Hi, I’m building a new SFF system that only has the capacity to mount a single 2.5” drive. I’ve chosen to use the ASrock Z77E-ITX motherboard which has an eSATA (3Gb/s), MSATA (3Gb/s) and a pair of SATA (6Gb/s) ports.
My current system has a 64GB Crucial M4 SSD which has the OS installed on it and a couple of programs. The rest of my games, programs and files are stored on a 3.5” WD Cav Black 1TB drive.
To initially ease the transition, I will just swap the 3.5” into an external eSATA capable external enclosure and put the 64GB into the new case.
The pickle I have is what upgrade path to choose. I can’t decide whether to go for a more self-contained hybrid route or go with a lower capacity SSD route and keep the external enclosure for general files. I also have the option of adding a 2nd MSATA drive via a bodged-in 1.8”-to-MSATA adapter which would be SATA 6Gb/s capable as I’m disinclined to use the slower 3Gb/s MSATA port on the ASrock PCB.
Once I’ve made the decision, I’d sell the 64GB SSD and turn the external 3.5” Cavier black into a file storage / backup drive and eventually replace that with a larger capacity green model.
Here’s the hybrid question. Would a Momentus XT 750GB 6Gb/s capable drive with 8GB of cache perform worse than using a 750GB Scorpio Black with a separate MSATA acting as 60GB of Cache using Intel Smart Response?
The first option is to use a 240/256GB MSATA mounted on the 1.8” adapter plugged into an SATA 6Gb/s port and use that to load the OS and primary games / programs. For greater capacity, I would pair that with one of the two hybrid drive options (the Scorpio option having the small MSATA mounted on the motherboard for lesser used programs and important files.
The other option would be to just fill the system with SSD drives starting out using a 240/256GB 2.5” SSD and adding the first and second MSATA drives as the system fills up. Would that be a better way of going about things?
My current system has a 64GB Crucial M4 SSD which has the OS installed on it and a couple of programs. The rest of my games, programs and files are stored on a 3.5” WD Cav Black 1TB drive.
To initially ease the transition, I will just swap the 3.5” into an external eSATA capable external enclosure and put the 64GB into the new case.
The pickle I have is what upgrade path to choose. I can’t decide whether to go for a more self-contained hybrid route or go with a lower capacity SSD route and keep the external enclosure for general files. I also have the option of adding a 2nd MSATA drive via a bodged-in 1.8”-to-MSATA adapter which would be SATA 6Gb/s capable as I’m disinclined to use the slower 3Gb/s MSATA port on the ASrock PCB.
Once I’ve made the decision, I’d sell the 64GB SSD and turn the external 3.5” Cavier black into a file storage / backup drive and eventually replace that with a larger capacity green model.
Here’s the hybrid question. Would a Momentus XT 750GB 6Gb/s capable drive with 8GB of cache perform worse than using a 750GB Scorpio Black with a separate MSATA acting as 60GB of Cache using Intel Smart Response?
The first option is to use a 240/256GB MSATA mounted on the 1.8” adapter plugged into an SATA 6Gb/s port and use that to load the OS and primary games / programs. For greater capacity, I would pair that with one of the two hybrid drive options (the Scorpio option having the small MSATA mounted on the motherboard for lesser used programs and important files.
The other option would be to just fill the system with SSD drives starting out using a 240/256GB 2.5” SSD and adding the first and second MSATA drives as the system fills up. Would that be a better way of going about things?