PS5 Cache Clear 2026: 12 Steps, Safe Mode Only, 8 Min

A few hundred thousand people a month ask a search engine how to "clear the cache" on a PlayStation 5, and the overwhelming majority of them are hunting for something that does not exist: a tidy toggle in Settings, a one-tap reset, a button somewhere in the system menus that makes the console feel new again. There is no such button. Sony did not forget to build it. They built something else, buried it in a recovery mode you reach by feel and by ear, and then declined to touch it again for the entire life of the platform.

Here is the part the listicles bury beneath an ad break: the PS5 cache-clearing procedure is a legacy feature from November 2020. It shipped with the launch hardware, it has not been redesigned, re-priced, or re-documented in any meaningful way since, and the version you will perform in 2026 on a PS5 Pro is byte-for-byte the ritual someone performed on a launch unit the week it arrived. Every "2025 update" and "new 2026 method" headline is content marketing wearing a calendar as a costume.

So we will do this properly: what the cache actually is, what clearing it does and does not fix, the exact twelve-step procedure with the timing everyone botches, the pitfalls, a troubleshooting matrix, and — because this is a retro-gaming publication and we have standards — an honest comparison with the caches you can genuinely control on a PC, where "clear the cache" means something you can inspect with your own two eyes. The word, incidentally, comes from the French cacher: to hide. Keep that in mind. The one cache Sony tells you to clear is the one cache Sony will never let you see.

What "Cache" Really Means on PS5

Before you hold down any buttons, understand what you are about to delete, because the marketing-grade explanation — "it clears out junk and speeds things up" — is true in roughly the way "the engine makes the car go" is true. Accurate, useless, and concealing every detail that matters.

The black box Sony will not let you see

The PS5 system-software cache is a pool of temporary files the console generates while it runs: decompressed assets, store-page thumbnails, partial download manifests, interface state, shader and pipeline scratch data, and a grab-bag of other transient blobs the operating system keeps on hand rather than regenerate on demand. On a desktop OS you could open a file manager and stare at every byte. On a PS5 you cannot. There is no file browser, no shell, no path to navigate, no command to run. The cache is a sealed compartment, and your only sanctioned interaction with it is one destructive verb: clear.

This is deliberate. Sony's console security model treats the storage layout as none of your business, and it has done so since the PlayStation 3 taught the company exactly how much mischief a curious owner can cause with filesystem access. The practical consequence for you, the person whose game saves are on that drive, is that you cannot selectively prune the cache, inspect what it holds, or measure how large it has grown. You get a binary: leave it, or nuke it. Everything in this guide is downstream of that single design decision, so make peace with it now.

Cache, database, and saved data are three different things

Most of the panic in PS5 support threads comes from collapsing three distinct concepts into one word. They are not the same, and clearing one does nothing to the others. The cache is disposable scratch space, as described above; deleting it costs you nothing but a few seconds of regeneration. The database is an index — a catalogue the system rebuilds by scanning your storage to know which games, apps, screenshots, and saves exist and how to present them on the home screen. The database is what "Rebuild Database" rescans, and it is why a rebuild can take minutes to hours while a cache clear takes seconds.

Saved data is your actual progress, kept separately and, if you carry PlayStation Plus, mirrored to the cloud. Clearing the system cache touches none of your saves. Read that twice, because the single most common reason people refuse to perform this procedure is a fear of losing progress that the procedure cannot, by design, delete. If a guide tells you to back up saves to a USB stick before clearing the cache, it has confused this with a factory reset, and you should distrust the rest of it.

Why a 2020 procedure is still the 2026 answer

The cache-clear sequence is not a 2025 trick or a 2026 update. It is the same Safe Mode routine that shipped in November 2020, unchanged through every system-software revision since. The PS5 Pro, which arrived in late 2024 at the top of the line, presents the identical Safe Mode menu in the identical order; nothing about the cache procedure was re-numbered, re-skinned, or re-priced for the new hardware. Sony does not fix what it has decided is not broken — the same institutional stubbornness that let it win the previous generation outright, a rout we quantified in our PS4-versus-Xbox-One retrospective. The cache ritual you are about to perform will, in all likelihood, survive onto the next console too.

