Cache SSD+HDD (like Intel SRT) for old system?

[Ichinisan]

I don't think the P55 supports Intel's SRT caching. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

My nephew lives far away from me in another state. I only see him briefly every few years. A while back, we built a Core i5 system for him. The first i5 CPUs had *just* been released. I don't remember the chipset of the Gigabyte motherboard. Would it be P55?

He has suffered with a WD 2TB "Green Power" drive most of this time he's had this system. I know...it should never ever be a boot drive. Using that system must be excruciating.

His system is having some problems and I'll definitely need to work on it the next time I see him. I'd also like to give him one of my unused 4TB drives with some kind of SSD caching solution.

Going with SSD-only is not an option. He plays lots games with very large installations, like Skyrim. His Steam library is huge.

I don't think my nephew is technical enough to manage what goes on an SSD and what goes on the HDD with a typical SSD+HDD system. That's why I think it would work best to have a caching solution where only 1 logical drive is presented to Windows.

What options do I have? Is there a software solution or an affordable hardware solution?

I read that Intel's SRT only supports caching up to 64GB. If there's a comparable caching solution, would it support 240GB? I'm thinking of upgrading to a higher-capacity mSATA drive for myself, so I might give him my 240GB SSD.

Also: If there is some comparable caching solution, could it also have onboard RAM for an HDD write buffer?

Thanks for any advice you guys can provide!

 

[VirtualLarry]

PrimoCache software (ask BonzaiDuck about this), or a Marvell PCI-E SATA controller card that supports their "HyperDuo" feature, running in "Hybrid" mode.

Or just buy him a Seagate desktop Hybrid drive. The 2TB models are pretty spry, and go for as low as $95 on sale at Newegg.

 

[Ichinisan]

PrimoCache software (ask BonzaiDuck about this), or a Marvell PCI-E SATA controller card that supports their "HyperDuo" feature, running in "Hybrid" mode.

Or just buy him a Seagate desktop Hybrid drive. The 2TB models are pretty spry, and go for as low as $95 on sale at Newegg.

Thanks. I'll look into this stuff.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The hybrid drive is probably the easiest "plug in and go" solution.

 

[Ichinisan]

The hybrid drive is probably the easiest "plug in and go" solution.

I agree. However, I'm thinking of getting a 1TB mSATA SSD for myself and I'm hoping to make good use of my current 240GB mSATA SSD by putting it in his system.

I might just buy a hybrid drive, but I'll also want to look into those other suggestions too. Thanks!

 

[ctk1981]

Big fan of Primocache. If you have plenty of ram you can dedicate some ram to be used for caching purposes (similar to samsung rapid mode) along with the SSD+HDD. I believe one license grants you permission to install on 3 computers also. Plenty of options for configurations also, no hard limits that I'm aware of.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Big fan of Primocache. If you have plenty of ram you can dedicate some ram to be used for caching purposes (similar to samsung rapid mode) along with the SSD+HDD. I believe one license grants you permission to install on 3 computers also. Plenty of options for configurations also, no hard limits that I'm aware of.

First member on these forums who I've heard that from, yet the program has many fans on some other forums. The only drawback I've seen so far: the RAM-cache is a fixed entity once you define it. You can change it or define a new cache, but it is a static allocation of memory.

I'd tested it on my laptop through the 90-day trial until I decided to pay the price for the 3-PC license.

With regard to ISRT, an oft-voiced opinion among Anand members had suggested it was a "temporary" innovation bridging the gap between an "HDD-era" and pervasive SSD usage at lower prices.

But there's an ongoing reason to use HDDs. They not only allow you to store more data; you can feel confident that storing an HDD data disk on the shelf for a year or more will not result in data-loss.

Caching has always been a feature that opens bottlenecks in the classic hardware pyramid paradigm. It is built-in to our CPUs.

Using Samsung RAPID literally requires the SSD to be configured in AHCI-mode. Using ISRT requires both SSD and HDD to be configured in RAID-mode.

It is not so clear for Hyper-Duo, which must be configured under the Marvell chip's BIOS for those controller chips which make it possible. The Marvell white-paper seems to indicate it will work in either mode, or it implies such:

http://www.marvell.com/storage/syst.../assets/Marvell-HyperDuo-Technology-Brief.pdf

But SSD-caching is not RAM-caching per se, and RAM-caching does not by itself enable SSD-caching.

Yet with Primo-Cache, you can do both. So I am currently considering whether to turn off my RAPID, install PrimoCache and enable a RAM-cache for the boot SSD while enabling an "L2" cache between a 60GB SSD and a large HDD. And I can leave the BIOS in AHCI-mode.

