I don't see the point when you can get a cheap 64GB drive for less.
It's £60 for a 'cache' drive or £40 for a standard SSD.
Surely the only difference is some bundled software?
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I don't see the point when you can get a cheap 64GB drive for less.
It's £60 for a 'cache' drive or £40 for a standard SSD.
Surely the only difference is some bundled software?
SSD cache drives don't seem that good a value though. Wonder how good the cache controller boards are at doing the same job, then you can get a cheaper normal SSD (or spend a few pounds more and get something bigger).
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...formance-by-70
Hi, I don't think you need a Z68 chipset as the some cache drives are onboard?
I am looking for cheap option because the capacity pricing is a bit large.
scaryjim: I was looking at the Corsair Accelerator also, but that SATA II interface made me wary, will it cut it in terms of performance. I was actually thinking of buying the £40 64GB SanDisk SSD as a cache (unless that is not possible).
Can any SSD be used as a cache, or only specific drives come with the caching software necessary?
I assume most users expect everything to be smooth, instead of expecting mostly used programs and files to be more snappy :P the idea of a cache where I don't need to think about "behind the scenes" knowing mostly used files will be cached is a nice thought.
willzzz: another thing I like about say a standard 64GB SSD is that using a drive as a cache you'll know all your data won't muck up if the SSD fails. I get where you are coming from, so that's why I am wondering if you can get software for caching on a standard SSD drive?
danceswithunix: thanks for the link, that controller actually looks promising, £10 for a cheap solution along with a decent SSD. Reviews say it acts like a RAID 1 with some extra umf, that sounds decent. May be decent paired up with a 64GB SSD.
Interesting info :P
I was thinking about a small cache drive paired with an average HDD for my parents laptop (HDD is going on it), so the cheaper solution sounds decent.
I'm sure you can use a normal SSD as a cache drive, although I don't know about software. Google it.
I really wouldn't worry about data loss, an SSD is very unlikely to just die, you should get warning. It's not like a HDD can't suddenly die.
Anyway, you aren't really storing data on the drive, just OS and other programs. You loose these and you just reinstall.
Looks like I may need to download some free open source caching solution, most cache software is bundled in with the SSD unfortunately.
Would it be better to install programs on the SSD, or install the OS and some programs on it? If the SSD goes, I would need to format the HDD anyway, because there wouldn't be registry entries for the program directories?
I would keep all personal stuff on the HDD though definitely.
Install the OS and your most used programs yes.
A lot of programs can repair themselves if registry entries are lost. I installed Win8 recently and all the programs I used before still work without having to reinstall. But I think you underestimate the reliability of modern SSDs, failures are less and less common.
SATAII will decrease performance compared to SATAIII, on a fast SSD, but I'm not sure it's that big a deal.
As I said before, it's the access times that matter, and SATA3 just allows for a higher ceiling on peak transfer speeds. It'll still be blazing fast, just not quite as quick as it could be.
I'd start with the OS, certainly, as for programs/personal stuff, that depends on what you're using them for. I quite like having the Outlook PST file on my SSD, as it lets me search much more quickly.
If you're worried about reliability, just back up every so often. At the very least (and it's not really a backup, but it's something), you could sync the documents from your SSD over to your HDD every so often.
Well around 50% of my 500GB drive is actually full, so would it be feasible to partition this drive, one for my programs and one for a copy purpose. I know it isn't exactly a backup as it is on the same disk, unless I purchase a smaller capacity drive for chucking personal stuff onto?
At the moment I use a separate partition for personal files, so I have two copies of everything. This is in case my Windows partition corrupts. I also have the files on an older HDD that I do not use at all, it isn't in operation it is just there in case of a problem.
So the best option you are saying is to be install OS and some programs onto this SSD and use the HDD for the rest. So would buying that Silverstone HDDBOOST be a good option? Apparently it can help extend its lifetime because the controller monitors everything.
What would be called a "fast SSD", seen as I am looking at the SanDisk which isn't top of the line, would the performance be choked by the SATA II bandwidth?
I'm not really convinced by the HDDBoost, I don't really see what it offers, nor how it extends lifetime.
I expect it made more sense when SSD were more expensive.
I'd keep things simple, if you have a little extra to spend then spend it on a better SSD.
