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The tried-and-trusted Crucial m4 repackaged as a cache. But is it still as good?
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The tried-and-trusted Crucial m4 repackaged as a cache. But is it still as good?
If i had an SSD for the OS and Apps. Could this be used with a HDD to speed up a data drive?
The previous cache drives seemed to hint that it was the primary drive only, but the images contained show that you can select a target drive.
If it was possible is it worth it, if for example you store a game on this data drive and it get cached? Or would it be better to buy a larger SSD in the first place?
A bit obvious but: It's too expensive! :-)
I am am considering this with intel's feature to shove cache file on it to speed up normal disk drive ops, but reviews of that featur seem quite hit and miss
if the hardware is the same, why don't they just bundle it with the normal SSD's they sell?
or why doesn't someone release some software that let's you use any SSD as a cache drive like this?
isn't having a separate product pointless?
Today £90 gets you a 128Gb M4 from eBuyer... that seems to be the sensible choice if you're happy to re-install your OS (who isnt, I love doing that.. everything's fast again!)...
What is Windows boot time like, or does this only work once you've hit the desktop? How much quicker is this than just buying an SSD drive and sticking all your apps/games/etc on there?
Obviously buying a massive SSD is the best option when price is not an issue, but for the people without holes in their pockets would.....
Option1
120GB SSD (£105)
60GB cache SSD with 2TB HDD (£60 + £90)
Total = £255
or
Option2
240GB SSD (£215)
2TB HDD (£90)
Total = £305
Or would it just be better to add another SSD as required. e.g. 120GB SSD is full so add another (Total £300).
Is the cache drive only really a viable option if there is no SSD in the first place?
My perception of these cache drives is that they're only a stop-gap. So ideally you'd have a single large SSD that'd hold OS+apps, or if you couldn't afford that then perhaps a small SSD for OS plus one of these cache drive for apps.Quote:
Originally Posted by Scainer
I've got a small SSD for my OS, and it appears to make a notable difference - remember that you can get a 64GB SSD for less than the price of this cache drive! Problem is that I'd now like to speed up app loading, so either I can either "downsize" my apps area a little and use a 256GB SSD (about £175) or think about one of these cache drives, (assuming that you can use that cache drive on a drive other than the boot one).
I'm going to agree with you - I can't see why the company doing the software for Crucial, Corsair, etc doesn't just sell it to end users - unless they've got some exclusive deal with the hardware manufacturers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Unique
People like my father that can't be bothered to reinstall photo and video editing suites and get them all configured again. There are a generation of people that love using PCs, but can't be bothered to keep pissing around with them to get the benefits of modern hardware.Quote:
Originally Posted by streetster
This is a great idea, although I did get my father in the end to reinstall everything when we installed a new SSD - and he loves it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brewster0101
OK. I'll ignore that ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Brewster0101
@Scainer - SSD drives are not for storage at the moment (hah that's an ironic statement), even a 256Gb drive would just hold an OS (potentially partitioned to leave 32Gb for linux), and apps. As of today, I doubt anyone would have 256Gb of 'applications'. If you've got hundreds of movies/music/tv shows on your computer then it's unlikely you'll need to access any of them at 500mb/s. (*)
(*)... if you're a (professional) video/sound editor that needs the speed of an SSD then you are likely to have the budget to get a few of them, and am doubting that a 50Gb cache drive is going to help you out ;)
Also "who isnt, I love doing that.. everything's fast again!" was mindly tongue-in-cheek.. I dont like reinstalling stuff, but do enjoy the speed-up that it gives. One day (I say this every time I re-install) I will ghost my partition and then just re-ghost it back as/when I need to reinstall.
Does seem like SSD caching is becoming a hot topic in storage circles. Quickly Googling for other options;
Obviously there is Intel's Smart Response Technology on Z68/Z77/H77 motherboards.
Whats interesting is on Asus motherboards there is Asus SSD caching that seems to be built into the newest Asus motherboards like the P8Z77 WS. That board has Intel SRT and Asus SSD Caching!
The Asus SSD Caching seems to be built on Marvell HyperDuo technology that in turn has spawned some other products.
Silverstone EC05 seem to be a PCI Express addon card for SSD caching.
