60-64GB SSD with good background garbage collection for Intel SRT cache

[PingSpike]

I'm having trouble knowing what to look for for a cache SSD for Intel Smart Response Technology setup. I have a 120GB intel 320 SSD now, but reviews seem to indicate its onboard garbage collection routine is not very good. I was thinking of setting up a Windows install on a spinner disk and speeding it up with the cache drive. Then I'd keep some games and other applications on the 120GB I already have.

But most of the reviews that talk about garbage collection for 64GB drives are kind of old. There don't seem to be many reviews on newer available drives that are that small, but SRT can only use 64GB (which seems stupid to me but that's how Intel rolls I guess).

I don't need a super high quality drive for this since I'm planning to run in enhanced mode (write to disk at the same time) rather than the maximize mode so that if the SSD dies on me I can just take it out and move on with my day (albeit at a slightly slower pace).

Can anyone recommend a drive?

 

[LoveMachine]

I've been using a Crucial m4 64GB with poor success, but I think it's because its a bad drive (long story, drive keeps disappearing, requiring a powercycle to revive). It's a purely anecdotal reference, but perhaps choose another drive. Also, I think SRT can only access up to ~18GB, so you can partition it out to have a small spare area for whatever. Perhaps leave a bit unpartitioned as an overprovision for garbage collection to enhance drive longevity.

Edit, SRT will use the whole drive if you tell it, but I think AT's article on it said that ~18 was the max that provided any benefit. I might be mis-remembering that, but I'm too lazy to look it up.

 

[PingSpike]

Its confusing because it seems the selection options in the setup are quite poor. You pretty much get the opportunity to use ~18GB or whole drive...which is really 64GB or the entire drive, whichever is less. Then the remaining becomes available as a separate non cache partition.

Anand's review is not great. As near as I can tell, they only tested caching with the Intel 311 that intel recommended for it, which is a 20GB drive. Its pretty hard to tell from that review if that is actually a good enough size since they have no data for comparison. If I wanted to take Intel at their word I'd just read their marketing materials. The 311 retails for $120. It makes the entire concept of caching not very compelling at that price. If I'm looking at dropping 120 bones I'm just going to step up to a larger SSD and bag the whole thing. Even if you're married to expensive Intel SSD drives that price is stupid IMO when placed up against other Intel drives. I know, I know...its a special SSD because it lasts a long time. It seems like a crappy drive in all other respects though and part of the appeal of SRT to me is when using enhanced (no write cache) mode SSD reliability concerns are largely mitigated anyway. I really would have liked to see some benchmarks using some faster or cheaper SATAIII SSD drives and the 64GB size. I should give the article a deeper read though in case I missed something.

Coming back around, it seems like a fast and cheap drive is the way to go IMO and I see no reason not to get more space. It should at worst just cache some programs that are sparingly used...at best if you use several different programs it should perform better. Personally, I think Intel chose the 64GB max purely for market segmentation reasons, probably to either avoid server customers from using it or so they could sell a larger cache space option on the next chipset as a feature.

Thanks for the anti-recommendation though. That drive doesn't seem super cheap anyway though so I'm not sure it would have been my first choice. Although I do generally think of Crucial as a good brand.

 

[Cerb]

I'm having trouble knowing what to look for for a cache SSD for Intel Smart Response Technology setup. I have a 120GB intel 320 SSD now, but reviews seem to indicate its onboard garbage collection routine is not very good.

Do you have a 330, or are you mixing up reviews? The 320 isn't fast, and it's not up to par with some newer drives, when it comes to steady-state performance, but it's not bad.

But most of the reviews that talk about garbage collection for 64GB drives are kind of old. There don't seem to be many reviews on newer available drives that are that small

That's because most ~60GB drives have half the NAND channels populated, and thus get only a bit better than half the performance, and thus won't look so great, thus manufacturers only tend to send out 120GB+ review samples . On the occasion you do find reviews including them, they're generally lackluster, compared to 120GB+. It's just not cost effective, I guess, for the makers to buy lower-density flash.

Just get one that offers good steady-state performance (Xbit Labs and AT reviews are good for that), and give a little more over-provisioning than factory (FI, make a 50GB MBR partition on a 64GB drive, leaving the end of the LBAs empty).

 

[pcunite]

I think this whole caching issue is a very short term solution. I'm using a boot 128GB Sata III drive and it is plenty of room for everything I do. I have another drive for data. In your case, just go for a bigger SSD.

 

[LoveMachine]

I think this whole caching issue is a very short term solution. I'm using a boot 128GB Sata III drive and it is plenty of room for everything I do. I have another drive for data. In your case, just go for a bigger SSD.

