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why won't write-behind stay disabled?



 
 
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  #11  
Old January 21st 06, 02:43 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
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Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

System.ini shows no obvious mention of write-behind.

Vcache settings:
maxfilecache=3072
chunksize=512
minfilecache=3072

Reasons are that I'm ways to inprove disk performance because I'm
tired of getting file system problems because my system too often
hangs up before data gets written to my drive (lost clusters and
orphaned pieces of files, etc.) I've tried everything else believe
me.

Second I'm tweaking my MTU/port settings for faster internet data
transfer. I was reading microsoft website about setting port speed
http://technet2.microsoft.com/Window...4f1a41033.mspx
when I read what this same article said about write-behind "You may
want to disable the write behind cache function, especially if you own
system critical applications, and ALWAYS shut down Windows AFTER
closing ALL running programs! This means all data will be immediately
written to disk, bypassing the cache." I take it from my reading that
write-behind is also implictated in problems with the data layer of
internet connections. I've been trying ever since to disable
write-behind.
Please if you wish to comment on my reasoning OK but help me disable
write-behind.
  #12  
Old January 21st 06, 08:26 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
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Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

I didn't say system, I said disk system. I don't know why you want to test
your disk system, but I want to test it to compare hardware, and to do that
you have to turn off write behind caching in the operating system.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Noel Paton" wrote in message
...

"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
It must be turned off if you want to do any serious disk system
performance testing.



That is total BS! - the whole point of system benchmarking is to test the
system "as it will be used" - not in some airy-fairy-land of the dealer's
choice!



  #13  
Old January 21st 06, 08:43 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
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Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

In that case, you don't use Windows to do it, but a direct-access OS

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2006, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.crashfixpc.com/millsrpch.htm


"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
I didn't say system, I said disk system. I don't know why you want to test
your disk system, but I want to test it to compare hardware, and to do that
you have to turn off write behind caching in the operating system.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Noel Paton" wrote in message
...

"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
It must be turned off if you want to do any serious disk system
performance testing.



That is total BS! - the whole point of system benchmarking is to test the
system "as it will be used" - not in some airy-fairy-land of the dealer's
choice!





  #14  
Old January 21st 06, 07:08 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

Did you see the date on that article? - 1995!!
it is totally irrelevant to anything resembling a modern machine, having
been written (presumably) during the Beta for Win95.
In fact, its zip file is dated at 2002, so cannot have been updated since
then - and the page itself
(http://www.cerberus-sys.com/~belleis...in.html#BOTTOM) admits it
to being 1996

In the real world, the machine is faster than the output through any sort of
COM modem port!

If you've been reading articles about memory configuration, and you're still
using Cacheman, then you've obviously been reading the wrong ones - or you
haven't taken any notice of the right ones!

vache does NOT use up RAM - contrary to what is stated in many article -
and has even less to do with any HD optimisation/tweaking you may want to do

with 48 MB of RAM, I have to wonder what the rest of your setup is like? -
in particular the CPU and HD, since if they are from that era then we may be
able to better advise on settings
details on your hardware would be useful at this point!

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2006, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.crashfixpc.com/millsrpch.htm

http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's
"Olive" wrote in message
...
Right now I'm playing with drive write-behind.
As of now, I still can not turn it off.

I'm trying to report results about the effects of disabling
write-behind on disk performance and on internet speed.
I've been reading this article. See the paragraph that starts with
"Another cause is poorly written 32-bit disk drivers"
http://www.cerberus-sys.com/~belleis...aq/overrun.htm
The article says a tempopary solution to slow internet speeds until
you can update your hard drive, bios and other drivers is to
temporarily disable drive-write behind. I installed a new drive in
2003, can't update my bios [don't ask], and have the latest win98
drivers available. So I thought I would try to temporarily disable
write-behind to test the effects. But I can not report results to
this NG until I can disable write-behind.

