I know the recommended figure years back used to be 100Mb but with browsing nowadays involving watching online vids of increasingly high definition (and therefore size), increasing amounts of downloads due to faster connections, surely 100Mb is on the low side by todays standards. What size do you have your cache set to and why?
I have Firefox set to 150 MB and have no issues.
Firefox set to default 50 MB. Running smoothly.
Firefox set to 100MB and no issues to date.
get's ready to be flamed. . . InternetExplorer set to default 50 (but using ie privacy keeper to clear whenever last window closed).Secondary Browsers: Portable Firefox set to default and empty at close. OperaUSB, Safari and Portable Chrome set to default (and if they have it empty at close but I rarely use them so I don't know.
Firefox and Opera at 200MB
50mb if i wasn't always in private browsing.
Like Nergal I also have the cache emptied when I exit the browser, I've did that even since my dial-up days.
Interesting. So most people still don't go above 100Mb or so. I changed it to 200Mb a couple of weeks ago and using CCleaner after browsing sessions, as I always do, have seen quite often the cache has the full 200Mb to be removed so was curious as to what sort of size others had it set to, as I assume 100Mb wouldn't take much filling (which I'm guessing would affect browsing performance wouldn't it - browsing with a full cache?)
I think the older cache entries are deleted when there are newer ones - not sure it's like that it works, but that would be logical.
I set the cache to zero on Firefox, Opera, and IE7. I would also do that to Chrome if I could. I notice shutting off the cache actually speeds up the browser. I first started doing this when I started using portable browsers from a thumb drive. They recommended disabling cache because writing to the thumb drive slowed down browsing. I tried it on my regular browsers and it was faster there to.
I think the older cache entries are deleted when there are newer ones - not sure it's like that it works, but that would be logical.
But I would have thought that would cause some performance hit as the browser has to then (when full) continually decide what cache items it can remove to make space for more. Though I freely admit my knowledge of how browser caching technically works is fairly poor so may be way off, hence why I started the topic
My Opera is set to 50Mb.
I also have my cache size set to 0 for the same reason as Anomaly.
I set the cache to zero on Firefox, Opera, and IE7. I would also do that to Chrome if I could. I notice shutting off the cache actually speeds up the browser. I first started doing this when I started using portable browsers from a thumb drive. They recommended disabling cache because writing to the thumb drive slowed down browsing. I tried it on my regular browsers and it was faster there to.
Yes, but then it must load everything everytime you ask it to, so it's much slower. Am I wrong ?
Yes, but then it must load everything everytime you ask it to, so it's much slower. Am I wrong ?
Yes you are wrong. As I said I noticed a speed increase when shutting off the cache.
When using a portable browser from a thumbdrive they recommend setting the cache to zero so that the browser isn't writing to the thumbdrive and is forced to use RAM instead which is always faster than writing to disk/thumbdrive. It made sense than that this would apply to a normal install as well so I tried it and in fact my browser is faster than when the cache is used.
With Google Chrome being the pig it is it can have a cache in the GB in size. This will result in a fragmented disk and the need for frequent defragging. I have notice huge disk activity when using Chrome and would love to disable the pig from using cache but there is no way to do that as of now that I know of.
So you'd then need to increase the RAM cache size
Firefox set to 50 MB.Its run proper.I have no problem at all.
I think it is best cache size.
So you'd then need to increase the RAM cache size
Where did you get that from
Well after the discussion here about using only the memory cache I decided to try it. So have been running Firefox with disk cache disabled (not just set to zero) for the last week, also took the probably unnecessary step of setting FF's RAM cache higher than default (200MB, same as my disk cache was set to). Now I can't say I've noticed ANY performance improvement, but I haven't noticed any DROP in performance either.
So as it has no noticeable performance effect, but does save on disk wear/fragmentation and saves having to run CCleaner to clear cache after every FF session, I shall be leaving it set up as is with no disk cache.
Glad I started this topic, and thanks Anomaly for the post that set me off looking into, and using, the above