How to know if Vivaldi writes to disk like Firefox does?

danielson

Found this tip to disable Firefox's writing to disk (to preserve SSD):
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.com/p/speed-mint.html#ID7

Just wondering if Vivaldi does same and what to do if it does?
-a flag to check off?
-an extension to install?

LonM

@danielson I believe in private mode some caches are stored in memory only.

I'm not aware of any config option to do that always in vivaldi.

Pathduck

You can set your cache dir to use a RAM disk like outlined in this thread:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/40699/vivaldi-on-steroids-vivaldi-ram-cache

Obviously, you won't have any persistent cache so you'll have to get the data from the network every time, which is slow. If you have a fast network, maybe not such a problem. But the benefit you'll get can be argued - I don't really think you'll see any major improvement in speed if that's what you're after. The drawbacks outnumber the benefit if you ask me.

A really hacky and definitely not recommended way to do this is instead just set your cache dir to /dev/null (Linux) or NUL (Windows):
--disk-cache-dir=NUL
I've tried this and it works (on Windows), and it would basically achieve the same as using a RAM disk.

Obviously since only the cache location is overridden, it will still write History, Cookies, Sessions, and various other stuff to disk.

You can also set your whole profile to the RAM disk by using the launch argument --profile-directory. This will not work with the "/dev/null" hack since it can't be read.

There's a flag you can experiment with for media caching:
vivaldi://flags/#turn-off-streaming-media-caching

To be honest, I think this is a non-issue, at least with a modern OS and SSD. Again, the drawbacks are bigger than the benefits.

danielson

@Pathduck - after reading up on your feedback and even if Martin at GHacks might tend to set RAM disk as per this recommendation for Brave:

Startup parameters
Brave supports Chromium startup parameters. These are supplied on start and may modify certain features and settings of the browser that can't be changed in the browser's settings.

You may either run Brave from the command line and specify the parameters, or edit the shortcut that points to Brave to permanently use the parameters.

On Windows, you simply right-click on the Brave shortcut on the desktop or Start and select Properties. Note that you need to right-click on Brave a second time in the menu if you right-click on the Brave icon in the taskbar. Add the parameters to the end of the Target field and click ok to save the changes.

--process-per-site -- Brave puts every page you open in the browser in its own process. If you notice that your devices hit the available RAM limit regularly, you may want to load Brave with the --process-per-site parameter to use a single process per site instead. Useful if you open multiple pages of a single site as it will reduce RAM usage.
--disk-cache-dir=z:\brave\ --disk-cache-size=104857600 -- You may move the disk cache to a faster drive or a RAM disk (if you have plenty of RAM). The value of the cache is in bytes. The number in the example sets the cache to 100 Megabytes. See How to use a RAM disk in Windows and check out our overview of free RAM disk programs for Windows.
--enable-low-end-device-mode -- This enables low end device mode which improves memory consumption of the browser.
https://www.ghacks.net/2019/09/14/speed-up-brave-browser/

and... not noticing anything significant with Firefox,
think i'll just let it be.