Prerequisites: Hardware and Firmware

This is a hardware procedure, so the "software versions" that matter here are the system firmware and the physical kit on your desk. Assemble everything before you power down, because once you are inside Safe Mode the console will not let you open a browser to look anything up. Safe Mode is a walled room with seven doors and no windows.

The hardware checklist

You need surprisingly little, and every item earns its place:

• The console. Any model qualifies: the launch PS5 (the CFI-1000 series), the Digital Edition, the slimmer 2023 revision (CFI-2000 series), or the PS5 Pro (CFI-7000 series, late 2024). The Safe Mode routine is identical across all of them.
• A DualSense or DualSense Edge controller. Either works. The pad's wireless mode is irrelevant here because Safe Mode refuses Bluetooth on principle.
• A data-capable USB cable. This is the item people get wrong. The cable must carry data, not merely power. Launch consoles shipped a USB-A-to-USB-C cable; the slim and Pro ship USB-C-to-USB-C. A charge-only cable will light up the controller and do absolutely nothing in the menu, which produces ten minutes of cursing before anyone suspects the cable.
• Optional: a second display or a known-good HDMI cable. Only relevant if the reason you are here is that the console produces no picture, in which case "Change Video Output" — option 2 — is your real destination, not the cache item.

Firmware: why the version does not matter

Ordinarily a tutorial pins itself to a software version, and a step that worked on build 23.x breaks on 24.x. Not here. The Safe Mode menu is firmware-agnostic in every way that counts: Sony has carried the same seven-or-eight-item layout, in the same order, from the launch firmware through every major revision to the system software running on your console in mid-2026. The only thing that drifts between versions is the number printed next to "Clear Cache and Rebuild Database" — it sits at option 5 on current builds and has appeared as 6 on others — and even that is cosmetic. The function, the wording, and the result are constant. This is why you should distrust any guide claiming a "new" 2026 method. There is no new method. There is the 2020 method, still load-bearing.

What to back up first (almost nothing)

Here is the reassuring part. Clearing the system software cache deletes none of your games, none of your installed apps, and none of your saved data. The only casualty is cosmetic: your home-screen layout, including the order of pinned apps and your carefully curated front row, reverts to default. So the entire "backup" ritual is this — take a screenshot of your home screen so you can rebuild the layout from memory, and confirm your PlayStation Plus cloud saves are current if you are the belt-and-suspenders type. That is the whole list.

The 12-Step Cache-Clear Procedure

The cache deletion itself takes seconds. The honest end-to-end time — a proper power-down, the Safe Mode entry, the navigation, and the automatic restart — runs about eight minutes, most of it spent waiting for the console to boot back up. Do not rush the parts that involve waiting; rushing a restart is how a thirty-second job becomes a database-repair afternoon. Here is the full sequence, with the reason each step exists.

1. Close active downloads and quit your game. Signing out is unnecessary, but an in-flight download is transient state, and you do not want to learn whether a half-finished 120 GB install survives a forced power cycle.
2. Fully power off the console. Hold the front power button about three seconds and choose "Turn Off PS5". Do not use Rest Mode. Safe Mode is reachable only from a true power-off; Rest Mode keeps the system half-alive and the beep sequence will never trigger.
3. Wait for the power indicator to go completely dark. A pulsing or amber light means the console is still shutting down. Start the entry sequence early and you abort straight into a normal boot.
4. Connect the DualSense to the console with a data-capable USB cable. Safe Mode disables Bluetooth pairing on purpose, so an unwired pad — or one on a charge-only cable — is inert in this menu.
5. Press and hold the console's physical power button. You will hear the first beep immediately. That chirp only confirms the press registered; it is emphatically not your cue to release.
6. Keep holding for roughly seven seconds until the second beep, then release. The second beep is the defined Safe Mode signal. Release on the first and the console boots normally, leaving you baffled.
7. At the pairing prompt, press the PS button on the wired controller once. Even wired, the system wants an explicit "this is my controller" handshake before the cursor will move.
8. Select "Clear Cache and Rebuild Database". It is option 5 on current firmware and may render as 6. Navigate by the label, not the digit — this is the only menu item that contains the cache function.
9. In the submenu, choose "Clear System Software Cache" — not "Rebuild Database". The cache clear is the fast, low-impact action measured in seconds; rebuild is a different, far slower operation you do not need yet.
10. Confirm by selecting "OK". There is no second-guess dialog beyond this point. OK commits the deletion.
11. Let the console restart on its own. Do not pull power. It restarts automatically. Interrupting that restart is exactly how you convert a clean cache clear into a corrupted database that then genuinely needs the slow rebuild.
12. Sign in, then re-pin your apps. The home screen will have reverted to default because the layout lived partly in the cache you just cleared. Rebuilding your row of pins is the expected, harmless aftermath.

