Z68 - BOOT SSD & CACHING

GRiDlock

GRiDlock

GRiDlock

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Question. Can you partition a 120GB SSD to be say 80GB boot and 40GB for the Z68 smart response? If so any pages confirming how?
 
I believe you can but I have no idea how it's done I'm afraid. An additional complication in doing this is that you'll have to align the partitions manually.
 
Going to order a Corsair Force 3 120Gb with the plan for about 30Gb cache and the main block for the boot. Any instructions would be great.
 
Doesn't ssd caching hammer the drive with writes and that is why intel released a slc ssd for the cache?
 
Atom said:
Doesn't ssd caching hammer the drive with writes and that is why intel released a slc ssd for the cache?
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I'm not too clued up about the varying technologies of SSD's, but surely regardless of how much you hammer an SSD, it's at least going to last 5 years, by which time you probably will have upgraded it.
Is it the write speeds which degrade or does the SSD just die?

I used Intel SRT caching on my 30gb OCZ vertez and after 24 hours of uptime it had written 230GB of data.
 
I've done this on my 120GB Crucial M4. I'm booting from the SSD, and boosting a 1TB mechanical drive with the same SSD.

I started a post about this the other week but it didn't seem like anyone was interested.

You won't get to use 40GB for the ISRT IIRC because you have to do your setup in a particular fashion. Here is my quick guide from memory:

You will need: An SSD, your main storage drive, a spare drive.
  1. Have your spare drive and your SSD installed.
  2. Set your SATA controller to RAID (even though you arnt using RAID you still need to do it for ISRT to work)
  3. Install Windows onto your spare drive
  4. Just install your mobo chipset drivers etc and the ISRT application (download the latest chipset and ISRT drivers from your mobo website)
  5. Configure your ISRT to boost your OS volume
  6. Disable the acceleration (dont worry your SSD will have created its caching partition now and the rest of the volume is free for an OS install)
  7. Turn off and take out the spare drive, put in your main storage drive you want to boost
  8. Install windows onto the spare SSD room (you will probably need to supply the setup with your SATA Raid drivers for it to pick up the SSD)
  9. Install the mobo chipset and ISRT drivers etc. It should recognise the SSD caching is already set up, just not enabled, so enable it for your storage drive.
  10. Done

The main reason for this convolution is because when you set up ISRT for the first time, it wipes all of the SSD.
 
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Ideally, I am also looking to make use of this new feature on an upgrade I have just purchased.

I have a Crucial M4 128GB and a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F4 on the way. Though I don't a spare drive to do the above with :-/
 
tlrBeta said:
I have a Crucial M4 128GB and a 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F4 on the way. Though I don't a spare drive to do the above with :-/
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As far as I am aware there is no other way to do this than to install Windows somewhere other than the SSD. Maybe you can shrink your 2TB volume by 40Gigs and install Windows there?

fleming222 said:
SSD Life tells you.
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Cheers, I'll check it out tonight.
 
Guys can I ask a noob question?

My system is all set up lovely on a wd caviar black. Can I just slot in say a small ssd and configure it or do I need to do a fresh install etc?
 
welshdragon said:
Guys can I ask a noob question?

My system is all set up lovely on a wd caviar black. Can I just slot in say a small ssd and configure it or do I need to do a fresh install etc?
Click to expand...

If you are going to use the whole drive as a cache drive then you just plug it in and set it to accelerate. No reinstall required.
However your hard drive needs to be set as RAID in the BIOS.
 
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Great. SO just plug the ssd in, presumably format it, then ste both as raid. Magic. Will setting as raid upset it at all in so much as it'll want to start over?
 
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welshdragon said:
Greta. SO just plug the ssd in, presumably format it, then ste both as raid. Magic. Will setting as raid upset it at all in so much as it'll want to start over?
Click to expand...

Depends on your current installation. You need to set your SATA controller to RAID in order for the SSD to get picked up for ISRT usage. Your OS volume probably hasn't been installed using a RAID driver, so before switching the RAID controller I would make sure your OS volume has the RAID device drivers installed for your mobo. I think that's all you will need to do.

Of course, backing up your files beforehand is a mighty smart thing to do!
 
I bought the Corsair Force 3 and installed Windows 7, speeds are incredible; Cold boot to login takes about 8 seconds. Will dig out a spare drive and try the instructions above. Thx
 
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