I've seen various tuning tips which state that 16 to 32 MB is sufficient. IE by default sets up a large number for retention and recommends 20 to 50 MB be reserved with a maximum of 1025 MB (1TB) possible. The larger your hard drive, the larger the number set by default.
Keeping too many Temporary Internet Files leaves them scattered across the hard drive which along with the adding of new files and deleting of old files creates a highly fragmented hard drive.
I often delete all of my old temp Internet files before shutting down or doing a defrag. I also recommend if possible putting the Temporary Internet Files on a different hard drive that your Boot or C: drive.
Some of those temp files look like junk. Cookies to websites I only visited once, in some cases weeks or months ago. I deleted some of them by hand. The retension memory was set to 250 MB, the high end of the recommended amount.
As to your prior post, which is obviously comprehensive, I openly admit to not being an expert on those things of a more complicated nature, so I’m not entirely sure how to attempt any alterations without causing problems (or if it is even necessary to do). I’m more or less simply puzzled why my internet connection is acting so subpar (despite the fact two computers are hooked up to the same wireless connection, and the older and ostensibly more troubled one has a far easier time navigating websites than this one).