Originally Posted by
belodion Crash: What you say is interesting and clearing is often dished out as an attempted fix, but I remember one instance - just one - where clearing did fix a problem on my Nexus 5....though I can't remember the problem. It could be said that the rebooting effect of cache wiping did it, but I would have tried a simple reboot as well as other things first.
Thanks. But let me try to be perfectly clear exactly what I'm saying before anyone jumps to conclusions...
I'm not saying cache files are never the problem. I'm saying that problems due to actual file corruption is not happening. Or at least, the odds of that are microscopic, near lottery odds with today's memory chips and filesystems. But, you say, what about a memory chip gone south? If a chip fails, you would have more problems than corrupted caches. So lets eliminate file corruption as a reason to clear caches.
However, there's still a legitimate reason for clearing caches. It's rare, but real. And that is a cache file may hold files that, for lack of a better term, have become obsolete, or maybe you could say incompatible, with the software using them. Think of it as similar to this:
You have a game on your computer and lots of saved play data. You install an update to the game and afterwards it runs but some of your saved play data is wrong or the game hangs when accessing it.
Your play data is the problem. It's no longer compatible with the game. But there's nothing actually wrong with the file - no errors, no corruption. When you contact the game's maker he says it's a compatibility problem with older game data. Or maybe he says a bug in game is causing generation of bad data. Whatever, he says all you can do is delete your saved gameplay file and let the game generate a new one.
That's a similar situation to what can happen with caches and why sometimes clearing a cache straghtens out a problem. IMO this is fairly rare. I've used Android since v1.0 and can count on one hand how many times clearing a cache actually helped and have fingers left over. And then it was only an app cache, not the cache partition.
So, to wrap this up...I'm saying...
1. Actual file corruption is an
extremely unlikely reason to need to clear caches.
2. While I'm not saying to never clear caches or that there is never any benefit, I am saying the benefits while real, are rare.
3. If you're having problems and can't figure why clearing cache files is a reasonable thing to try. Can't hurt, might help. If it's an app clear the app cache only.
4. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Treating clearing caches like regular maintenance is madness. With very rare exceptions I don't touch cache files for the life of a device and have no problems with stability or performance.
5. Cache files purpose is to speed up operation, which they do well. So what good is an empty cache?
