A conservative SKSE64 derivative of Disk Cache Enabler by Archost (original Nexus upload by enpinion).
Skyrim opens its .bsa/.ba2 archives with FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING, which tells Windows not to keep those reads in the system file cache. On a machine with RAM to spare that is usually the wrong trade. This plugin removes that flag from archive reads so Windows can cache them — and, by default, does nothing else.
2.0.0 unifies the numbering. Earlier Nexus uploads (1.1.2, 1.1.3) used a different scheme from the repository tags (1.3.0, 1.4.x), which made bug reports impossible to map to a commit. From here the DLL version, the git tag, and the Nexus file version are always the same number.
| Old Nexus file | Was actually |
|---|---|
| 1.1.2 "Experimental" | repo 1.3.0 (warm cache and hardware tuning on) |
| 1.1.3 "Safe" | a narrow IAT build whose source was never published |
If you compared those two and preferred 1.1.2, you were comparing a fully-featured build against a nearly-inert one. 2.0.0 lets you pick either behaviour from one installer.
Hooks only the CreateFileA/CreateFileW entries in SkyrimSE.exe's own import table. Other SKSE plugins have their own import tables, so their file operations never reach this mod at all — verified by test, not asserted.
Rewrites only opens that are all of: an existing .bsa/.ba2, read-only, synchronous, OPEN_EXISTING. For those it removes FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING and applies the archive-only FILE_FLAG_RANDOM_ACCESS hint.
Safe, minus the random-access hint. Strips FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING from archive reads and does nothing else. Use it to isolate a compatibility problem or if you want the smallest possible change.
Safe plus three opt-in changes, none of them demonstrated to help:
- Process-wide hook (Detours) instead of the executable's import table. File opens from other SKSE plugins pass through this mod's policy. The policy declines nearly all of them, but this is a real compatibility surface — it is the reason Safe exists.
- Bounded warm cache: 512 MB total, 8 MB per archive, one low-priority thread, starting 60 s after load. It cannot know which archives your save will need, and background disk activity is a plausible microstutter cause.
- EcoQoS power throttling disabled for the Skyrim process.
If you cannot measure a difference against Safe on your own save and route, use Safe.
Saves (.ess), SKSE cosaves, backups, journals and SQLite state files, logs, temp files, plugins, loose meshes/textures/audio, config files, and unknown extensions. Nor any handle opened for write or delete, or with OVERLAPPED, WRITE_THROUGH, DELETE_ON_CLOSE, or a create/truncate disposition. The plugin does not parse or write save data.
A policy self-test runs before the hooks are installed and disables them if any of those invariants fail. It is verified to survive optimization — an earlier release shipped a self-test the compiler had folded into an unconditional success.
It cannot enable 3D V-Cache, Resizable BAR, XMP/EXPO, or an SSD's onboard DRAM cache — those are silicon, BIOS, or firmware. bRaiseMemoryPriority is present for completeness but ships off: it sets MEMORY_PRIORITY_NORMAL, which Microsoft documents as already the default, so it is a no-op.
DirectStorage is bundled only as an optional FOMOD choice and is disabled in every shipped profile. Its raw-read path fills scratch memory and discards it, which does not populate the Windows cache Skyrim reads from.
Every release is built by GitHub Actions from the tagged commit, and the workflow, hashes, and PDB are published with it. To check a DLL you already have:
dumpbin /exports NextGenDiskCache.dll → only SKSEPlugin_Load/Query/Version
dumpbin /imports NextGenDiskCache.dll → SETUPAPI, KERNEL32, SHELL32 only
MSVC output is not bit-identical across compiler versions, so a local build with a different Visual Studio release yields a different hash but identical imports, exports and behaviour.
The log at Documents\My Games\Skyrim Special Edition\SKSE\NextGenDiskCache.log states the active hook scope on every launch. Set bLogEveryOpen=1 briefly to see exactly which handles are and are not modified.
.\build.ps1 # fetches the DirectStorage SDK, builds Release x64
.\package-release.ps1 # produces the Nexus/Vortex FOMOD zip + SHA-256- Archost — original Disk Cache Enabler (ISC)
- enpinion — original Nexus upload
- Microsoft Detours (MIT), SKSE64 plugin headers
This derivative retains Archost's copyright and ISC notice.