Similar thing from Addonics
Again another option based on HyperDuo but this time with the SSD onboard from Apacer
For an alternative software solution looks like there is a beta of FancyCache available for your SSD caching needs.
The Crucial Adrenaline seems the easiest solution at the moment. Couple of guys in my BF3 Platoon got it recently and they love it. Appears more options will be coming shortly :)
I have already emailed the software supplier to see if they will consider retailing the software independently but I think I am going to hear zilch on that
One big question. Let's say you have the software-is it reusable on other SSD'd or is it a oneshot registration download?
I think this is pretty cool for those that aren't tech savvy but would like SSD performance. I mean you may assume it's not hard to learn how to decide what goes on the SSD and what goes on the HDD but I assume for a large portion of the population, they only have 1 drive with everything on there. These are perfect for them.
I really can't see the point in these drives. If your tech savy enough to be buying one then surely your tech savy enough to buy a normal SSD and install windows! Your really not saving yourself a hugh amount of cash getting one of these when you can have 120gb SSD and a 2TB HDD for what £30-£40 more?
Ghosting a drive is also very easy and that completely negates installing windows!
Ah, I should have meant, buying it for non tech savvy users. For example I showed my 10 year old brother an SSD and told him why my computer is more responsive than his. He then asked if I could install it into his PC and then I linked him to my eBay listing to show him how much an SSD costs and told him that he wouldn't know how to organise his files/storage etc to have an SSD. I could say the same about my parents too as they were born in the generation when computers were very much a luxury item and it's only recently that they've started using the internet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sickorz
I can see the market for these, it's for those techies who's friend want their PC faster but you know they don't understand anything past what is in their My Documents folder as storage space. At the same time it is simple enough to put windows and all software on an SSD and then setup windows to save nothing on the SSD except new programs. I can see myself recommending someone to use one of these.
Does anybody knows how are data written back to HD ? Let say you have data base cached in ssd. And you changed few date and this is than firs written on ssd cache. How log it takes that this updated database is written on HD ? This is important when you make backups from HD so that you don't have old date from hd and not the new one from cache.
ghosting is easy, but if you have a drive larger than your SSD that uses more space than your SSD then you can't easily ghost without deleting/uninstalling stuff. the point of this is you don't have to reinstall stuff, and that's what takes a lot of time and hassle for a lot of people. it's not so much the tech savvy than the time and hassle. i usually keep small boot partitions and data on separate partitions to make it easier to keep regular ghost images and avoid having to reinstall windows unless i'm forced to (and i don't really suffer from slowdown as i regularly keep an eye on start up processes so nothing runs that i don't want to). it's not just installing programs but getting the settings you want etc, bookmarks, your outlook data, etcQuote:
Originally Posted by Sickorz
so the idea is good but i don't think seperate products like this will last long. i think shortly the software will be bundled or available so people just buy an SSD and have the option of how they want to use it
would like to see a `mega review` of a pure ssd vs caching on larger drives vs pcie SSD (eg the revo)
... My understanding is that the SSD is 'unknown' to Windows, therefore when you try to access a file (in this case your DB) it asks for the composite device of HDD+SSD and if the file is cached it'll pull it from SSD @ fast/MBs otherwise it will pull from HDD @ slow/MBs.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomazk
The question of consistency is a different matter, I imagine everything should be written back to the HDD @ what, 120Mb/s or whatever the drive can handle. If there's 1Gb of data to write, this could be written to the SSD drive in ~2-3 seconds (and then written to the HDD in a further 10s).. for prolonged writes I imagine you leave yourself vulnerable in the instance where the power is pulled from a system that is writing from SSD to HDD. Guess you'd just run chkdsk and hope for the best :)
As far as I know all writes go directly to the HDD that the SSD is fronting - the SSD is only providing read caching and, for all intents and purposes, is invisible to the OS. I'm guessing that that cache software is smart enough to know when the block that it's got on SSD is out of date and supply the user with the up-to-date version from the HDD, and update the cached copy it's got on the SSD. Then, next time the user needs that particular block, it'll be up to date and will get supplied from SSD.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomazk
Still can't help thinking that being able to front a large HDD (2TB?) with a large SSD (say a 256MB unit) would be the best use of this technology. So your apps and program libraries would eventually end up on SSD, but lesser used stuff (like photo's etc) would remain on the HDD.
