-x64 and 7-x64 patiently wait as long as it takes Primo to flush its buffers. It is of course possible that Windows Server behaves differently, although I doubt that. If you want help, you need to give Romex something to work with. Such as a detailed description of your system. PrimoCache settings, Windows version, CPU and mainboard, amount of memory and programs running just before shutdown. There is always a possibility that some process other than PrimoCache interferes with the normal shutdown procedure. For example, a bad driver from another application could block PrimoCache writes. Especially if this driver crashes or freezes during reboot, which you probably would'n notice because Windows immediately reboots. Did you see any suspicious events in your event log?

[supercilious]

Also, judging by the levels of activity in this forum, this software is in fact abandoned (or at least nearly so).

Although I understand your disappointment, negative remarks aren't going to help.

I should like to state that my remarks are not intended with any degree of malice or hostility. Though they are negative in their nature about the suitability of PrimoCache for use at my company, I stand by them. I simply cannot justify the risk of data-loss or corruption. For the record, I am not dissuading anyone from using PrimoCache, simply stating the reasons that I am not using it.

As for information, I have provided what information I have, and a means of reproducing the errors I experienced using PrimoCache. I had no other software or drivers installed yet at the time the corruption occurred, as I was still in the midst of installing Windows updates. Only what is shipped on the Windows 8.1 Enterprise DVD and Windows Update itself.

As for the hardware, I have repeated the issue on two completely different machines, the only requirement being having lots of RAM. With >32GB I am able to set a 16GB cache (no L2), and since I am using a USB stick writes to the C: drive are slow. I was not able to re-produce the issue on my 8GB Yoga 2 Pro laptop, as the 2GB cache I set writes successfully to the drive before Windows times it out, and thus, no corruption occurs.

[Bjameson]

Thank you for your answer. Leesamn describes a problem which strongly resembles yours. I posted a simple troubleshooting procedure there, which may come in handy for you too. There are now two cases of trouble with RAID + Updates, which may indicate a real problem with PrimoCache.