Set a hard limit on disk used by Edge for cache

Brass Contributor

I'm trying to find how to limit the amount of disk space used by Edge for it's cache/temp files, we have it set to a couple of hundred Mb, but I've seen it exceeds this to well over a Gb.

 

The group policy documentation here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployEdge/microsoft-edge-policies#diskcachesize says that '...The value specified in this policy isn't a hard boundary but rather a suggestion to the caching system...' .. which is not very helpful/useful.

 

Does anybody have experience of solving this one?

7 Replies

@DeltaWasp Thanks for reaching out! Tagging in @Kelly_Y who can help with that GPO question.

 

Fawkes (they/them)
Program Manager & Community Manager - Microsoft Edge

Thanks, @Deleted !  

 

Hi @DeltaWasp - I'm checking with the team right now.  I'll follow up after we've had a chance to discuss.  Thanks! 

 

-Kelly

I've been using the same thing on Firefox and it's been convenient for me.
another useful case is for Windows virtual desktops where each user has a dedicated disk space and you wouldn't want Edge to take up a lot of space for cache.
Microsoft Verified Best Answer

@DeltaWasp  Hello!  I confirmed with the team that due to various reasons, like performance issues, the DiskCacheSize policy does not set a hard limit.  Also, for a little more information please see the following Issue in Chromium 

 

The team has suggested other policies available in MS Edge that can help with disk cache problems.  For example, have you seen https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployEdge/microsoft-edge-policies#clearcachedimagesandfilesonexit ? 

 

If it is not possible to resolve your issue using other available policies, would you be able to provide more information about your scenario and the problem you are encountering?  Thanks!

 

-Kelly

@Kelly_Y Hi yes we're aware of clearcachedimagesandfilesonexit but we don't want to implement that as it may cause performance issues for internal apps. We have never had an issue like this in IE11.


This behaviour is problematic for us as our desktops are virtual and some users have lost remote connectivity as low disk space has knocked-out the remote access software.

 

 

@DeltaWasp this quota value is currently per-cache which is admittedly a bit unintuitive. The Chromium project is tracking that wrinkle via https://crbug.com/1064308.

 

Please note that the eviction process will not run in the first 5 minutes after the browser launches for performance and responsiveness reasons.

 

To help us understand what caches and other data is contributing to the size you're seeing, can you please go through "%localappdata%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data" and recursively call out the directories contributing the most to the large size you're seeing?

I'm also running into this issue. I have a large volume of VDI users who's Edge cache has hit over 20GB. As it stands I have a powershell script to look through these folders and delete it, but it isn't something that can be run automatically and needs someone to investigate each time.

Has there been an update on setting a maximum cache size per profile? This would greatly reduce my storage issues on my VDI instances.