# Move a browser's cache to SSD or HDD?



## P4-630 (Sep 26, 2016)

A guy on facebook told me you should move the browser's cache to a regular HDD.
I read on some websites, some say yes while other say it's better to leave on SSD.

What do you think?


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## rtwjunkie (Sep 26, 2016)

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, then those temp internet files are a lot of constant writing to SSD.  For that reason mine is pathed to an HDD, and I can not perceive any real world penalty for doing so.


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## P4-630 (Sep 26, 2016)

rtwjunkie said:


> If you spend a lot of time on the Internet, then those temp internet files are a lot of constant writing to SSD.  For that reason mine is pathed to an HDD, and I can not perceive any real world penalty for doing so.



Did you set any specific size?

I just have the cache location set to my 2.5" 750GB 7200rpm Hitachi drive with a 100MB limit.
Chrome's cache used to be just over 400MB on my SSD C drive.
Should I set it to 400MB then or is 100MB just fine.

With using this in chrome's shortcut: --disk-cache-dir="g:\cache" --disk-cache-size=104857600

Here's one saying that you should leave the cache on the SSD:
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/rkXAt47LoEI


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## rtwjunkie (Sep 26, 2016)

Mine is set to 250 with Internet Explorer and is set to delete temporary Internet files on browser closure.


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## dank1983man420 (Sep 26, 2016)

I set up a 1GB Ramdisk for the browser cache and TEMP/ TMP folders and have no issues so far , though I would have went 2GB  if the free version allowed me to .


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## Jetster (Sep 26, 2016)

Face palm

The problem starts with "A guy on Facebook told me"
Leave it alone


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## Jetster (Sep 26, 2016)

dank1983man420 said:


> Works fine for me



There is absolutely no reason to. Unless you want to free up 250Mb of space. Its not going to get much bigger

The thinking use to be the extra writes will damage an SSD but not anymore. That SSD will out live you platter drive


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## alucasa (Sep 26, 2016)

I browse a lot since that's what I do when I am waiting for my render to finish.

I just set it default (SSD) and couldn't care less. By time it dies, I am pretty sure newer, better, SSD will be at much cheaper price or I can use warranty.


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## erocker (Sep 26, 2016)

I have an easier solution. Don't worry about it and don't bother changing anything. No need to.


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## Jetster (Sep 26, 2016)

Go to apdata/Windows/ INetCash/ right click on that folder then properties and see how big it is. 

Mine is 18Mb

Why you would want to move it is beyond me


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## cdawall (Sep 26, 2016)

I'm trying to figure out why you would care? I am coming up on 10 years of usage from my 32GB supertalent SSD's. One of them has failed in almost a decade.


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## P4-630 (Sep 26, 2016)

Jetster said:


> Go to apdata/Windows/ INetCash/ right click on that folder then properties and see how big it is.
> 
> Mine is 18Mb
> 
> Why you would want to move it is beyond me



To preserve the lifespan of the SSD said a member in a group on facebook I'm with.

My chrome's cache folder was 409MB.


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## alucasa (Sep 26, 2016)

I think the preconception of SSD having limited write cycles has been blown out of proportion.


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## Jetster (Sep 26, 2016)

P4-630 said:


> To preserve the lifespan of the SSD said a member in a group on facebook I'm with.
> 
> My chrome's cache folder was 409MB.



SSDs now officially have longer lifespan than a platter drive.

Mine have 5 and 10 year warranties


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## erocker (Sep 26, 2016)

P4-630 said:


> To preserve the lifespan of the SSD said a member in a group on facebook I'm with.
> 
> My chrome's cache folder was 409MB.


Nah.


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## alucasa (Sep 26, 2016)

P4-630 said:


> To preserve the lifespan of the SSD said a member in a group on facebook I'm with.
> 
> My chrome's cache folder was 409MB.



Following @erocker , Nah


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## francisw19 (Sep 26, 2016)

I think this is just old advice from the very early days of SSDs when 32GB/64GB drives were typical.  Off loading stuff from the SSD (temp files, cache files, page file, disable hibernate, disable system restore, etc.) was just to reduce the writes and free up as much space as possible.  These days, with such large drives, it's not a problem IMO.


