Do those cache SSD drives, handle TRIM on their own/work with XP?

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,587
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Just wondering. I'm curious if the caching software interfaces directly at the driver level with the SSD, and also sends TRIM directly as needed, or just at the filesystem level with the SSD, and requires the underlying OS to send TRIM to the cache drive when needed.

IOW, can I use, say the Synapse, or whatever Crucial's SSD cache drive is called, with XP?

Does anyone know?

Edit:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148564
Crucial Adrenaline 50GB
This one explicitly says for Windows 7 PCs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233262
Corsair Accelerator 60GB
Lists Windows 7 in system requirements.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227755
OCZ Synapse
Lists "Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit Support". No mention of XP.



Seems like these companies are missing a good part of the market. A way to speed up "elderly" machines, still running XP on an older HD. Still a lot of XP boxes out there. A block-level storage device-driver, that managed the SSD cache, and explicitly sent the TRIM command when needed to the SSD, could probably work for this older OS.
 
Last edited:

taltamir

Lifer
Mar 21, 2004
13,576
6
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It depends on the caching software (driver) used (in theory).
A cache drive is just a really small cheap SSD that is useless for anything but caching and is advertised for caching (might be optimized too).
To actually use it for caching you need to get caching software which is not included with ANY caching drive on the market, AFAIK the only one currently on the market is the intel SRT, which:
1. does not support TRIM.
2. does not support winXP.
3. requires a specific high end intel chipset (it is placed in firmware)
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,587
10,225
126
It depends on the caching software (driver) used (in theory).
A cache drive is just a really small cheap SSD that is useless for anything but caching and is advertised for caching (might be optimized too).
To actually use it for caching you need to get caching software which is not included with ANY caching drive on the market, AFAIK the only one currently on the market is the intel SRT, which:
1. does not support TRIM.
2. does not support winXP.
3. requires a specific high end intel chipset (it is placed in firmware)

Uhm, read the description for those three caching drive products I linked. All three of them DO include their own caching software drivers, but appear to be limited to Windows 7 only.

And the Intel SRT stuff is purely software, the limitation to Z68 and Z77 chipsets is just a check in the software, AFAIK. I would be curious if the BIOS would utilize the SSD cache to boot up. But since it appears as a RAID-0, I don't know how that would work, exactly.