I worte a control with a hexeditor-like display that read a file from the hard disk, but the way I have it set up now it has to re-read the information it's displaying from the hard disk each time it gets redrawn. Now I imagine if the data really does get re-read each time it would put uneccessary strain on the drive, but does windows keep the data cached in memory for a short time so it won't have to access the HD uneccessarily? If it does then I won't have to rewrite that portion of the code .