Sir, my current vcache settings are just the latest temporary settings
from months of playing with Cacheman and reading articles about memory
management. My current vcache settings use Cacheman to set min and
max vcache to 3072 and set chucksize to 512. Then I let windows
manage files and buffers by remming out lines files= and buffers=
from my autoexec.bat These current settings give me some stability
and (most importantly) free up for other uses about 13 meg of ram of
my miniscule 48 meg ram. Otherwise, sir, my machine starts swapping
early and often like a sinful couple in an open marriage.

Soooooooo, right now it's about disabling wite-behind.
I have faith in this NG. I know posters are searching for options.
This newsgroup has never failed me.



  #15  
Old January 21st 06, 09:31 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

Right now I'm playing with drive write-behind.
As of now, I still can not turn it off.

I'm trying to report results about the effects of disabling
write-behind on disk performance and on internet speed.
I've been reading this article. See the paragraph that starts with
"Another cause is poorly written 32-bit disk drivers"
http://www.cerberus-sys.com/~belleis...aq/overrun.htm
The article says a tempopary solution to slow internet speeds until
you can update your hard drive, bios and other drivers is to
temporarily disable drive-write behind. I installed a new drive in
2003, can't update my bios [don't ask], and have the latest win98
drivers available. So I thought I would try to temporarily disable
write-behind to test the effects. But I can not report results to
this NG until I can disable write-behind.

Sir, my current vcache settings are just the latest temporary settings
from months of playing with Cacheman and reading articles about memory
management. My current vcache settings use Cacheman to set min and
max vcache to 3072 and set chucksize to 512. Then I let windows
manage files and buffers by remming out lines files= and buffers=
from my autoexec.bat These current settings give me some stability
and (most importantly) free up for other uses about 13 meg of ram of
my miniscule 48 meg ram. Otherwise, sir, my machine starts swapping
early and often like a sinful couple in an open marriage.

Soooooooo, right now it's about disabling wite-behind.
I have faith in this NG. I know posters are searching for options.
This newsgroup has never failed me.
  #17  
Old January 21st 06, 10:52 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

Why not use Windows (provided you disable the write-behind feature)? It's
available and it's already running.

Or if you object to that one so much, perhaps I have a logging application
that buffers its disk writes within the application so that I can implement
very aggressive disk drive power management. Write-behind has to be
disabled or the disk drive stays active for much longer causing a reduction
in battery time.

Or perhaps I use one of those data base systems where the manufacturer has
warned me that data corruption can occur in a multi-user environment when
write behind is enabled.

Or perhaps I am using a high performance raid system where the manufacturer
advises disabling write behind so that the intelligent algorithms in the
controller can operate most efficiently.

Or any number of other possible reasons.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Noel Paton" wrote in message
...
In that case, you don't use Windows to do it, but a direct-access OS

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2006, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.crashfixpc.com/millsrpch.htm


"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
I didn't say system, I said disk system. I don't know why you want to test
your disk system, but I want to test it to compare hardware, and to do
that you have to turn off write behind caching in the operating system.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Noel Paton" wrote in message
...

"Jeff Richards" wrote in message
...
It must be turned off if you want to do any serious disk system
performance testing.


That is total BS! - the whole point of system benchmarking is to test
the system "as it will be used" - not in some airy-fairy-land of the
dealer's choice!







  #18  
Old January 21st 06, 11:58 PM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

If your recovery procedure involves restoring an earlier version of the
registry then this could cause the setting to revert. Then you wouldn't
know whether or not it had changed before the problem occurred.

Of course, it's always possible that the registry is getting corrupted, for
instance as a result of a memory error. However in this case I would expect
that the symptoms were more variable and much more widespread.

Consider what utilities you are running that might be trying to 'optimise'
your system behind your back, or utilities that need to manipulate Windows'
settings for their own purposes, such as diagnostics, and may not be
restoring things to how they were.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"Olive" wrote in message
...
I still have not received a workable answer.
I want to disable drive write-behind and make the settings stick.
How do I do this? Thanks.



  #19  
Old January 22nd 06, 05:59 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

Will report back. This NG gave me four things to work on. Thanks.

