Question How well does Windows handle disc caching by default and how do you set it manually?

[jamesdsimone]

I just got some additional ram for one of my workstations. One of the 16gb modules failed so decided to grab some extra sticks while they are still super cheap. I payed about 50 cents/Gb. I want to optimize hard drive load times etc. Gaming is not a consideration.

 

[mikeymikec]

Very complicated topic, so this explanation will be wrong if you dig deep enough, but basically any modern OS will try to cache the hell out of data that's been requested with all the available RAM (as a secondary priority to processes requesting RAM; if it's needed by processes, then the cache will be reduced). You can see what Windows is doing in Task Manager > Performance, it tells you how much has been cached. In a Win10 session I just fired up in a VM, it was caching 2GB immediately after bootup. A few minutes later (with no user activity), 5.5GB.

- edit - just noticed the second question in the thread title: I'm not sure you can. There was a very old Windows NT setting:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\LargeSystemCache

But like with a lot of things that Microsoft designed, I bet it has been depreciated.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I've been using Romex "PrimoCache" on all of my systems since around 2014. For that, two of my three midtower desktops are fitted with 64GB kits. I have 256GB NVME drives to cache HDDs and SATA SSDs, but it's not essential for performance. I cache my boot-disk and another NVME to RAM so that there's 16GB available for programs or whatever Windows needs.

If I weren't satisfied with PC, I would not still be using it. It is very stable software. And to my recollection, it isn't very pricey -- the license is lifetime with updates.