Any idea what the best cache settings are for Firefox?

Discussion in 'other software & services' started by HandsOff, Jul 14, 2014.

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  1. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    I guess when I upgrade firefox my old settings are saved. What may have been fine before I have to question now.

    Here are my current settings
    -Let Firefox manage cache: unchecked
    -Cache amount: 1024MB (the maximum)

    My internet speed is rather slow: 768mbs downstream, 320mbs upstream.

    My laptop is fairly fast, Intel Quad Core i7, 1TB hard drive, 8GB memory.

    The cache fills up very quickly. in a day or two, probably. Then what? Because I have have not checked for Firefox to manage cache, does that mean it no longer caches new pages? To be honest, I don't see any performance difference accept maybe that it is actually slower when it is caching pages. I'm thinking maybe my computer can handle the pretty slow bandwidth I have without having to rely on cache. Or possibly once cache is filled (hopefully) my most visited pages are cached. Since I just cleared the cache I expect the internet to be slightly slower for a while, then level off.

    Does anyone think using less cache might be a good idea? I'm worried that if I let Firefox manage cache it will cause so much writing to the hard drive that it will wear it out. Maybe that's happening anyway, only being written to the page file instead.

    Any thoughts?
     
  2. Nebulus

    Nebulus Registered Member

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    Why don't you make an experiment and disable the cache completely? If you find this situation to your liking, then leave it like that. If you don't, then it is clear that you need caching...
     
  3. Victek

    Victek Registered Member

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    I haven't experimented with the Firefox cache, but the way it should work is "first in last out"; the oldest data should be discarded automatically to make room for the new data. As the cache gets larger the overhead of managing it increases and at some point that may cancel out the benefit. One thing you could try is enable automatic cache management and see how much space Firefox allocates. On my PC it only uses 14mb. Another option you could try is to create a RAM disk and locate the cache there. The cache would initially be empty when you booted, but as it filled up read/writes would occur at the speed of ram.
     
  4. bellgamin

    bellgamin Registered Member

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    Um... I think that would be FIFO (first in first out).
     
  5. Victek

    Victek Registered Member

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    Thanks for the correction; I think I got the second part right :)
     
  6. HandsOff

    HandsOff Registered Member

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    Well I'm only up to 113mb now, but then I haven't been on Flickr, probably the main culprit. I wonder if the cache is allocated in a continuous block. I sort of doubt it. I guess I will try some experiments. By telling Firefox not to manage cache I assumed it would not only use the amount I specified, but also stop caching new pages until I cleared the cache. My thought being clearing at at one time would tend to keep the cache closer together on the drive. All just guesswork since I don't know how Firefox manages cache in the first place.
     
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