The beep timing, measured

The single most-failed step is the beep, so here it is as a timeline. Pressing the power button produces a beep immediately — that first chirp only confirms the button registered. You keep holding, through roughly seven seconds of silence and a pulsing light bar, until a second beep sounds; that is the Safe Mode signal, and you release on it.

POWER-OFF state required (LED fully dark — not Rest Mode)

[hold]    power button .............. t=0.0s   first beep (chirp)
[hold]    keep holding .............. 0.0s..7.0s  LED bar pulses
[RELEASE] on the SECOND beep ....... t~7.0s   boots to SAFE MODE
[oops]    released too early ....... normal boot — power off, retry

If you have ever held the button, heard a beep, let go, and gotten a normal startup, that timeline is the entire explanation. Per Sony's official Safe Mode documentation, the second beep is the defined trigger, and it has been the trigger since launch.

Why the controller must be wired

Safe Mode deliberately disables Bluetooth pairing. The reasoning is sound — Safe Mode exists to recover a console whose normal software is misbehaving, and a recovery environment cannot depend on the wireless stack that may itself be broken. So you connect the DualSense with a data cable and press the PS button once to register it. A pad left on Bluetooth, or wired with a charge-only cable, sits there inert while you mash buttons at a menu that cannot hear you. Engadget's walkthrough flags the same trap, because everyone hits it at least once.

What selecting "OK" actually triggers

When you choose "Clear System Software Cache" and confirm with "OK", there is no second dialog, no progress bar worth watching, and no undo. The system deletes its temporary cache pool and immediately schedules a restart. You will see the screen go dark within a few seconds, the power LED cycle, and the standard boot sequence begin. Do not interpret the brief black screen as a freeze and yank the power — that is precisely the wrong instinct, and it is how a clean cache clear turns into a corrupted database that genuinely needs the slower rebuild.

Expected Output: Every Screen You Should See

Because the PS5 gives you no logs, no terminal, and no confirmation text beyond a one-line "this may take a moment," the only "output" you get is a sequence of screens and two beeps. Knowing exactly what that sequence looks like is the difference between confidence and the special anxiety of staring at a black screen wondering whether you have bricked a $500 machine. You have not. Here is the ground truth.

The Safe Mode menu, verbatim

After the second beep and the controller handshake, you land here. Memorize the shape of it; the only number that shifts between firmware versions is the one beside the cache item.

PS5  ::  SAFE MODE

 Restart PS5
 Change Video Output
 Update System Software
 Restore Default Settings
 Clear Cache and Rebuild Database     # your target (may render as )
 Reset PS5
 Reset PS5 (Reinstall System Software)

Option 5 is your destination. If your console renders it as 6, the wording is unambiguous, so navigate by the label, not the digit.

The cache submenu and the confirm

Selecting that item does not clear anything yet. It opens a submenu with two distinct actions, and choosing the wrong one is the difference between a ten-second fix and an hour of rebuild.

CLEAR CACHE AND REBUILD DATABASE

 *  Clear System Software Cache   # deletes temp cache — seconds — games safe
    Rebuild Database             # rescans storage — slow — games safe

 [ confirm: OK ]   then the console restarts on its own

Highlight "Clear System Software Cache", press X, confirm "OK". That is the entire transaction.

The restart, timed

Here is the part that unsettles first-timers — the unattended restart. Expect this exact arc, and do not touch anything while it runs.

[selected] Clear System Software Cache

  | "This may take a moment."
  | display goes black ............ ~3-10 s
  | power LED:  white .. off .. white
  | standard boot animation
  | sign-in screen

EXPECTED TOTAL (cache only): ~1-3 min of unattended restart
EXPECTED TOTAL (rebuild):    minutes to HOURS, scales with storage

If you want a frame-accurate record of these screens — genuinely useful when you are documenting a flaky console for a warranty claim, since support staff respond to evidence — route the HDMI through a capture card. Our PS5 capture-card setup for 4K60 in OBS covers the HDMI handshake quirks that otherwise drop the Safe Mode screen entirely, because HDCP and recovery menus have a famously bad relationship.