Soon as I can afford it though, I'm moving my apps to SSD. :)
so how does this differ from something like fancy cache??
Likewise!Quote:
Originally Posted by crossy
Nice question. Would be interesting to see a comparison of an SSD Cache drive vs current-SSD drive + FancyCache... Hexus?Quote:
Originally Posted by HalloweenJack
Actually looks quite interesting and might be more a kick to a 1TB raid array.
I really can't be bothered with a re-install.
With that I may go SSD with windows 8 if I like it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by crossy
Quote:
Originally Posted by article
Nope - too expensive, and too big a cache drive. You may as well have all your apps on programs installed directly on a proper SSD and have photos and other media on the 2TB - even the most non-techie person can understand that they have a boot drive and a storage drive because they appear different in My Computer.Quote:
Still can't help thinking that being able to front a large HDD (2TB?) with a large SSD (say a 256MB unit) would be the best use of this technology. So your apps and program libraries would eventually end up on SSD, but lesser used stuff (like photo's etc) would remain on the HDD.
No point effectively losing 256GB of space from your storage drive.
I didn't explain myself properly - I'm not talking about the folks on Hexus, more Joe Public. I've seen a heck of a lot of systems that had a single drive and when I've quietly suggested that other layouts would have "better" have been told that this was "too much trouble". On the other hand if you had this software plus a large drive then you can guarantee that OS and programs would be migrated to SSD with little, if any, effort on the part of the user.Quote:
Originally Posted by miniyazz
Note that I said "the best use of the technology to me" not "I intend to use that technology to". If/when I can afford that large SSD (although I could really do with one for my laptop too) then I'll be doing a lift 'n' shift from my current "D" (/APPS) drive to the new SSD. Although first priority at the moment is to upgrade my current 64GB boot drive to something a little larger, because I've had a couple of large apps that have insisted (no choice given) in slapping a lot of data in there and I'm running out of free space as a result.
Thanks for the real world benchmarks - really put things in perspective!
I'd still tend to disagree, because I've yet to meet someone who is sufficiently IT literate to want a fast computer who is unwilling or unable to manage a storage drive in additional to their usual drive (be it a small or a large HDD). With smaller SSDs I totally see the point, but 256GB is so large you'd struggle to be limited by space meaning it is simply no hassle, for anyone, to put photos/other large media on a storage drive.Quote:
Originally Posted by crossy
Anyway you've obviously had different experiences so we'll have to agree to disagree.
You've never had to deal with the trauma of supporting attention-span-limited teenagers then... ;) They don't want you "interfering with my stuff" but still want help to get into Farcebook (or like whatever) quickly.Quote:
Originally Posted by miniyazz
Of course, next time we get into that argument about "keeping stuff organized = faster/easier" I'll be able to quote you, adding "so see, it's not just me saying that!!!!". So :thumbsup: for the support! :mrgreen:
Fair enough.. but with one proviso. This isn't about it being no hassle to micromanage a small SSD and a large HDD because Windows + programs + docs won't fit on the ssd - it's about being no hassle to keep media on a large HDD, and not worrying about windows/programs/docs (everything else) being on an SSD, because there's so much space it won't be filled except by putting media on it. Just to be clear for future reference :pQuote:
Originally Posted by crossy
I don't see how people here aren't being limited by space, I already have ~200GB of games just from Steam . . . in terms of all programs, I'm eating at 330GB + 20GB for Windows, so 350GB. >_>'
256GB enough for a SSD? Heh.
The caching drives plus a larger HDD makes more sense to me as a heavy gamer at this point in time. Managing Steam and petty stuff takes more time than I'd ever save on a straight SSD solution, so there are those outside "Joe Public" that benefit from it (caching) too . . . fewer? Yep, but still exist.
I am with shike on this, not all my programs/games will fit on a large ssd, so the fact this will give me ssd like performance on the programs I am using a lot currently is great.
I'm inclined to agree. Currently debating with myself whether to go for Windows on SSD completely, or go with this solution - which erases the problem of limited storage space, plus takes out the bother or reinstalling Windows + all my programmes and getting Windows to how I like it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Percy1983
How does it fare with dual boot setups? I know it doesn't support Vista, but I use Vista 32bit for various development work that doesn't like Win7 x64. So how would it deal with a dual boot Win7 x86/x64 setup?