It also appears to be the case that hibernating a system with Primo will resurrect the cache(s) of the previous session. More details to look into.

Some of our boards come configured with Marvell auxiliary controllers which may -- or may not -- allow for Hyper-Duo. And frankly, I don't enable the Marvell controller feature unless I need it, and I choose a strategy in which I will not need it.

So PrimoCache can be a more versatile solution that doesn't depend on IRST software and RAID-mode, doesn't need a particular type of controller, allows caching of RAID volumes, and gives you both RAM-caching for an SSD and SSD-caching for an HDD.

All that for approximately $30 per PC, and an assumption that the Chinese military's hacker-unit isn't infiltrating corporate outfits like Romex in Shanghai. But if you were worried about that, you probably shouldn't buy hardware mass-produced in China, either.

 

[Essence_of_War]

But there's an ongoing reason to use HDDs. They not only allow you to store more data; you can feel confident that storing an HDD data disk on the shelf for a year or more will not result in data-loss.

Unless you're talking specifically about an SSD that has had its write endurance totally exhausted, I don't see how you can assert this. SSDs even in consumer level drives is rated for longer than 1-year data retention even close to their endurance limit.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Unless you're talking specifically about an SSD that has had its write endurance totally exhausted, I don't see how you can assert this. SSDs even in consumer level drives is rated for longer than 1-year data retention even close to their endurance limit.

Maybe they've improved on the data-retention factor -- I couldn't say. [EDIT: Let me be more flexible and admit a possibility that there never was a problem or limit.] But I could surely count on an HDD's data retention on the shelf for a couple years, and might worry about using an SSD for archives if it isn't powered on here and there.

Call it a myth. Sometimes myths are totally false; sometimes they contain an element of truth or even more than their share of it.

I suppose we could just wait until someone comes up with a $100 SSD with a capacity of 3 or 4 TB. I'm just not going to hold my breath. [EDIT:] But there's still a place and application for HDDs in our systems.

Consider my personal scenario. In reallocating hardware between my machines -- which includes a server -- I come up with a spare 60GB SSD, and I have more spare 1TB HDDs -- some in storage boxes because I've refined my backup strategies and had acquired more than I can use at once. Suddenly, I need more storage without "less" performance, and I don't want to spend $250 or $500 on another SSD right now.

So wouldn't it make sense? To deploy a caching solution for a large HDD to supplement my SSD boot-drive?

 

[ctk1981]

So wouldn't it make sense? To deploy a caching solution for a large HDD to supplement my SSD boot-drive?

This....exactly this. I use a 4TB WD Red drive to store my collection of movies, mp3's, games etc. Even a good portion of my apps go on this drive, despite the fact that I have ample room on my 840pro. I use 12GB of ram and 50GB of an 830 SSD as a cache for this drive. As time goes on, the cache hit rate goes up and it can be like having a 4TB SSD.

One small problem is defrag....the minute you do this, your cache hit rate will drop. I typically check the fragmentation level once a month, if it gets above 10% I go ahead and run a defrag and reset the cache.

I'd also like to see an option to manually specify which files should or should not be cached. There was talk of adding this option in, but they seem to move pretty slow on development there.

 

[Cerb]

As a long-time modded Bethesda game player, plenty of RAM makes the most difference. My SSD lets me back up the game folder as I try mods easier, but it has made almost no difference in speed of loading, which is mostly CPU limited, just as when I was running a HDD. Big games might not use much RAM for their process, but they will take advantage of Windows mapping cached files for them, instead of hitting the drives, and doing that is still a few orders of magnitude faster than going to an SSD.

Even if you do the SSD cache thing, if he's got 4GB RAM, there's room to improve. IMO, get 2x4GB. If the PC has 2x2GB, and it plays nice with the old stuff, you got 12GB, if not, 8GB. 4GB may be enough, but enough is still a ways off from ideal.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Yes . . . I discovered that. I didn't use any caching at all before I upgraded my system to 2x8GB of RAM.

When I used it with my old laptop, I started with a 2x2GB SO-DIMM configuration. The indications prompted me to trade that for a 2x4GB kit -- the limit of what can go in that old Gateway 475M. You have ample RAM for business apps and other things with just 4GB, and my setup with 3GB going to PrimoCache leaves me 5GB for everything else.

The reason this is such a boon for an old laptop arises from the controller limitations: it's all SATA-II technology, the SSD is SATA-III. Without the caching, the SSD performs predictably at maybe 280 MB/s throughput for sequential read rate. Caching boosts it to around 1,200 MB/s. While the argument holds that this is just "benchmark" performance, the advantage can be felt, regardless whether the "real-world" performance isn't reflected in the benchmark.