Clear Cache vs. Rebuild vs. Reset

Three menu items live within one or two keystrokes of each other, and their blast radii could not be more different. People conflate them constantly, and forum advice to "just reset the PS5 to clear the cache" is the troubleshooting equivalent of burning down the house to clean the gutters. Let us draw the lines precisely.

What clearing the cache removes

"Clear System Software Cache" deletes the temporary scratch files described at the top of this article — decompressed assets, thumbnails, transient UI and shader data — and nothing else. It is fast, measured in seconds, and its worst side effect is a defaulted home screen. It is the right first move for a sluggish interface, an app that refuses to open, a glitchy storefront, or intermittent audio dropouts that survive a normal restart. Because it reclaims almost no meaningful storage, do not run it expecting to free up space; that is not what it is for, and a console at the red line will keep stuttering no matter how clean its cache.

What rebuilding the database does

"Rebuild Database" is the sibling action in the same submenu, and it does something entirely different: it scans every item in your storage and reconstructs the index the system uses to present your library. It does not delete games or saves, but it can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours depending on how much you have installed and whether you are on the internal SSD or a slower expansion drive. Reach for it when games go missing from the library, thumbnails attach to the wrong titles, or the library itself has become sluggish to navigate. It is the heavier hammer, and you use it second, not first.

The decision, expressed as code

If you think in control flow, here is the entire decision tree. Note the final branch, which is the one the internet gets wrong.

if symptom in (slow_ui, app_wont_open, store_glitch, audio_dropout):
    action = "Clear System Software Cache"    # try first — ~seconds
elif symptom in (missing_games, wrong_thumbnails, slow_library):
    action = "Rebuild Database"               # minutes..hours by drive size
elif symptom in (corrupt_settings, boot_loops):
    action = "Restore Default Settings"       # resets prefs, KEEPS games
else:
    action = "STOP: a factory reset is NOT a cache clear"

The two "Reset" options — option 6 and option 7 — are factory wipes. "Reset PS5" restores the console to out-of-box state; "Reset PS5 (Reinstall System Software)" additionally re-flashes the operating system. Neither is a cache clear. Neither should appear anywhere in your mental model of routine maintenance. They exist for selling the console or recovering from genuine corruption, and invoking one "to speed things up" is how people lose data they did not have to lose.

Six Pitfalls That Waste Your Afternoon

Every one of these is avoidable, and every one of them has cost someone an hour they will not get back. Read them now so you recognize them in the moment, not after.

1. Treating Rest Mode as "off." Rest Mode keeps the system half-alive to charge controllers and download updates; the beep sequence will not trigger from it. Fix: hold the front power button about three seconds, choose "Turn Off PS5", and wait for the light to go fully dark before you begin.
2. Reaching for "Reset PS5" because a forum said so. Options 6 and 7 are factory wipes, not cache clears. Fix: the cache lives at option 5, two levels of menu away from anything destructive. Navigate by label.
3. Bluetooth muscle memory. Your pad connects wirelessly every other day of its life, so reaching for it without a cable is automatic. Fix: wire it with a data-capable cable and press the PS button once before you expect the cursor to move.
4. Releasing on the first beep. The immediate beep feels like the cue; it is not. Fix: hold through it for the second beep at roughly seven seconds, then release.
5. Expecting a permanent cure. Sony positions this as a troubleshooting step, not a tune-up, and it is explicitly a short-term remedy. Fix: if slowness returns within days, stop clearing the cache on a loop and investigate storage, thermals, and network — the real culprits.
6. Panicking when the home screen empties. The defaulted layout looks, for a heart-stopping second, like data loss. Fix: it is expected and harmless; re-pin your apps, and screenshot the layout before your next clear so rebuilding it takes thirty seconds.

The Rest Mode trap, specifically

Rest Mode deserves its own paragraph because it is the most common single failure and the least obvious. A console in Rest Mode shows a faint amber or orange glow rather than nothing at all, and to a tired person at 1 a.m. "there's a light, so it's on, so holding the button should work" is a perfectly reasonable chain of logic that happens to be wrong. The Safe Mode entry sequence is defined from a true power-off only. If you hold the button and get a normal startup instead of the menu, nine times out of ten you started from Rest Mode. Power all the way down and try again.

