about to pull the trigger on an 120GB SSD for OS/SRT drive

Chaoticlusts

Member
Jul 25, 2010
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Hey all

as the title states I'm about to buy a Vertex III Max IOPS 120GB for a OS drive *and* an SRT drive was thinking about splitting it so it's 56GB OS partition and using the remaining 64GB (I'm pretty sure the 120GB rating is taking into account reserved space otherwise I can cut a few more GB's out) for an SRT Cache coupled with a 3TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000 as primarily a games drive (will probably throw some other stuff on there I am considering a 2TB to save cash but the 3TB isn't much more and I will use it eventually)

basically I've been poking around about this for a bit but there's a few questions unanswered..one being how much wear and tear will it add to the drive (the main reason for paying the little extra for the Max IOPS since it uses 3xnm NAND so theoretically a bit more long lasting)

The second question is will there be a noticeable performance impact from running it as an OS drive *and* an SRT Cache...if it's running data on both, I'm assuming it won't be an issue with the bandwidth on the latest gen SSD's but figured I'd ask those who know more ^_^

So put simply will running a drive as *both* pure SSD OS and SRT games drive cause problems?

(side note why can't anyone do a performance review of this >_< I brought this up in here before as to whether it was possible which people kindly helped with but still can't see anything on how well it works other than speculation)

Any help would be greatly appreciated ^_^

*edit*

AAANNNDDD we finally have confirmation this WORKS thanx to one of the lovely helpful members of this board all the details on how to set it up in the link below looking forward to trying it myself
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=31868683
 
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Fallen Kell

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
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I have mixed feeling about this. While I can see your reason for wanting to do this, I think this is something that should really be separated. Personally I can't see a need to have more than 120GB on the solid state at this point in time. The only reason to need more than that would be if you are doing video/photo editing, and at that point, the current Sandforce drives are just not the right fit (since that is not highly compressible or de-dup'ible data).
 

Chaoticlusts

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Jul 25, 2010
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I have mixed feeling about this. While I can see your reason for wanting to do this, I think this is something that should really be separated. Personally I can't see a need to have more than 120GB on the solid state at this point in time. The only reason to need more than that would be if you are doing video/photo editing, and at that point, the current Sandforce drives are just not the right fit (since that is not highly compressible or de-dup'ible data).

hmm you mean from a space perspective? my main reason for wanting space in the region of 1+TB's accelerated by an SSD is that my game collection will be pushing 1TB nowdays and has grown exponentially in the last year so I expect that'll continue..wouldn't be surprised if it was over 2 in another year or so...while a lot of these games don't get played most of the time I will flick between games a bit then play a couple of different ones over a week repeatedly..figured with the way SSD Caching works that would be a good fit for it..the alternative is constantly copying games on and off the SSD itself and when games can be over 20GB each that doesn't give you many to put on it at any given time

I just woke up so I might be misreading what you said sorry if thats the case >_<
 

Dahak

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2000
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From everything I read about it, unfortunately I do not think that you can do what you want. It will allow you to select a portion of the drive, but it caches data from a system level, meaning you cannot select which drive you want to cache.
 

Dahak

Diamond Member
Mar 2, 2000
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Ahh, I had seen that screen shot somewhere else, but it was not as clear and could not read all the headings right. So I guess you could do what you want.
 

TemjinGold

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2006
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I would say a better idea is to keep the SSD whole and simply install the handful of games that you currently flick between onto it (uninstall them when done and install others.) Keep the rest of the games on the 3TB. This will give you way better performance than what you are planning.
 

Chaoticlusts

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Jul 25, 2010
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even if I could only put about 2-3 games on at a time and I might flick between 4 in a week? (remember a lot of games are starting to take up 20+GB per game) the reason I was thinking of going this way was to be able to keep every game I own installed and not have to worry about a long copy time transferring 20GB of data off a HDD just so I can reduce the loadtimes on the game I'm about to play..seems a bit defeatist doing it that way when I could have a generic (though granted not consistent since it'll need to load assets the slow way sometimes) speed boost across the 1TB or so of games I have

Unfortunately if I was a multiplayer gamer or still played WoW this would be simple..just keep WoW or TF2 of MW2 or whatever on the ssd but I'm mainly a single player gamer and jump around between games a lot depending on what genre I feel like/how much concentration I have at any given time

The main thing I wanted to know but it seems like there's no answers out there atm is if there would be a noticable performance impact running it as cache and os simultaneously (you know as opposed to having 1 60GB drive dedicated to OS and another 60GB drive dedicated to caching)

I've been looking it up more in forums and reviews the most I've found is more indications it's possible but that's all >_< there are people on this forum caching a secondary HDD for gaming while running a SSD for the OS (and extremely happy with it)...but I can't find anyone that's actually tried using one SSD for both tasks...seems like a good budget solution to me for those of us that can't afford the extra..

*edit* should probably note I do purely need the extra space for games so it won't be huge files like photoshop/video editing/media I understand they don't really work so well with cache and I also simply don't use them...any large media files that don't really need speed will go on a green drive/NAS the cached HDD would be primarily for games (might use some of the spare space for non-read data that will never go into cache like backup etc)
 
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TemjinGold

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2006
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I don't know if this is an option but SB Z68's SSD caching thingy might be just the thing for you...
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,054
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I don't know if this is an option but SB Z68's SSD caching thingy might be just the thing for you...

That's MY plan . . . . and I'm going to choose the SSD and hard disk carefully . . .

Some people have had trouble with the installation, but there are some guides available -- I found one the other day -- not too succinctly written, but there should be more info.

You have to select "RAID" configuration for the drives in the OS, then install the OS on the hard disk, then implement the caching on the SSD within Windows using software bundled with the Z68 mobo . . .