To Mr. Paton your arguments proceed from at least two false
assumptions: 1) The lion's share of computers use Microsoft's latest
and greatest technologies and 2) Computing principles change as fast
as computing technologies.
All I know is using the principles in this article sped up internet
speed of my Win98 system dramatically. The principles, paraphrased
from the article, must be done in order--1, 2 then 3:
1) Start with your data link layer and make it solid (eliminate com
port overrunns).
Enable FIFO.
Reduce rate setting your com port advertises to modem.
For example, set modem speed to 56K but set comm port to

38K. You have to change comm port speed within each
software program that uses internet. Otherwise
Microsoft article says you cannot make comm port change
change using Control Panel.
2) Next work on the PPP or SLIP layer.
Turn off the "speed-up" option on your S3-chip-based video
cards. If current video software does not allow you to
change speed-up mode then manually add a line to the
[display] section of system.ini saying bus-throttle=on.
Turn off write-back cache for all drives. Write-behind
caching for VCACHE is turned-off with a line in the [386enh]
section of system.ini that says ForceLazyOff=C
3) Next use EasyMTU to tune the MTU, MSS and RWIN for maximum speed.
  #20  
Old January 22nd 06, 08:11 AM posted to microsoft.public.win98.setup
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Posts: n/a
Default why won't write-behind stay disabled?

Olive
The COM port is severely limited in its bandwidth - while any
Pentium-II-class machine is quite capable of filling that bandwidth with no
impact on system speed, unless perhaps it also has to cope with compression
on-the-fly (which is better done within the modem, anyhow)
You would appear to be using Windows 98 - and applying Win3.1 tweaks to it.
Many of these tweaks don't work, simply because Windows changed
significantly between Win3.x and Win98, and the hooks for the tweaks to hang
on just don't exist. Many of those that still apparently work are not
supported, or can lead to system instability or data loss.

In response to 1)
This would appear to expose a weakness in your modem, rather than a problem
with the OS - in that the modem is relying on the OS to do compression. Have
you updated the drivers for the modem?

in response to 2) - again, the s3 video tweak would appear to expose a
hardware problem rather than an OS problem - again, a driver update would
seem to be a possible solution.
This is the first time I have ever heard of the ForceLazyOff - I'm trying
to get some information on its working in Win98

as to 3) - the author of EasyMTU says that it's designed for DUN 1.2 (on
Win95) - and may not work with higher versions. Since an updated Win98 has
version 1.4 as a minimum, I suspect that the program may have problems.


....and you've still given no details as to your hardware!
In view of my comments above - perhaps you had also better include the
driver versions in use for the relevant items.

--
Noel Paton (MS-MVP 2002-2006, Windows)

Nil Carborundum Illegitemi
http://www.crashfixpc.com/millsrpch.htm

http://tinyurl.com/6oztj

Please read http://dts-l.org/goodpost.htm on how to post messages to NG's
"Olive" wrote in message
...
Will report back. This NG gave me four things to work on. Thanks.

To Mr. Paton your arguments proceed from at least two false
assumptions: 1) The lion's share of computers use Microsoft's latest
and greatest technologies and 2) Computing principles change as fast
as computing technologies.
All I know is using the principles in this article sped up internet
speed of my Win98 system dramatically. The principles, paraphrased
from the article, must be done in order--1, 2 then 3:
1) Start with your data link layer and make it solid (eliminate com
port overrunns).
Enable FIFO.
Reduce rate setting your com port advertises to modem.
For example, set modem speed to 56K but set comm port to

38K. You have to change comm port speed within each
software program that uses internet. Otherwise
Microsoft article says you cannot make comm port change
change using Control Panel.
2) Next work on the PPP or SLIP layer.
Turn off the "speed-up" option on your S3-chip-based video
cards. If current video software does not allow you to
change speed-up mode then manually add a line to the
[display] section of system.ini saying bus-throttle=on.
Turn off write-back cache for all drives. Write-behind
caching for VCACHE is turned-off with a line in the [386enh]
section of system.ini that says ForceLazyOff=C
3) Next use EasyMTU to tune the MTU, MSS and RWIN for maximum speed.



 




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