When clearing the cache is the wrong tool entirely

There is a category of problem that looks cache-shaped but is not: install corruption, a failing SSD, a game-server outage, or a thermal-throttling console choked with dust. Clearing the cache against any of these accomplishes nothing except making you feel proactive. The tell is recurrence — a true cache hiccup clears and stays cleared for weeks; a deeper fault returns within hours. We return to this in the table below, because knowing when not to clear the cache is as valuable as knowing how.

Troubleshooting Table

The matrix below pairs the symptom you actually observe with the most likely cause and the fix that addresses it. Work top to bottom; the rows are ordered roughly from "you made a small mistake" to "the console has a real problem."

Symptom-to-fix matrix

When the clear didn't help

If a cache clear changed nothing, the cause is almost always one of three things the cache has no bearing on: a nearly full SSD (the PS5 wants meaningful free headroom to behave, so delete or offload games until you have tens of gigabytes spare), thermals (a console packed with dust will throttle and stutter no matter how pristine its cache), or your network (download and matchmaking problems are upstream of anything Safe Mode can touch). Diagnose those before you clear the cache a second, third, and fourth time expecting a different result.

Error codes and the wired-controller gotcha

If you hit a CE-series error code during a Safe Mode action, note it and search Sony's database for the exact string — these codes are specific, and the generic ones usually point at storage corruption that a database rebuild, not a cache clear, addresses. And if the controller simply will not register, return to the prerequisites: Bluetooth is disabled here, and a startling number of USB cables are charge-only. Epic Games' own Rocket League cache-clearing guide walks players through this exact sequence to resolve load-failure errors, which tells you the procedure is still a frontline fix for shipping 2026 titles, not a relic.

The Emulation Parallel: Caches You Can Actually Control

Here is where a retro-gaming publication earns its keep. Everything above describes a sealed ritual: you cannot see the PS5's cache, measure it, or prune it — you can only perform the approved deletion and trust that something happened. Step over to a PC running RetroArch, or any half-open handheld, and "clear the cache" stops being an incantation and becomes a directory you own.

RetroArch's shader and pipeline cache

RetroArch — the libretro frontend that has become the default way to run emulated systems across desktops, handhelds, and single-board computers — keeps its caches in plain, inspectable directories. Shader compilation in particular is cached so your CRT filter does not recompile from scratch every launch, and when that cache goes stale you can simply delete it and force a clean rebuild. No Safe Mode, no beeps, no seven-second hold.

# Unlike the PS5, RetroArch lets you SEE and delete its caches.
# Linux defaults (paths vary by OS, build, and your own settings):

~/.config/retroarch/          # configs, system files, thumbnails
~/.config/retroarch/cache/    # general cache dir (Settings, Directory, Cache)

# Force a clean shader / pipeline recompile:
rm -rf ~/.config/retroarch/cache/*

# Windows:  %APPDATA%\\RetroArch\\
# macOS:    ~/Library/Application Support/RetroArch/
# Confirm YOUR paths first inside the menu:  Settings, Directory

The exact paths vary by platform and build, which is why you confirm them in the menu rather than trusting any single guide, including this one. The authoritative references are the official libretro documentation and the RetroArch source repository on GitHub, both of which document the directory structure and the configuration keys that point to it. That is the whole difference in one sentence: Sony documents that a cache exists; libretro documents where it lives and lets you open it.

Save states, SRAM, and what is not cache

The open ecosystem also forces a useful distinction the console blurs. In emulation, your save states (whole-machine snapshots) and SRAM (the battery-backed saves the original cartridges held) are emphatically not cache — they are precious, and you back them up. The shader cache, the thumbnail cache, the autoconfig scratch — those are disposable, regenerated on demand. On a PS5 these categories are collapsed behind one wall, which is exactly why people fear that clearing the cache will eat their saves. On an open platform the boundary is a folder you can see, and the fear evaporates.

Why an open platform wins this argument

None of this is nostalgia for fiddly config files. It is a straightforward observation about control. A handheld like the Retroid Pocket 6, which we found PS2-ready in early 2026, hands you the same RetroArch directory structure and the same right to inspect and clear it, on a device in your pocket. The PS5 is a magnificent machine and, on the question of who controls the storage, a black box. Knowing both models — the sealed console ritual and the open directory you can actually manage — is the difference between performing maintenance and merely hoping it worked.

