Read Cache Programs Required or Not?

[DisasterIncarna]

I use FS-UAE and WinUAE, both using Directory Mode for Harddrives (Both OS3.2.1), perhaps posts on this matter are old or hard to find or i'm just blind, but are programs like PowerCache, FDA, etc (read only mode) even needed or does the emulation already so some magic caching of some kind?

Already guessing its a feature/weirdness of directory mode perhaps? but I have recently noticed when trying to use PowerCache that FS-UAE does not recognise the correct device driver whereas WinUAE does, both as i understand use UAEHF.DEVICE, but for some reason the caching programs only see it as UAE.DEVICE.

Attached 2 screenshots both showing Powercache, it can see the correct device on WinUAE but FS-UAE is seeing UAE.DEVICE instead of UAEHF.DEVICE for some reason and fails to install, more weird given SYSINSPECTOR shows the correct device.

Or maybe this is simply cache programs doing something wrong rather than the emulation?

However, if this is considered normal for directory mode with FS-UAE then i can safely use 1 of my scripts to see if this is an emulated environment and simply not run caching tools.

[Toni Wilen]

Cache programs can't be used with directory harddrives. It might appear to work but it won't do anything, cache program won't see any reads or writes. Directory harddrive directory data is partially cached UAE host side, data is left for host OS caches.

Directory harddrive is technically similar to a network drive or a RAM disk, custom filesystem handler without block device.

uae.device is fake, it does not exist. It only exists in name because DOS structure has device name field that needs to contain some string.

Later it was changed to uaehf.device, it exists but it still is mostly fake (when connected to directory harddrive). This was changed to keep some programs (for example sysinfo which crashes if device driver fails to open..) happy. It only responds to some metadata query functions.

Hardfiles obviously have "real" uaehf.device units.

[DisasterIncarna]

ah right thanks, so if i use a .hdf then theres still benefit, do you know of a way inside emulation to tell if a device/volume is using a hardfile/normal filesystem or a directory structure? or should i just run such a cache tool regardless knowing 1 way gets a benefit and the other runs but doesnt really do anything, or at least doesnt slow/break anything.

No big deal if i have to manually enable/disable some programs, just i'm trying to make a 1 does all setup, for my pc/pi/chameleon64 setups where i dont need separate setups, everything just magically works regardless if fpga/real hardware or emulated.