There are a lot of caveats. ctk1981 is "in my camp" for seeing, thinking or believing that these caching alternatives offer advantages in the use of available hardware.

But I see no reason to cache movies. You might watch a DVR capture once, and then delete it. The caching wouldn't seem to offer any advantage in playback. An SATA-II HDD is fine for storing movies. Maybe there are other reasons for caching with such big files, but I haven't personally entered that territory.

Main thing to remember about any of this: It depends on software as well as hardware, and it must function flawlessly. Otherwise, I'd say stay away from it. But I've used ISRT and PrimoCache and RAPID. I tried SuperCache from Romex's competitor SuperSpeed (of Massachusetts). It also seems reliable, but you only get a license for a single PC for the Romex 3-PC price, and it doesn't have all the marvelous features of Primo.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

This....exactly this. I use a 4TB WD Red drive to store my collection of movies, mp3's, games etc. Even a good portion of my apps go on this drive, despite the fact that I have ample room on my 840pro. I use 12GB of ram and 50GB of an 830 SSD as a cache for this drive. As time goes on, the cache hit rate goes up and it can be like having a 4TB SSD.

One small problem is defrag....the minute you do this, your cache hit rate will drop. I typically check the fragmentation level once a month, if it gets above 10% I go ahead and run a defrag and reset the cache.

I'd also like to see an option to manually specify which files should or should not be cached. There was talk of adding this option in, but they seem to move pretty slow on development there.

We-ull, Pil-grum!! I'm impressed by Romex-Primo now!

There may have been some reason Intel chose to implement ISRT (through IRST SW) the way they did. It may be that Marvell chose some strategy that was similar -- I can't rightly say, and I remember I'd seen reference to AHCI_mode in the online Marvel white-paper -- linked in an earlier post.

But this!?!? This is much more flexible.

I had worried that I might want to turn RAPID off for my Sammy boot/system-disk. But such a worry would be more justified if one were using PRimoCache for RAM-caching just as RAPID does.

Instead, Sammy and RAPID are a completely separate issue with "L2" SSD-caching of an HDD. I was sort of surprised that you have to initialize and partition the SSD in advance. You COULD create a RAM-cache for the L2-cache-enabled HDD. And obviously, you could also cache a pair of RAID0 drives with Primo using the L2 feature.

I had Steam's GRID2 installed on the system's 500GB WD Blue drive. The game seemed to perform OK once started, but I noticed some hesitation when it was printing material to the screen in all the annoying pre-game promotion and splash-stuff. Suddenly, that hesitation is gone, gone gone!

Maybe their further development and revision of the software is slower because it already does so much. It's like a Swiss-Army knife of caching programs.

Just for the edification of others, you make choices for plugging in the hardware just as you would for ISRT. My Sammy Pro under RAPID is connected to one of the two SATA-III ports; the 60GB Mushkin Chronos SSD is connected to the other SATA-III port. I pulled the WD blue drive off that same port and connected it to an available SATA-II port.

So far, it seems to behave "tip-top."

 

[ctk1981]

Yeah I've been impressed with it so far for my games and apps. The movies occasionally I do some editing and misc tasks and it seems to help. Really, there doesn't seem to be a major draw back to using this software, at least for what I need.

Another benefit is the fact it works with encrypted drives/partitions. I was a bit leery of this at first, but after 6 months without a single issue I have no problems recommending it for use with encrypted drives....although I do turn off defer write when working with an encrypted drive/partition.

I'm also impressed by how much of an improvement I've gained from switching off of an AM3+ mobo to an intel Z97 setup. I have a benchmark done in Anvil of the same WD drive on both setups....the intel showed considerable improvement, which could be attested to the better memory controller and driver.

Until we see large TB SSD's at an affordable price, I believe this is the way to go. And even if we do see that day happen, we can still use this software to enable a ram cache in front of it and reap even more rewards. Thumbs up all the way.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Yeah I've been impressed with it so far for my games and apps. The movies occasionally I do some editing and misc tasks and it seems to help. Really, there doesn't seem to be a major draw back to using this software, at least for what I need.

Another benefit is the fact it works with encrypted drives/partitions. I was a bit leery of this at first, but after 6 months without a single issue I have no problems recommending it for use with encrypted drives....although I do turn off defer write when working with an encrypted drive/partition.

I'm also impressed by how much of an improvement I've gained from switching off of an AM3+ mobo to an intel Z97 setup. I have a benchmark done in Anvil of the same WD drive on both setups....the intel showed considerable improvement, which could be attested to the better memory controller and driver.

