please explain the ideal cache

[kwhelan]

I work in a school with a users database of 600 all using java authentication.Wingate runs on windows 2000 with 1 gig of ram. we unfortunately pay thru thr nose for adsl charges and I am trying to address the megabyte usage.In older versions of wingate the cache listed folders and pages all viewable etc.the later versions contain approx 7k files that mean nothing and were talking tens of thousands of them.I have moved the cache to a second ntfs partition but still wonder what stress this places on windows and the drive itself.A manual deletion of the cache is horrifingly slow.
There is no longer any cache hit graphs which personally I think is a pathetic omission.I know it was part of a plugin but why have things moved backwards.Anyway all posts/recomendations in this forum seem to have the common themes ,"to avoid lockups you need to set the cache to about 100meg -200meg,you need to delete the cache files some say nightly etc etc,"
Surely this flys in the face of what a cache is/does,Why is wingate unable to handle say a 40gig cache on a seperate drive without groaning under the strain.Am I better advised to switch off the cache altogether and route proxytraffic thru a linux box for a half decent cache.
can someone shed light on these little cache files,is there a tool to view them
Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.