File Caching

By default, Windows caches file data that is read from disks and written to disks. This implies that read operations read file data from an area in system memory known as the system file cache, rather than from the physical disk. Correspondingly, write operations write file data to the system file cache rather than to the disk, and this type of cache is referred to as a write-back cache. Caching is managed per file object.

Caching occurs under the direction of the cache manager, which operates continuously while Windows is running. File data in the system file cache is written to the disk at intervals determined by the operating system, and the memory previously used by that file data is freed—this is referred to as flushing the cache. The policy of delaying the writing of the data to the file and holding it in the cache until the cache is flushed is called lazy writing, and it is triggered by the cache manager at a determinate time interval. The time at wh