Until we see large TB SSD's at an affordable price, I believe this is the way to go. And even if we do see that day happen, we can still use this software to enable a ram cache in front of it and reap even more rewards. Thumbs up all the way.

I don't think either ISRT (I-R-ST) ever reported a "cache hit-rate," nor does Samsung RAPID. My GRID2 game consumed about 11GB of HDD space before I added the 60GB SSD for "L2" caching. Ha! Just playing the game once, Primo reports a near-100% hit-rate.

I think Romex could have a larger customer-base and following if they gussied up their web-page, and the software itself could have a lot more "bling." But those things don't have anything to do with how it works, or how well it works.

One thing for sure. A 90-day, fully-operational trial-period is better than I'd ever seen for software. I don't think I might have convinced myself so profoundly to buy Primo with only a 30-day trial.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I don't think the P55 supports Intel's SRT caching. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

My nephew lives far away from me in another state. I only see him briefly every few years. A while back, we built a Core i5 system for him. The first i5 CPUs had *just* been released. I don't remember the chipset of the Gigabyte motherboard. Would it be P55?

He has suffered with a WD 2TB "Green Power" drive most of this time he's had this system. I know...it should never ever be a boot drive. Using that system must be excruciating.

His system is having some problems and I'll definitely need to work on it the next time I see him. I'd also like to give him one of my unused 4TB drives with some kind of SSD caching solution.

Going with SSD-only is not an option. He plays lots games with very large installations, like Skyrim. His Steam library is huge.

I don't think my nephew is technical enough to manage what goes on an SSD and what goes on the HDD with a typical SSD+HDD system. That's why I think it would work best to have a caching solution where only 1 logical drive is presented to Windows.

What options do I have? Is there a software solution or an affordable hardware solution?

I read that Intel's SRT only supports caching up to 64GB. If there's a comparable caching solution, would it support 240GB? I'm thinking of upgrading to a higher-capacity mSATA drive for myself, so I might give him my 240GB SSD.

Also: If there is some comparable caching solution, could it also have onboard RAM for an HDD write buffer?

Thanks for any advice you guys can provide!

Just to recap here . . . Either the Marvel Hyper-Duo (requiring a controller with the right Marvell chip) or the PrimoCache software should allow for a caching-SSD greater than ~60GB (64 for ISRT, I think it was . . ).

With ISRT, the caching SSD doesn't have a drive letter, and it doesn't appear as a disk in Windows Explorer -- or, if it does, the appearance is only the model-code for the SSD, but the "drive" has the capacity of the accelerated HDD and the assigned drive letter.

With Primo, you need to initialize and partition the SSD WITHOUT ASSIGNING A DRIVE LETTER -- using "Disk Management" under the "Administrative Tools->Computer Management" app from Control Panel. Primo will then format it in process of making it an "L2" cache-drive.

Your nephew would never "see" the cache SSD in Windows Explorer. But he'd either have to leave Primo "alone," or become familiar with it. You can "pause," delete or re-create any caching feature.

So I see the problem with the nephew: I had a sister-in-law who likely fiddled with the controller-card BIOS for a RAID-0 setup I created for her -- destroying the array. But for anybody who wants high-capacity plus performance, Primo-Cache is a great tool.

 

[PingSpike]

With primocache can you allocate a portion of a SSD to be cache for a secondary mechanical disk and install your OS onto the same SSD. I think you could do that with ISRT but it was a pain in the ass.

 

[ctk1981]

I believe the entire drive has to be dedicated to the L2 storage, it can be partitioned into more than one cache....but the entire drive is a special "format" and is unrecognized by windows and samsung magician.

 

[Wall Street]

I used a Sandisk ReadyCache with a p55 system. I have nothing put good things to say about it. It sped up game loads and Windows reboots dramatically. The drive is about $50 for a 32 GB drive and you download he software from Sandisk's site.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

With primocache can you allocate a portion of a SSD to be cache for a secondary mechanical disk and install your OS onto the same SSD. I think you could do that with ISRT but it was a pain in the ass.

I'm not an electronics or storage expert, but I was a statistician. I can only offer a single observation -- maybe misdiagnosed -- for using the remainder of a cache disk for storage. It might have been some . . . bus contention or resource problem . . . it might have been the dual use of a single SSD. It was an Intel Elm Crest 128GB unit, which has been functioning perfectly in another machine for 3+years. A single observation doth not a sample make . . . .

Instead, with something like Primo, I could see caching different HDDs with different allocations on the SSD.

