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In Firefox 55 (2017) does it still make sense to move the cache to RAM?

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  • Last reply by user633449

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I refer to the classic case where I have an SSD and don't want to "consume" it by watching endless videos on YouTube (and/or other sites) that are being buffered to the disk. Or does the buffering of such videos occur in RAM by default in Firefox?

I also want to speed up Firefox at the maximum.

What are the downsides of having the entire cache in RAM and, if none, why isn't the default instalation with no cache at all on the disk (browser.cache.disk.enable = false) ?

What is the best configuration of Firefox (regarding cache) on a laptop with the an SSD and 4 GB of RAM?

Thanks in advance.

I refer to the classic case where I have an SSD and don't want to "consume" it by watching endless videos on YouTube (and/or other sites) that are being buffered to the disk. Or does the buffering of such videos occur in RAM by default in Firefox? I also want to speed up Firefox at the maximum. What are the downsides of having the entire cache in RAM and, if none, why isn't the default instalation with no cache at all on the disk (browser.cache.disk.enable = false) ? What is the best configuration of Firefox (regarding cache) on a laptop with the an SSD and 4 GB of RAM? Thanks in advance.

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I don't think it ever makes sense to have your cache live in RAM. If you have a SSD, you will never hit the max number of read-writes in your lifetime, so you don't have to worry about that. As for performance, no, it won't significantly change performance (and could actually hinder it).