#AMI BIOS & CACHE?
7 messages in this thread
John,
>>So I guess will bury SMARTDRV, eh? 🙂
He he he, not so fast. Did you forget about the sequal, "Return of the
Living Smartdrive!"? I'm sure everyone else has tuned out of this thread by
now, so I'll bring up a point about the /C switch. It seems clear to me that
the C/ switch (according to all my manuals and dos 6.2 help) is simply a
command to dump all data that has been previously put into ram by smartdrive,
to the disk at the time you enter the command "smartdrv /C". You talk as if it
was a switch to enable delayed caching or something. Why would the docs say
that you should enter SMARTDRV /C before you turn your computer off? Because as
soon as you enter Smartdrv /C at the prompt, you're telling smartdrive to empty
the contents of the cache (if any) to disk, so you can then shut down without
the worry of losing any data. Using the /C switch when smartdrive is first
loaded (in the autoexec or whereever) is pointless, because no data is yet in
the cache to write to disk.
(Can anybody else back me up on this??? Is anybody else there anymore???)
When I first ran into write problems with SD (I'm tired of typing
SMARTDRIVE), was when I wrote some batch files to change my autoexec and config
files automatically for whatever startup configuration I wanted. I had 3 or 4
versions of the startup files that would overwrite the existing ones, and then
reboot. I had SD set up to the default (no parameters) and when I executed the
batch and reboot, no changes were made. As it turns out, I was beating SD to
the punch and rebooting before it could put the cached info to disk (which
included the copy commands in the bat file), so there were two solutions. 1:
place the command "SMARTDRV /C" at the end of the batch files, or 2: simply
disable write caching. I chose the latter and this solved the problem.
One of us is a little off on what the /C command does exactly, so I'd
be curious to know if anybodyelse has a take on this (just the /C option).
Your turn…
David
David,
The HELP file for SMARTDRV list /C
-JE
David,
>> It seems clear to me that the /C switch (according to all my manuals and dos
6.2 help) is simply a command to dump all data that has been previously put
into ram by smartdrv. <<
You seem to be correct in this assertion but I will quote verbatim the setup
that the help file gives for the AUTOEXEC.BAT and the /C switch, which led me
to believe otherwise.
Syntax
When starting SMARTDrive from your AUTOEXEC.BAT file or from the command
prompt, use the following syntax:
[drive:] [path] SMARTDRV [/X] [[drive[+|-]]…] [/U] [/C|/R] [/F|/N] etc.
So the question is why would you have /C in your autoexec.bat? The same
question you asked me. <g>
/C
Writes all cached information from memory to cached disks. SMARTDrive writes
information from memory to the disk at times when other disk activity has
slowed. You might use this option if you are going to turn off your computer
and want to make sure all cached information has been written to disk.
(SMARTDrive writes all cached information to the disk if you restart your
computer by pressing CTRL+ALT+DELETE, but not if you simply turn off the power
or press your computer's reset button.)
_The fact that [/C|/R] are bundled together on the command line supports your
assertion. I assumed because it was listed in the AUTOEXEC.BAT it had a
multiple purpose.
Another thing which helped confuse the issue was the line regarding /N._
/N
Writes cached data when the system is idle. When the command prompt returns,
not all cached data may be written yet. To ensure that all the cached data is
written, use the /C switch.
_I took this to mean that if you didn't want the type of delay provided by /N
use the /C switch instead. However after reading your thread, its clear that
the use of /C is to insure that the cache is cleared._
_The /R switch I assumed would be used with /N because it states; _
Clears the contents of the existing cache, including writing all write-cached
information to disk, and restarts SMARTDrive.
The two switches which activate "write caching" are the /F which is like the
old SMARTDRV and the /N which does "delayed writes."
-JE
John,
I tried to keep my mind clear and didn't even read up on the NEW
smartdrive, because we were basically talking about the old one, so I didn't
want to confuse myself (which I probably would have). Actually theres still a
couple of things I'm not sure about, but I don't think I want to know<g>. Lets
do eachother a favor and put smartdrive to bed, I for one am all cached out.
David
So ah David… what about RAMDRIVE?
Just Kidding… 🙂
-JE
>> what about RAMDRIVE?
"AAAHhhh! Run away! Run away!"
David
>> "AAAHhhh! Run away! Run away!" <<
I knew you had a good sense of humor. <g>
-JE