For some, caching is the smarter way to go. If you are setting up a system for a non-tech savvy user (e.g. Mom), SRT is brilliant and requires minimal fuss beyond the initial setup. And you don't have to have that conversation over the phone when they call with the "this drive is almost full" error after downloading the latest email chain letter of adorable cat pictures to the SSD rather than a media drive. To each his/her own...

 

[bryanW1995]

I'm going to dump a bunch of links on you first:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2614
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4244/intel-ssd-320-review
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2738

All a couple of years old, and they are quite a read if you're not really interested in ssd's, but I found them useful when I bought my first x25m bitd (still using it btw). IIRC, you will get ~80% of the maximum performance out of your 320 series even though you can't trim it, and as you will often just be using it for caching, anyway, you might not even miss that other 20%. My 80gb x25m served me quite well for about 6 months as a cache drive before I finally took it to work and upgraded to full-time ssds.

It is quite difficult to use the non-cache portion of your ssd for the OS/data/etc, but I think after 4-5 hours of reading/trial/error I was able to get it working. Here's a link for how to do that:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2172381

 

[Zaxx]

I think this whole caching issue is a very short term solution. I'm using a boot 128GB Sata III drive and it is plenty of room for everything I do. I have another drive for data. In your case, just go for a bigger SSD.

Totally agree with this. When SRT first hit the scene, SSDs were still pretty pricey so it made a decent alternative to buying a larger SSD. Now that prices are much more reasonable now, the best route is to buy a 120/128GB ssd to run the OS. Not only will it smoke an SRT setup but it'll also be much more reliable...going with SRT just adds to the list of what can go wrong. If you must go with a caching solution, you'd be better off buying a 60/64GB cache drive like the Ocz Synapse or any other that uses the same caching software with will beat he crap outta Intel's SRT. Btw...re: GC...any SandForce drives do pretty well without trim unless you plan to hammer the hell out of it 24/7. Just letting it idle for a few hours every now and then is all it takes for the controller to do house cleaning.

 

[PingSpike]

Thanks for the reviews. I knew they were on there but I didn't know some of that information about TRIM recovery was in them.

Are SSDs getting cheaper? I suppose so, but they are still fairly expensive. If you want to just do everything on the SSD and not worry about it I think even a 256GB drive would be tight for many people, and the 512GB drives cost a fortune. And if you store a bunch of media on your drive even the 512GB isn't going to do the job. You'll want a separate spinner.

So the solution that is suggested is to basically manage the data between two drives. Store the stuff that benefits from the SSD on the SSD and less used stuff on the spinner. I'm living that right now, and I don't really love thinking about it and its not quite as simple as it sounds.

Honestly, I look at SRT as a work around for a bunch of stupid design decisions on the part of MS. Why Windows Vista+ was designed with an unstoppable file space eating cancer like the winsxs folder is beyond me. I've heard people say that there are hard links to the redundant files in there but after reading a bunch about it, it seems like that is a good idea that might have made it into the marketing materials but not the actual implementation. There are ways to reduce this somewhat but its a lot of pointless busywork and you'll still continue to slowly lose the fight. Microsoft once again blew it and didn't do anything to help out with emerging desktop technologies like SSDs. I can't imagine administering servers and dealing with this crap.

And don't get me started on all the programs that try and dump everything onto the C drive. Everything from driver installs to game saves and of course tons of dependencies. Most of this can be manually managed and redirected, some of it can't. You can use symbolic links of course, but that's more busywork.

I guess that's what is more appealing about the caching to me. Let some software do this crazy business for you. I'm hoping all the never accessed portions of the bloated Windows folder are banished to a spinner disk where they are available for the once every two years I access them while leaving the space on the SSD for the games I play often. I don't know why MS didn't include something useful like this in the new version of their OS, instead their designs are actively hostile to SSD drive usage for the most part and they seem to have focused on rearranging the start menu in new ways that require more clicks with each revision.

I think I ended up on a bit of a rant there.

 

[Cerb]

Why Windows Vista+ was designed with an unstoppable file space eating cancer like the winsxs folder is beyond me. I've heard people say that there are hard links to the redundant files in there but after reading a bunch about it, it seems like that is a good idea that might have made it into the marketing materials but not the actual implementation.

No, it's in the implementation just fine, but the damn thing still grows, and never shrinks. It's not the 30+GB it may report, but it still can get to 10+GB, given enough time. Pruning should have been built in to the design.

I think I ended up on a bit of a rant there.

Yeah, but a pretty true one.