New ReadyCache - no data written or read - utilization stuck at 0.07GB

I’ve been using one of your ReadyCache devices on my (Win 7 Enterprise) computer at work for a few weeks, and it’s been working great after a flawless installation.

As a result, I decided to but another one for my Win 7 Home Ultimate machine at home. I simply cannot make this one work. There is no data written to or read from the cache, and the cache utilization remains at 0.07GB. I have uninstalled and reinstalled several times to no effect. No errors are ever displayed.

This is a screen shot of the relevant parts of my system configuration, according to other threads here.

    http://web.newsguy.com/alankay/ReadyCache.jpg

Originally, this computer was dual booting XP and Win 7 Home, which explains the slightly weird partition layout. There is only one bootable partition now, the one labelled WIN7SYS. I am not running any encryption software, dynamic disks, or other weird stuff.

Any ideas about what else I can try? My work machine *flies* with the ReadyCache installed - I’d like to get the same on my home machine.

AK

Try the following:

  1. Cleanup the ReadyCache drive by following this step:
  • Run “Diskpart” as administrator under command prompt

  • Type “select disk0” to select your ReadyCache drive

  • Type “clean” to clean the drive 

  1. Restart your machine for it to be re-initialized and see if it will work now

Please update your result to let me know if it’s working or not.  Thanks

Thanks for the suggestion. The procedure you gave worked fine with no errors reported - it took about 20 seconds for the ‘clear’ command to run.

I rebooted twice and looked at the readycache app graph - it’sstill the same, showing 0.07GB cache utilization and zero bytes read from the cache, and no acceleration.

Interestingly (maybe), *before* I did this procedure, the readycache app was reporting 0.18GB (approx) and the blue ‘cached reads’ line was showing a small amount of cached data read. Presumably in the several days the machine has been used since I grabbed the screenshot in the original post, the cache had managed to store a little data. It seems to me that the cache was actually working, but for some reason little or no data is being stored in the cache.

AK

you can also try to see if it’s actually caching by using these commands:

  1. open command prompt as admin

  2. type eccmd -info to make sure that readycache is running

  3. now, to test if it actually writting data to the cache, type "eccmd -preload c:\windows (this is to cache all the contents in the “windows” folder to the drive

  4. while it’s preloading contents, check on the GUI to see if the cache data has changed or not.  If it does, it means that it’s working correctly.

Good suggestion, cooldude!

That -preload command is undocumented, but does seem to work, and is very useful for diagnosing issues like this.

Indeed, after preloading c:\windows, I did see the cache fill (albeit slowly), and read requests were being satisfied from the cache, but performance was still slow. Obviously, now, the issue was not being caused by the ReadyCache, but was elsewhere. Looking in the windows system log, there were thousands of atapi errors being reported, starting at the time I installed the ReadyyCache device. D’oh! I must have disturbed the SATA cable to the disk drive when I was adding the ReadyCache. I’m still amazed that windows wasn’t crashing all over the place.

So I swapped in a new SATA cable for the disk drive, and made sure everything was well seated. It’s all working now!

These ReadyCache devices are *wonderful*. That PC was taking 65 seconds to boot, now it’s under 30.

Thanks to all who helped, and I hope my experiences might help somebody else. I’m guessing that windows was dropping to PIO mode (explaining the slowness) and that this somehow bypassed the ReadyCache fill, or that the cache was constantly being cleared by the errors.

Thanks all.

AK