Usually, I'd wait until something new like this is established with a trail of "guinea-pig" users providing more insight.

I think I'm about to become a guinea-pig . . .
 

Chaoticlusts

Member
Jul 25, 2010
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That's MY plan . . . . and I'm going to choose the SSD and hard disk carefully . . .

Some people have had trouble with the installation, but there are some guides available -- I found one the other day -- not too succinctly written, but there should be more info.

You have to select "RAID" configuration for the drives in the OS, then install the OS on the hard disk, then implement the caching on the SSD within Windows using software bundled with the Z68 mobo . . .

Usually, I'd wait until something new like this is established with a trail of "guinea-pig" users providing more insight.

I think I'm about to become a guinea-pig . . .

Yeah that's what I was hoping to avoid but it's looking more and more the case, have found reports of people running the OS on one ssd and using a second one to cache a HD for games and being happy with the results but after *tons* of forum searching the most I can find on splitting one drive for both is that it *should* work and some people are planning on doing it but not one report of someone who has actually tried and either succeeded or failed >_< let alone any performance reports :( if I don't find any by the time I get my ssd and Z68 board (it got delayed cause a friend needed a loan) I'll report back my results
 

groberts101

Golden Member
Mar 17, 2011
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if you look at that screen you posted a link to above?.. the available SSD looks to be only 19 gigs in size(the Intel 311 SLC I presume). No where in that menu does it give the option to choose a partition or "part" of an SSD. Since the drive you are choosing will be 111GB in formatted size.. it stands to reason that you will not be able to do that.

If you want acceleration benefit and have enough ram to use I would be pursuing Fancycache by Romex as it uses much faster ram caching and is highly configurable. You can also set up a portion of your SSD to make a hybrid HDD as you are looking to do here as well. Worth a look for sure.
http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/
 
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Chaoticlusts

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Jul 25, 2010
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if you look at that screen you posted a link to above?.. the available SSD looks to be only 19 gigs in size(the Intel 311 SLC I presume). No where in that menu does it give the option to choose a partition or "part" of an SSD. Since the drive you are choosing will be 111GB in formatted size.. it stands to reason that you will not be able to do that.

If you want acceleration benefit and have enough ram to use I would be pursuing Fancycache by Romex as it uses much faster ram caching and is highly configurable. You can also set up a portion of your SSD to make a hybrid HDD as you are looking to do here as well. Worth a look for sure.
http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/fancy-cache/


It also asks in one part how much of the disk you would like to assign to cache and many reviews of the srt tech have stated any space on the ssd outside the cache is usable as a separate drive letter, what hasn't been said is if you can use that seperate space for the OS though it also hasn't been ruled out and it's essentially just another partition so technically there's no reason why it shouldn't be possible (unless it creates some weird bottleneck that kills performance of both the cache and OS)
Will look into fancy cache too thanx though from what I understand SRT is better if it turns out to be possible because it works at a deeper level allowing it to do some things fancy cache can't I maybe wrong on that though will research it a bit once I get home
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
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You know you could raid 0 two seagate momentus xt 500gb drives for your games. I run a ssd os drive with some programs and a single velociraptor 600gb drive for my games and programs that I don't want on the ssd.
 

Chaoticlusts

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Jul 25, 2010
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You know you could raid 0 two seagate momentus xt 500gb drives for your games. I run a ssd os drive with some programs and a single velociraptor 600gb drive for my games and programs that I don't want on the ssd.

I could but for the same price as two of those I could buy a 2TB HDD and a 60GB SSD which in theory should run vastly faster (since momentus only use 4GB of RAM) that was always a secondary option but I wanted to go the route suggested in my OP if there wasn't any major difficulties with it..though it's looking like as said above I'm going to have to be a gunnie pig for whether there is issues doing it or not :p

I figure if there is it'll mean I'll be using the entire 120GB as an OS drive..not exactly a waste just not optimal (ie if that was the case in the first place I'd likely buy a cheaper drive) :p

but yeah the point of the post was mainly to try and fish out someone who may have already attempted this(as I can't find anyone that's already posted about it) sadly that seems to have failed :( so if anyone does please post in here otherwise once I've given it a shot I'll post back my results :)
 

stevech

Senior member
Jul 18, 2010
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I've been using a 64GB SSD for many months. It's still only half full.
I'm careful to put all my downloads, photos, etc on a big hard disk.
Applications are all on the SSD, including MS Office, Visual Studio, a dozen or so special apps I use.
I keep shortcuts on the WIn 7 desktop to the hard disk's folders.
 

Chaoticlusts

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Jul 25, 2010
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I've been using a 64GB SSD for many months. It's still only half full.
I'm careful to put all my downloads, photos, etc on a big hard disk.
Applications are all on the SSD, including MS Office, Visual Studio, a dozen or so special apps I use.
I keep shortcuts on the WIn 7 desktop to the hard disk's folders.

yeah I've got plenty of space for media (between my PC and NAS over 10TB's) I don't plan on accelerating that the bit I've been mentioning in here is purely for games which are far too big to have more than a couple at a time on an SSD (and I own literally hundreds) and benefit greatly from SRT
 

Chaoticlusts

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Jul 25, 2010
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hmm...I think I may have found some data that will change my mind on getting this....seems I might entirely lose TRIM support (possibly on the OS partition too) if I go this path...that alone is a good enough reason not to do this I think...

I could grab an Agility 3 for my OS and a cheap 60GB SSD for SRT if I really want go this route and keep TRIM on the OS drive

If someone knows otherwise please feel free to correct me but it's looking like the RAID configuration required to enable SRT disables TRIM and I'm assuming splitting a drive you couldn't have one partition with TRIM one without...or if you did it may well lead to unexpected complications (my knowledge of it isn't deep enough to know for sure that's just a guess)