I don't have all my software on the SSD,only the ones which can really show an advantage with an SSD. However,I would try to get a 120GB or 128GB as I found my previous 64GB a little bit too small for my purposes.Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeo01
Don't worry about lifetime, it was a massive scare when SSDs came out but realistically you'd need to be writing ridiculous amounts of data to reach the limit of an SSD's life. I wouldn't fancy an standard disk's chances much either over a long period. Frankly, by the time it happens (if it ever happens), you can probably buy a disk 10* bigger for a tenth of the price.Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeo01
As for your 500GB disk, I'm not sure there's any value to partitioning. It'll still be just as vulnerable to failure. Might as well just create a folder, it'll be a lot easier.
As for backup, it's all about redundancy. A disk in the same machine is redundant against drive failure, but not the PSU exploding. A disk outside the PC is redundant against the PSU exploding, but not fire/theft. A disk in a relative's is redundant against fire/theft, but not a meteorite hitting the UK. A remote server in the US is redundant against a meteorite hitting the UK, but not an alien invasion. You get the idea :p
willzz: According to the reviews (hardware canucks) the HDDBOOST apparently decides what data goes on the SSD, so if it thinks the data is unsuitable it writes it to the HDD, apparently.
I could fit all my things on a 64GB model, but I can get a 128GB model for £55 which I may go for. An extra £15 for double the capacity.
Snootyjim: good explanation, I think it's safe to say a meteorite won't be hitting the UK any time soon (I hope not anyway!). I will just make couple of copies on different media then to make sure it's safe(r). I suppose the scare stories still feel real, but like you said I shouldn't really worry about it, I have just always gone with disk options and labelled top brands safe until the 4 year mark.
My HDD is still going strong and my old one has yet to go on me (that's around 5 years old) so if an SSD would last around that it's win win :D
Later down the line I could always purchase something else if SSD prices are down then.
It doesn't seem to only write suitable data to the SSD and there are other drawbacks as well.
From the same review:
Quote:
Unfortunately, there is a major down side to doing things this way. It may be a lot easier on the SSD’s cells and eliminates stuttering, but it means that unless you either reboot your system frequently or manually trigger (via included software) synchronization, rebooting may take an awfully long while. If the HDDBoost does incremental backups, the added time may not be all that bad while if full backups are done every time you reboot, this could significantly add time to the process. Worse still, the time required would only get worse the larger the solid state drive used.
Interestingly enough, the controller is not smart enough to just load the OS and most frequently used applications on to the solid state drive. Rather, it clones the first chunk of the hard drive to the solid state drive. This means if you use a 30GB solid state drive the first 30GB worth of data on the hard drive will be copied to the solid state drive, even if this includes less time sensitive data like songs, pictures, etc. Needless to say, you still need to keep you hard drive defragmented or HDDBoost performance will suffer as well.
So it basically is a RAID 1 setup with some caching solution added in. At £10 it isn't too bad for a small build though with added umf.
Although looking at some feedback on Scan it doesn't seem that good, apparently it has some problems, may be just the firmware, but still.
Anandtech bench has some benchmarks of the same drive with Sata 3 and 6 Gb/sec, the difference is measurable but not that big. If you can send commands to the drive twice as fast then in theory the seek time is halved, but as you said the jump from rotating media 10ms seek time to 0.1ms on an SSD is what you really notice and a further doubling is kind of a small increment on that. I have a 3gb/sec motherboard so was wondering if a motherboard upgrade was worth it, and frankly I don't think it is. Not just for SSD speed anyway.Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
SATA 3gb vs 6gb:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/380?vs=379
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/372?vs=371
Fast hard drive vs Agility 3:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/182?vs=372
As far as SSD cache goes, my opinion is that it makes getting SSD speed easy whilst not having to worry about where you put your data and programs. 128GB isn't an awful lot of room if you start pulling down a few games from steam (my HTPC's 100GB system partition is already full of games, for instance), so even if you got a 128GB SSD for OS purposes you'd always need to think about both where you were storing downloaded media and where you were installing programs. Get a 60GB cache drive and you'll have an adaptive system that will give you near SSD performance, whilst leaving you free to install what you want, where you want.
For power users a larger OS SSD + storage drive might well be better value, but it'll still require careful management, particularly if you're looking at a 128GB SSD maximum. For the majority of people (including lazy power users who can't be bothered to micromanage their disk usage - like me ;) ) I think cache SSDs are a very desirable solution.
Of course, people with an appropriate Intel chipset motherboard can use any SSD and Smart Response to get the same effect, but the OP doesn't have an Intel motherboard. So for a balance of big performance gain plus ease of use, a cache SSD makes implicit sense - particularly if this is an upgrade to the existing system, because they can just install the cache drive, set up the software, and they're done: no hassle doing reinstalls etc.