From:	allan <c91peral AT und DOT ida DOT liu DOT se>
Date:	Tue, 17 Jan 95 18:18:58 +0100
To:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject:	Re: Optimize your PC

> > Yes, and avoid SmartDrive... Use Norton Speedisk instead. I haven't
> > timed it, but it sure feels like twice as fast as Smartdrive 
> 
> You mean NCache, right?  

No, I definitely don't. The program is called Norton Speedrive - 
nothing else - I deliver it with PC's I sell... It may be a renamed
NCache, but it's dated *late* 1994...

> You probably used a very old SmartDrive,
> because latest versions (one which comes with Win 3.1 and another
> from DOS 6.2) have about the same performance as NCache, incuding
> delayed-write (aka write-back) feature which older versions didn't
> have.

I have the latest Smartdrive (with MSDOS 6.22), and I have tested the
one which comes with PC-DOS 6.3 also - they just don't compare...
  
> On the other hand, NCache of yore (about the same time when
> DOS 5.0 came) was *exceedingly* buggy: would crash your machine
> now and then.  I suppose that's why we now have NCache2 with the
> newer versions of Norton Utilities.

Speedrv is much more stable than Smartdrive, at least on my system...
DOOM (an example...) crashed all the time with Smartdrive, works just
fine with Speedrv.

When it comes to caching CDROM drives it's absolutely fantastic -
my 2x behaves like a 3-3.5x with most applications. (Norton
says that a speedup of 4000% is possible...)

/allan


 

- Raw text -