Would there be any advantage in locating the cache on another physical drive - I mean different from where the IM database is located? Does it speed up or slow down IM, compared to its default location, which seems to be the same drive. The drive I can use is of the same size and speed as my "normal" drive.
IMatch by default uses the default storage location for application data as defined by Windows.
IMatch uses advanced caching in-memory mechanisms when working with cache files, as well as for the database. During normal operation, when using the cache, you won't notice much of a difference.
But having the database and cache on different disks while indexing thousands of files should gain some speed. IMatch writes to the database and to the cache files simultaneously and from multiple CPU threads. The amount of data transferred per second is high during this stage. If the load can be distributed over two disks, there should be a noticeable (but small) performance gain. All this depends of course on multiple factors, like how much RAM is available for the Windows disk cache, processor speed vs. disk speed, if you use regular hard disks or SSD's etc.
In short: Try it out and let us know ;D
We're all learning new stuff about IMatch 5 all the time...
Well my experience was that the Cache on the default C: drive quickly took my getting full SSD drive to the point where it was so full it was dying on me. Moved it to another normal drive and got my SSD boot drive back again.
Ian
Based on testing at Anandtech.com, it appears that for most SSDs keeping at least 25% of the drive free (either through partitioning or through close free space management) will help prevent slowdown. Total drive space, TRIM availability, etc., will also influence how much data you can comfortably maintain on an SSD.