Advanced Tips and a Real Maintenance Cadence

If you have read this far you are past the basics, so here is the higher-altitude view: how often this is actually worth doing, what prevents the problem in the first place, and the one adjacent "cache" that is not a cache at all.

How often to actually do this

Resist the urge to clear the cache reflexively. A sensible cadence is a cache clear roughly monthly, or whenever the interface starts dragging, and a database rebuild quarterly or after a spree of large installs and uninstalls that leaves the library messy. Clearing the cache daily is cargo-cult maintenance — it cannot hurt the hardware, but it wastes your time and trains you to treat a symptom instead of finding a cause. The cache is a short-term remedy by Sony's own framing; build the habit around that fact.

Storage hygiene that prevents the problem

Most "my PS5 feels slow" complaints trace back to storage pressure, not cache rot. The fix is unglamorous: keep meaningful free space on the internal SSD, and if you are constantly juggling installs, add a compatible NVMe expansion drive so you are not perpetually at the red line. A drive with breathing room rarely develops the symptoms people try to cache-clear away. Offload the games you are not playing this month; the ones with multi-hundred-gigabyte footprints are the usual offenders, and reinstalling later is a download, not a tragedy.

The "network cache" that is really DNS

A large share of searches for "clear PS5 cache" are actually chasing a network problem — slow downloads, failed matchmaking, a store that will not load — and no amount of Safe Mode will touch those, because they live in your router and your ISP, not in the console's scratch files. The levers that matter there are DNS settings, MTU, and a clean line, none of which are "cache." If you suspect the network rather than the console, the faster diagnostic is to stream the console to another device and watch where it falters; our guide to PS Remote Play at 1080p in twelve steps doubles as a network sanity check, because Remote Play is brutally honest about a bad connection.

The Complete Reference Card

Everything above, compressed to one screen you can print and tape inside the cabinet door. If you read nothing else, read this.

The one-screen procedure

PS5 CACHE and DATABASE  ::  MAINTENANCE REFERENCE CARD
--------------------------------------------------------

POWER OFF  (mandatory — NOT Rest Mode):
   hold front power ~3s, choose "Turn Off PS5", wait for LED dark

ENTER SAFE MODE:
   from OFF, hold power, RELEASE on the 2nd beep (~7 s)

CONTROLLER:
   DualSense on a DATA-capable USB cable  (no Bluetooth in Safe Mode)

ROUTINE  (monthly, or whenever the UI drags):
   Safe Mode   ->  "Clear System Software Cache"  ->  OK

QUARTERLY  (or after big installs / a messy library):
   Safe Mode   ->  "Rebuild Database"  ->  OK

ONLY IF GENUINELY BROKEN  (keeps your games):
   Safe Mode   ->  "Restore Default Settings"

NEVER "to clear the cache":
   Safe Mode /  Reset / Reinstall   (these wipe the console)

AFTER ANY CLEAR:
   re-pin apps — the home screen reverts to default by design

VERIFY:
   sign in, open the app that was failing, confirm behavior changed

That card is the entire working configuration. There is no file to edit, no setting to toggle, no version to match — there is a power button, a USB cable, and a menu that has not changed since 2020.

A maintenance schedule you will actually keep

Pin the cadence to events you already notice rather than dates you will forget. Clear the cache the next time the interface stutters; rebuild the database the next time the library looks wrong; restore default settings only if the console is genuinely misbehaving in ways a cache clear did not touch. Tie maintenance to symptoms, not the calendar, and you will do it exactly as often as it is warranted and no more.

The last word

The PS5 cache clear is free, it is provided by Sony Interactive Entertainment as a first-line troubleshooting tool, and it has been the same twelve-step ritual since November 2020 — unchanged for the slim, unchanged for the PS5 Pro, and very likely headed onto whatever comes next. That stability is the actual story here, and it is why you should treat anyone selling you a "2026 PS5 cache secret" with the suspicion they have earned. If you want to know where this hardware lineage is going rather than how to maintain it, our look at the PlayStation 6's release date and its pricing problem is the forward-looking companion to this very backward-looking, and very necessary, piece of housekeeping. Clear the cache when the machine asks for it. Ignore everyone who tells you to do more.