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## P4-630 (Sep 26, 2016)

erocker said:


> Nah.



Yeah I was thinking the same thing, and I have a 10 Year warranty on my OS SSD!


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## P4-630 (Sep 26, 2016)

Firefox and Chrome write every day more than 10 GB of data to SSD:

https://translate.google.com/transl...s-10-gb-data-naar-ssd.html&edit-text=&act=url


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## erocker (Sep 26, 2016)

P4-630 said:


> Yeah I was thinking the same thing, and I have a 10 Year warranty on my OS SSD!


Really?! Is that the warranty for all Samsung's? Nice!


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## P4-630 (Sep 26, 2016)

erocker said:


> Really?! Is that the warranty for all Samsung's? Nice!




850 Pro that is...


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## P4-630 (Sep 26, 2016)

"FIREFOX IS EATING YOUR SSD – HERE IS HOW TO FIX IT"

https://www.servethehome.com/firefox-is-eating-your-ssd-here-is-how-to-fix-it/


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## Jetster (Sep 26, 2016)

erocker said:


> Really?! Is that the warranty for all Samsung's? Nice!



Not all. 5 years standard, Pro is 10 years

Wait the 750 is 3 years


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## Frick (Sep 26, 2016)

P4-630 said:


> "FIREFOX IS EATING YOUR SSD – HERE IS HOW TO FIX IT"
> 
> https://www.servethehome.com/firefox-is-eating-your-ssd-here-is-how-to-fix-it/



The official specs for my lowly BX200 says 72TB writes, which if 12GB/day means more than 16 years of operation. 20GB/day is like 10 years. On the laptop in sig I have 294h power on time and 2.381TB written ... but that is with several clean Windows installs and some Linux fudgery. Vivaldi on my desktop had about 4GB writes in a bit more than two weeks, but I'm not exactly a power browser.


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## verycharbroiled (Sep 26, 2016)

firefox, windows temp and page file, basically any temp file go on my ssd.

so i only get 12 years out of it instead of 15.. no worries there as it will be long obsolete by then.


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## slozomby (Sep 26, 2016)

FUD!. gotta love it


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## alucasa (Sep 26, 2016)

I fear for the duration of cells in my brain more than my SSDs. Too bad that my brain isn't covered under warranty.


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## Jetster (Sep 26, 2016)

Beer is working on my memory as we speak


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## RejZoR (Sep 27, 2016)

Browser creating "lots" of writes. Nonsense. It doesn't. I browse A LOT and in 8 months I've accumulated only 4.5 TB of writes total (not just browsing). Out of which 2TB was basically when I migrated my whole 2TB HDD to 2TB SSD. So, 2.5 TB. Lets round it up to ~3TB for a year. Even for crappiest SSD with 30TB of writes available would last you 10 years.

Using RAM disk is pointless because it's volatile and you have to save and restore on every new session which means startup will take longer and shutdown will take longer as well.


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## lemonadesoda (Sep 27, 2016)

Move browser cache to ramdisk if you want. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/move-google-chrome.114190/

RAMDisk tips, old thread, but lots of info. https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...p-your-hdd-and-or-reduce-ssd-trashing.107670/

@RejZoR, you might have only accumulated 4.5TB of writes, but the question is how many write commands were issued, not total data, and how much housekeeping did the SSD do to manage a trillion gifs and cookies that added up to only 4.5 TB of space but possibly many more "pages" of writing and updating data and timestamps.


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## RejZoR (Sep 27, 2016)

Who cares? If you're so god damn scared of write wear to move browser cache around, go back to HDD that has infinite writes. Seriously. This NAND wear anxiety is ridiculous and even more so unnecessary opposed to range anxiety in electric cars which really limit you.  With SSD's, even the most crappy one should last you 5 years solely based on write wear. If you buy half decent one, you'll be good for 10-20 years of writes. With that said, how long have you had HDD's? 3 years? 5 years? 10?

Not to mention I have System Restore activated which shuffles files even more regularly. And I've only accumulated this. On a drive with guaranteed 300TB of writes, on a drive that is capable of doing over 1PB of writes...


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## lZKoce (Sep 27, 2016)

Never even remotely thought about moving the cache of my browser. I think I will leave it, the way it is for now


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