spooling or other memory functions. Other times, no effort is even put forth to understand caching, since the idea of altering the way your system handles memory really doesn’t sound too “safe” anyway. Once understood and used effectively, disk caching will become a very powerful system enhancement for virtually any user. Your RamPak 4GS utility may be the most powerful, easy to use caching tool ever written for a microcomputer.
A cache is actually a disk drive enhancement. A cache is established and assigned to a specific system drive, to which it is then dedicated. Your Apple IIGS can access up to 16 drives in a single configuration, and the RamPak Memory Management Utilities has the ability to maintain caches for all of these drives.
“Cache” is a French word which means “hidin place.” A disk cache is, in effect, a hiding place for important data. Once a cache is established, it serves as an intelligent storage area for that drive, holding as much of your “often used” data from that drive as possible in the system RAM you have specified. It achieves this by keeping track of what data you use most when you use that drive. As data is requested, the cache will load that data into RAM and keep it there as long as you are accessing it often. Once the cache is full, the
The RamPak utilities offer you a choice of either “dynamic” or “manual” caching. Dynamic caching wil automatically take over all caching functions for you, letting your memory operate at optimal levels with a minimum of interaction on your part. Dynamic cache allocation is recommended for most caching purposes. Manual cache allocation allows you to manually allocate the amount of RAM to be used for caching in each disk drive.
Caching is strictly a READ utility. Any data saved to disk is immediately written to the physical drive, so accidental loss of a cache will not result in lost work.
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