CompuServe Messages

Keith, There's really no need to guess at what CD Speedway does. Simple, yet highly effective, CD Speedway uses "caching" technology to take full advantage of the "basic" fact that different parts of your computer work at different speeds. Your RAM is much faster than your hard disk. You hard disk is much faster than your CD Reader. For example, a CD Reader can move a piece of data in about 350 milliseconds, which is slower than 1/3 of a second. A hard disk can move data in about 17 milliseconds, which is 17 thousandths of a second. RAM can move data in about 70 nanoseconds, which is 70 billionths of a second. In other works, a hard disk is about 20 times faster than a CD reader, and RAM is @ 240,000 tims faster than a hard disk. Caching with a CD reader means that when data is read from a CD, it is also copied to another, faster location and stored in a "cache". The cache could be a file on a hard disk (if you don't have enough RAM to make a RAM disk). Then, if that same data is needed again (which happens a lot), it is read from the faster location. When the needed data is already in the cache, the slow CD reader doesn't have to retrieve it a second time. And you end up with a noticeably faster application. (Sorry for the dissertation, but this should help you understand better what CD Speedway does). Reese.