How to increase the disk cache of Windows 7
- by Mark Christiaens
Under Windows 7 (64 bit), I'm reading through 9000 moderately sized files. In total, there is more than 200 MB of data. Using Java (JDK 1.6.21) I'm iterating over the files. The first 1400 or so go at full speed but then speed drops off to 4ms per file. It turns out that the main cost is incurred simply by opening the files. I'm opening the files using new FileInputStream (and of course closing them in time to avoid file leaks). After some investigating, I see that Windows' disk cache is using only 100 MB or so of RAM although I have 8 GiB available. I've tried increasing the cache size using the CacheSet tool but any values I provide are considered out of range. I've also tried enabling the LargeSystemCache registry key but (after rebooting) the CacheSet tool still indicates I'm using 100 MB of cache (and doesn't increase during the test run). Does anybody have any suggestions to "encourage" Windows 7 to cache my 9000 files?
