Intel SRT and some old HDDs

[Shahmatt]

Hi guys,

I've got a Z68 based board which I am currently using with the following three HDDs.

1. Samsung F3 1TB (new)
2. Seagate Barracuda 250GB 32MB cache (4 years old)
3. Hitachi 80GB 16MB cache (6 years old)

I've picked up a Crucial M4 64GB. I would like to use this with Intel SRT.

Problem is, my current Win 7 installation (on my Samsung) was done on IDE mode. It seems I have to reinstall in RAID mode to take advantage of SRT.

Ok so my question is this. My Hitchai 80GB is kind of idling right now with nothing much on it. I wonder if it would be better to install Win 7 on this HDD instead. It's a much slower drive, but SRT would accelerate it to SSD speeds anyway and I would still be making use of a good HDD.

My worry is that even SRT may get bottle-necked by the 16MB cache on this drive. Would cache act as a bottle-neck?

If the older drive is not advisable, should I install Win 7 on the Seagate 250GB instead?

 

[Diogenes2]

Once your OS ( and other often used apps ) is cached to the SSD, the performance of the HDD is of no consequence.

If you are going to cache the 80gb drive, you would do just as well to forget SRT and just use the M4 as your OS drive, IMO ..

 

[Shahmatt]

Do you mean that SRT only caches one drive at a time?

Does SRT work with drives or partitions?

Edit:
Would there be a way in which I can merge my 80GB HDD with the second 250GB HDD into one 320GB under one drive letter?
By doing this perhaps I can still make use of SRT across two HDDs.

 

[Diogenes2]

Only one drive..

Because of software overhead, supporting multiple drives would rapidly diminish any performance gain.

Which Z68 board do you have? Some boards, such as the Asus Z68 deluxe, have the Marvell 9130 SATA 3 controller, which also supports SSD caching, but would require a 2nd SSD/HDD pair.

 

[Shahmatt]

I use a Biostar TZ68A+. I don't think it has the 2nd SSD/HDD feature. It's a pretty basic Z68 board.

Ok so it would presumably be best for me to install my OS onto my 250GB HDD. I'm a little worried about this drive though. It has slowed down a little over the years and could be on the verge of failure.

Alternatively, what would be the consequence of installing on my 80GB HDD (as per the original plan) and mounting an unlettered partition from my larger Samsung HDD in order to increase space, as described in post #10 over here:
http://www.sharkyforums.com/showthread.php?t=289542

The additional space would just show as a folder within the C drive - in which I could install apps on. Do you think SRT would treat a mounted folder differently?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

1) On the matter of drives set to "IDE" mode in BIOS for the current Windows 7 installation, there is a patch at the MS website which can resolve this. I had to use it, but I can't remember precisely what the imperatives were per getting the system to boot so you can resolve the problem. I think it required installation before changing the BIOS to AHCI or RAID.

2) The biggest bang for the buck will come from using a small SSD to cache a mid-range HDD (accelerating the HDD). To dispel some myths:

3) A $200 VelociRaptor SATA_III on an SATA-III port will not perform appreciably better with ISRT than an SATA-II Samsung F3 connected to an SATA-II port, provided that we are talking about the SSD cache-drive selected from SATA-III offerings and connected to an SATA-III port.

4) The SSD-caching applies a single SSD to a single HDD VOLUME. The VOLUME can either be a single HDD or a (RAID) array of more than one HDD.

5) Set up properly in the less speedy "Enhanced Mode," there is no more risk to losing data from the accelerated HDD as for using the HDD without acceleration. You can unhinge the acceleration and reconnect it at will.

6) Beware of installing large software suites from DVD install-discs while caching is enabled. I unhinge the caching temporarily while installing software this way. Download software, on the other hand, doesn't present any problems. You can reconnect the caching after your installation is finished.

7) There may be newer offerings out there, but I recommend the 60GB Patriot Pyro for an SATA-III SDD caching drive in ISRT. I haven't had a single problem with it. I've never needed to reinitialize the caching, and it's relatively the fastest among the SDD's I considered. It's been running for about 3 months now -- non-stop.

8) You have two options for caching size: ~20GB or ~64GB (or the entire capacity of the SSD for drives less than 64GB). There is no "in between." Surprisingly, there doesn't seem to be any degradation in performance for the smaller option -- PROVIDED that you have an SATA-III SSD connected to an SATA-III port. And . . .

9) Given the sustained throughput specs on most SATA-II and SATA-III HDDs (including the SATA-III VelociRaptor) -- even use of an SATA-II SSD should not "bottleneck" the system. But the overall performance improvement will not be as stunning as the optimal solution I explained above.

 

[Shahmatt]

Thanks for the info.

From what I've been reading it seems that a mounted drive would not do the trick.

I guess I'll reserve the 250GB HDD for Windows + Apps with SSD caching, and everything else for general storage.

 

[Denithor]

Why the heck would you put your OS on a 4 year old 250GB drive when you have a new 1TB drive available? Just back up your stuff, reinstall W7 on that drive in the correct mode and enable SRT on the SSD...

 

[ElFenix]

i'd just install windows onto the SSD and use the 1TB drive for storage

 

[Shahmatt]

Why the heck would you put your OS on a 4 year old 250GB drive when you have a new 1TB drive available? Just back up your stuff, reinstall W7 on that drive in the correct mode and enable SRT on the SSD...

The point is that with SRT the speed of an older drive would become irrelevant.

Both my 80GB and 250GB are sitting idle. I prefer to make use of them if I can.

Ideally if SRT worked independently of the drive I could install all my apps on the slower drives, i.e. both the 80GB and 250GB, and used the 1TB drive as bulk storage for larger files like music and movies.

An SSD may not provide that much of a benefit anyway over a HDD for sequential reads. So this may be a nice way to optimize the overall the resources at hand.

 

[Shahmatt]

i'd just install windows onto the SSD and use the 1TB drive for storage

Yes. This would be a good solution. However I am worried that with a limited space of 64GB I may run out soon after a few apps. Games are pretty heavy anyway these days, and I am loathe to manage by uninstalling after I am done.

 

[Diogenes2]

Thanks for the info.

From what I've been reading it seems that a mounted drive would not do the trick.

I guess I'll reserve the 250GB HDD for Windows + Apps with SSD caching, and everything else for general storage.

Based on what you are saying, this sounds like a good plan ..