Date:	Wed, 1 Mar 2000 19:03:11 +0600 (LKT)
From:	Kalum Somaratna aka Grendel <kalum AT crosswinds DOT net>
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To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: rhide compile..
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On Tue, 29 Feb 2000, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> SmartDrv flushes its buffers when a program exits, so it is slower
> than a RAM disk.  

This is the default behaviour of smatrdrv and is there for people who are
afraid that they might loose data because of write caching etc.
But if you add the /N option IIRC this will tell smartdrv not to flush the
write cache when the program exits. 

In most caches you can set a time limit about how much to delay the writes
for.

 
> And because SmartDrv flushes buffers on program exit, a RAM disk is
> better with pipes as well.  That's why the FAQ suggests to point
> TMPDIR to a RAM disk, if it's installed.

AFAIK smartdrv flushes only the write buffers in its default
configuration. You can easily change this behaviour as I mentioned above.

> 
> > And there will be more efficient memory usage as there is no need to
> > allocate memory as in a ramdisk for the whole tool chain, for how many of
> > the tools do we actually use?
> 
> If you have enough memory installed, this is not an issue.

Actually how much should "enough" be? GCC itself hogs up a large amount of
memory and allocationg too much memory for a ramdisk will be
counterproductive as GCC will start paging to the hard disk.

FWIW I find that a 8mb smartdrv with write caching enabled and the /N
switch works marvels and is far easier to setup than a RAMDISK.

Grendel

Hi, I'm a signature virus. plz set me as your signature and help me spread
:)

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