export cache to folders

I believe Bridge  uses its central cache all the time. I do not use the bridge much.  So when I do most likely most thing in my bridge's cache will be considered stale and is purged.  I use the export cache to folders for I hope Bridge will not consider that data old no matter when its was exported because it would be current for the folder content when last accessed.  So Bridge should be able to quickly populated its central cache with the data from the exported cache rather than having to access and read metadata to populate its cache and generate thumbnails form all the image files in these folders.   Bridges performance is not good till its cache is populated.

On my Wife machine she has a folder with 5000+ RAW files.  If on my machine I set my preferences not to export cache to folders I only access her machine read only on a 1Gbit network but on her machine she does export cash to folders so I do not know if my bridge will read that data. Anyway If I look at where bridge stores its cache for my user ID. If I close Bridge while its pointed to my wife folder displaying its thumbnails.  If I delete Bridges cache folder.  It takes 2 minuets and 30 seconds for bridge to open and populate it cache for that folder. If I the close Bridge and look at the size of Bridge's new Cache I see it is 600MB+ in size and contains 5000+ files.  If I then open Bridge with a current cache for that folder. It still takes bridge 30 seconds to open and validate its cache.

Thank you gener7

Your explanation cleared it up completely :-)

Here's a primer on how the cache works: Set preferences to manage and optimize the Adobe Bridge CC cache size

The folder location you see in Preferences is the default should you choose not to export.

If you choose to export, that default is ignored for the folders.

If you checkmark "export cache", then the cache files go to all the folders you keeps your images in. You will not see these cache files unless you set the option in your OS to "Show Hidden files".