I'd use an entire drive for logical volume and OP of the boot-system disk -- maybe cached to RAM. If I needed more storage and I had some nominally small 30GB to 120GB SSDs that were SATA-III, I'd cache large HDDs with them -- 1:1 -- 1 to 1. But there are only so many SATA-III ports on motherboards going back to my sig-rig's Z68. You could, instead, buy a PCI-E x2 4-port SATA-III controller with limited RAID (if you wanted it), set up in AHCI mode . . . or RAID if you wanted to complicate things. Primo would work in either mode for single caching disks, single drives or arrays on the same controller. I use PEXSAT34RH controllers with the Marvel chip (9xxx-something) for my server. The price on those went up from about $80+ to ~$100 on the StarTech website. Those controllers offer Marvel's Hyper-Duo. There are a lot of options.

It's nice to have these caching options: You can cache your Sammy Pro to RAM with RAPID, or you can cache any other SSD to RAM with PrimoCache. Simultaneously, you can cache a large HDD to SSD, and I suppose there's the possibility of caching that to RAM as well. In those types of scenarios with Primo or other RAM-caching, I'd probably turn off RAPID and use Primo with the Sammy Pro instead -- with other variations and other drive-combinations.

Just try to stick to a KISS principle. I've got RAPID running for Sammy boot-disk, with a Primo-Cache-ed HDD and 60GB SSD cache-drive. I won't do RAM-caching with Primo if I'm doing it with RAPID.

But you can use Primo-Cache for all of it.

 

[Phynaz]

So I installed Primo just as a RAM cache on my laptop. The only drive I have is an SSD.

I setup a 3.5GB cache, 4K block size, with a 60 second deferred write. The amount of write savings to my SSD is amazing. I was seeing a 4x write amplification on my drive. With Primo having TRIM built into the cache my write amplification is now less than 1x.

Next up is my desktop, but I need to buy more memory for it.

Thanks guys!

 

[BonzaiDuck]

So I installed Primo just as a RAM cache on my laptop. The only drive I have is an SSD.

I setup a 3.5GB cache, 4K block size, with a 60 second deferred write. The amount of write savings to my SSD is amazing. I was seeing a 4x write amplification on my drive. With Primo having TRIM built into the cache my write amplification is now less than 1x.

Next up is my desktop, but I need to buy more memory for it.

Thanks guys!

I've yet to explore the deferred-writes feature yet. Consider that I have a 2007-vintage executive Centrino-Duo laptop with 2x4GB DDR2-800 SO-DIMM and an AHCI-compliant SATA-II controller. I replaced the WD-blue SATA laptop HDD 500GB with 500GB Crucial MX100. I'd replaced the wireless-G with an Intel Wireless-N for $10.

3GB of cache leaving 5GB for office and database stuff, web-searching, e-mails and similar applications -- more than enough. The Gateway E-475M was never configured with more than 2x2GB SO-DIMM.

The sequential read-rate under benchtest is ~1,200 MB/s. Sure -- "just a benchmark." But I can feel it. The opposite of "HAL:" "Dave? My mind is going . . . . I can feel it . . . I can feel it . . . " Otherwise, the scores for the MX100 would not exceed 280.

 

[Phynaz]

My laptop's SSD is encrypted so it's slow. I haven't benched it since installing Primo, but I think it used to be around 60MB / sec. Everything is running much faster, believe me it's not just the placebo effect. It truly is much faster.

 

[Phynaz]

Holy smokes.

Without cache:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 191.160 MB/s
Sequential Write : 169.544 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 167.187 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 164.876 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 23.071 MB/s [ 5632.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 60.508 MB/s [ 14772.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 187.061 MB/s [ 45669.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 135.052 MB/s [ 32971.6 IOPS]

Test : 500 MB [C: 32.6% (54.4/166.7 GB)] (x1)
Date : 2015/01/16 12:18:45
OS : Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x86)


With cache:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 2306.011 MB/s
Sequential Write : 233.744 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 2576.491 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 231.025 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 201.750 MB/s [ 49255.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 121.874 MB/s [ 29754.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 206.205 MB/s [ 50343.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 198.196 MB/s [ 48387.8 IOPS]

Test : 500 MB [C: 32.6% (54.4/166.7 GB)] (x1)
Date : 2015/01/16 12:14:13
OS : Windows 7 Enterprise SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x86)


One drawback, Resource Monitor now shows nothing but pagefile activity.

 

[ctk1981]

I'd be careful of using that long of a deferred write, especially on an encrypted drive. You can see write improvements with as little as 10 seconds defer.