SSD Caching vs Partitions

eddiew

eddiew

eddiew

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Hi all,

Simple question, possibly a hard answer :D

I'm tempted by a small SSD (say 60 gig) to set up as a cache for my main 1TB hard drive - but I'm also a fan of partitions, and said drive is split into 4, which I'm very very reluctant to faff around with.

So, when using the almighty power of the Z68 chipset in this way, am I going to get stuck with only caching one partition, or is it smart enough to do all of them as a disk? Or would I be able to set up separate 20GB caches for each partition?

Cheers!
 
using an SSD just to cache a mechanical hard drive is surely overkill?

Why not just use your 1TB for storage and the SSD for your OS, that'll give you the biggest performance boost.
 
matt100 said:
using an SSD just to cache a mechanical hard drive is surely overkill?
Click to expand...

I'm kind of assuming there's a reason the feature is built into the Z68 chipset :)

Plus not all my applications are on my OS drive - and I strongly suspect 2/3rds of files on C:\ are not regularly used. Kind of hoping that the smart caching will select only the stuff that's actually useful on high speed access :)
 
matt100 said:
using an SSD just to cache a mechanical hard drive is surely overkill?

Why not just use your 1TB for storage and the SSD for your OS, that'll give you the biggest performance boost.
Click to expand...

OVERKILL? absolutely not. Using a small SSD for SRT is great and the boost you get is brilliant. It's very fast and boot up times is comarable to a SSD only system, Aplications load in an instant and game loads are slashed.

Using a small SSD for a primary drive is a complete total waste of time unless you got money to burn on a 512gb SSD.

A 64gb SSD is best used for caching, even a 128gb SSD is just too small for a primary drive and most of your games will end up on a non accelerated machanical hdd, use the SSD to enable SRT and accelerate your entire machanical hdd....and not worry about limited space.

I have a 128gb SSD and have it set up for SRT and the performance increase over a standard hdd is amazing.
 
Remember though you'll have to set the Sata mode in the bios to raid before installing your OS to get SRT to work, although there is a way you can enable SRT without a reinstall.
 
Using small 60GB SSD as cache is excellent.

I use my 64GB M4 SSD drive with my Samsung 1TB F3 HD,very noticeable gains in speed etc...so ideal for Z68 boards with small SSDs.

Using SSD as cache you don't have to worry about space,one of the reasons why I did not put OS on SSD etc..since by the time you add Win7 plus a few programs its full so you would then go over to mechanical HD for storage,as SSD cache you get the best of both worlds ie speed and no worry of SSD being full (only full for cache which is automatic).


I would use more then 20GB for SSD cache, 60-64GB is better for sure since you can cache more programs etc that you regularly use.
 
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spankingtexan said:
OVERKILL? absolutely not. Using a small SSD for SRT is great and the boost you get is brilliant. It's very fast and boot up times is comarable to a SSD only system, Aplications load in an instant and game loads are slashed.

Using a small SSD for a primary drive is a complete total waste of time unless you got money to burn on a 512gb SSD.

A 64gb SSD is best used for caching, even a 128gb SSD is just too small for a primary drive and most of your games will end up on a non accelerated machanical hdd, use the SSD to enable SRT and accelerate your entire machanical hdd....and not worry about limited space.

I have a 128gb SSD and have it set up for SRT and the performance increase over a standard hdd is amazing.
Click to expand...

ok fair enough but is it fair to assume that if you can quite easily get by with a 128gb drive as I can (normally only have the games I'm playing installed then remove when I'm finished) there's more benefit to be had from having your OS on the SSD rather than using it for cache?

genuinely didn't know you could use it like that however, interesting.. could have saved me the cost of upgrading my full 60gb to my 128gb!

Whats the performance difference between a fast mechanical drive and ssd cache vs just an ssd with all your apps installed on it with a mechanical for data (music videos etc) as I have?
 
matt100 said:
ok fair enough but is it fair to assume that if you can quite easily get by with a 128gb drive as I can (normally only have the games I'm playing installed then remove when I'm finished) there's more benefit to be had from having your OS on the SSD rather than using it for cache?

genuinely didn't know you could use it like that however, interesting.. could have saved me the cost of upgrading my full 60gb to my 128gb!

Whats the performance difference between a fast mechanical drive and ssd cache vs just an ssd with all your apps installed on it with a mechanical for data (music videos etc) as I have?
Click to expand...


Review with benchmarks and 20GB SSD here http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/printpage/Intel-Smart-Response-Technology-Explained/1292
 
Performance benchmarks are definitely convincing :)

Still not sure how it'd react to having 4 partitions on my primary HDD though... Anyone tried to do that before?
 
spankingtexan said:
Remember though you'll have to set the Sata mode in the bios to raid before installing your OS to get SRT to work, although there is a way you can enable SRT without a reinstall.
Click to expand...

Once you've got the Raid drivers installed, theres a registry fix to change them from 'start with the rest of windows' to 'start at boot time' which will get you in business.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStor\ Start [REG_DWORD] set it to 0 ('start at boot time').
 
Ok, this is all interesting reading. I was about to settle on a Crucial M4 128GB for my upcoming SB build, but I was slightly concerned about how best to manage my files/games/documents folders etc to make do with the space.

Now, it seems ppl here are suggesting that a 64GB SSD as an SRT cache drive is actually a BETTER bet than a 128GB SSD OS drive? As in you get comparable start-up and load times for your most/currently used apps but ditch the worries about space?

Is that fair to say? With a 64GB SSD as a cache would I really see near-native-SSD speeds for system start-up, opeining FF, Office docs, etc, and for loading my currently-played Steam/other games (and level loads as well?)?

Would be nice if true as not only would it end that concern, but would save me £80 or so as well...
 
I also can't decide if I should use a SSD for caching or my OS, be nice to know if caching really is as fast as having OS on the drive
 
Could you use an SSD as your OS drive and then another SSD as a cache for a HDD?
I've got a 128GB SSD as my OS drive + some games, a 120GB SSD as my games drive and a 2x1TB HDD as my storage drive (and any games I can't fit on my SSDs) thinking now about getting a couple of 64GB SSDs to cache the HDDs.

My only worry with using only caching is how often do you have to use something for it to be cached? How quickly does it get removed from the cache when not used?
If I only played 1 or 2 games then I'd put them on an SSD, but since I might go through 10+ games within a week (not finish them, just play them a bit).
 
I guess I'm the only person in the world who still partitions his main HDD then :P

Unfortunately google does not know what will happen if I have a 100 gig windows partition, and a 900 gig stuff partition, and want to put an SSD cache on the whole drive :(
 
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