Intel Smart Response - Effective Usage?

[Samwood]

I have a 128GB Samsung 830 SSD, 2x160GB 7,200.7 Seagate Barracudas in RAID0 (game drive) and will shortly be getting a 2TB drive for my media files etc.

My questions are,
1) With the option to use Intel Smart Response (im going to call it: ISR) to boots my HDD's performance what is my optimal setup?

2) I was thinking of creating 3 partitions on my SSD, 1 large (100GB+) for boot drive + some programs, 2 small (2-10GB each) partitions to use with ISR to boost my HDDs performance.
2.a) Is this possible?
2.b) If so, how effective will it be?
2.c) Also, what size is 'optimal' for these partitions?
2.d) I'd guess this last one will vary based on the drives usage, what would you suggest for my usage?

3) I'd also appreciate any other suggestions for either utilization of the ISR technology, or any other (free) software that can do similar (create what is effectively a 'hybrid' drive).

System: 3770k, asus p8z77-v, HD6950, 8GB, 128GB/320GB/2TB.

[Jasp]

The simple answer is don't bother tbh, you already have your SSD as boot drive and for gaming reasons the increase you get will be hear nor their in all honesty.

The mean idea behind ISR is if you are adding a SSD after a HDD and don't want to go thru the hassle of reformatting all the drives you can just use the SSD to boost your HDD.

Personally I wouldn't bother..

[Samwood]

Thanks Jasp.
My main reason for asking is that my 2xBarracudas are quite old and only have an 8Mb cashe. So I was thinking that maybe a 1GB partition on the SSD might help by effectively giving my game drive a huge cashe.

But im not sure if the ISR works like a standard cashe (i.e. only v.small 'chunks' of data stored), but with more room. Or similar to how the Seagate Momentus XT works (i.e. 'hot' data on the SSD, 'cold' data on the HDD).

I'd be more than happy to sacrifice 1GB or so (and go through the formatting process), to give my game drive a few % boost.

[Jasp]

I believe it works by caching the most used applications and programs much like the Momentus you mentioned, problem is you can't really cache a full game so its rather useless in that instance. Personally I'd just stick with the setup you have in all honesty

[Copperwings]

I've been running an ISR setup for a while, albeit with a 64GB SSD dedicated to caching a 600GB HDD (OS and office etc. installed on a second 64GB SSD). For my usage patterns, where I tend to play one game intensively at a time, I've found it really useful. After a couple of sessions the load times reduce *for that game* and play seems that little bit zippier

I did quite a bit of research before setting up the ISR and, to answer your second question, it's *extremely* difficult to assign a partition on an SSD as the cache. Intel expects you to dedicate a whole SSD as the cache to a another drive or raid volume.

As for how the cache works, my understanding is that the algorithm measures the usage of blocks on the HHD and caches the most recently used blocks on the SSD. It's relatively easy to kick those blocks out, especially with a smaller cache, so the performance tends to be better if you use the same data on the HHD for extended periods of time.

If you had a spare SSD of around 60GB, I'd suggest setting that up as the cache. However, I certainly wouldn't recommend purchasing one specifically for the purpose of ISR as, to me, the performance wouldn't justify the current cost.

[Samwood]

Thanks Jasp & Copperwings.

Well I think I will give it a go, see what happens. Just had the RAID setup fail on me anyway - one of the drives started grinding and the write speeds dropped to about 5Mb/s, though for some reason the read speeds were unaffected... So, anyway, im down to a single 160GB drive. Cant really decide whether to buy another old/quite-slow 160GB, or to 'demote' it to a backup/spare drive and get a new larger high-speed, low latency, larger drive, but that would cost more.

Also - @Copperwings - I've read that the max size for the ISR SSD caching is 64GB and that with drives over that size ISR will partition the drive and only use a maximum of 64GB. So there must be something in place to allow you to use an SSD partition. I'll (hopefully) report back with how I get on.

Thanks again for your help

[matts-uk]

Well I think I will give it [ISR} a go, see what happens...Cant really decide whether to buy another old/quite-slow 160GB, or to 'demote' it to a backup/spare drive and get a new larger high-speed, low latency, larger drive, but that would cost more.

Can you run to another 128GB Samsung SSD? Forget about ISR and RAID0 the SSDs on SATA3.

[Samwood]

Can you run to another 128GB Samsung SSD? Forget about ISR and RAID0 the SSDs on SATA3.

Yea that is one option that i'm thinking about. But I dont think that 256GB will be enough for an OS+programs+Games drive for me.

[HalloweenJack]

you only need games that require alot of frequent loading on an SSD - something like an MMO for example or maybe skyrim , something like an RTS you would only save time on the initial loading , then potntially the drive could even go to sleep whilst you play

[rtyall]

Old drives tend to be slow, was using a 250gb WDC as a scratch disk in my PC, but it's read speed was between 80 & 40 mbps. Have relegated this and got aother 2tb drive, so far it's not dropped below 100mbps when reading or writing files to it and I'm about 1tb in. I'm guessing this is simply because the higher density platters used in new drives can push more data under the read heads per second.
You'd be better served getting rid of the old drive and getting a new one, rather than getting another old one.

[Agent]

I believe it works by caching the most used applications and programs much like the Momentus you mentioned, problem is you can't really cache a full game so its rather useless in that instance.

You don't need to cache a full game in the same way you don't need to cache the entire Windows directory

All that needs caching to make it feel faster is the core files - most of which will be small, but plentiful. Exactly what caching helps with

Other larger package files will have a fast sequential read speed anyway.

But yes, as he's got a SSD, I don't disagree with you

[asderferjerkel]

Thanks Jasp & Copperwings.

Well I think I will give it a go, see what happens. Just had the RAID setup fail on me anyway - one of the drives started grinding and the write speeds dropped to about 5Mb/s, though for some reason the read speeds were unaffected... So, anyway, im down to a single 160GB drive. Cant really decide whether to buy another old/quite-slow 160GB, or to 'demote' it to a backup/spare drive and get a new larger high-speed, low latency, larger drive, but that would cost more.

Also - @Copperwings - I've read that the max size for the ISR SSD caching is 64GB and that with drives over that size ISR will partition the drive and only use a maximum of 64GB. So there must be something in place to allow you to use an SSD partition. I'll (hopefully) report back with how I get on.

Thanks again for your help

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-032826.htm

Doesn't look like you can set a custom size for the cache, though I guess it doesn't matter if you wanted 18.6 or 64GB anyway