Question about SSD Caching for 2nd hard drive

[bioprez]

Hello,

I am getting ready to order a secondary storage hard drive for my new rig (Z68 chipset)...i already have a Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD for my main drive which is awsome, but need something for storage. I am looking for the fastest configuration i can get for my secondary HD, and need some help picking the best setup.

My main question is, what is the fastest setup i can do for my secondary HD?

I was first looking at the hybrid Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB here, perhaps two of them which would be 1TB for less than $300 that seems to offer great performance with the built in SSD caching.

However, i was reading into the new SSD caching technology supported by my motherboard (Asus P68Z68 Deluxe), and was wondering if it would be faster and make more sense for me to order say a decent 1-2TB hard drive (say the Seagate ST2000DM001 Barracuda 2TB for $170), and a small 32GB SSD and setup the caching for my secondary drive using the SSD which should be well under $100. So i could get 2TB with SSD caching for less than what i would pay for the hybrid, but not sure what is a faster setup.

What do you guys think? Go for the hybrid, or setup SSD caching using a small SSD plus a 1-2TB mechanical drive?

Any help or suggestions in the matter would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance!

-Mark

 

[Puppies04]

What sort of data will you be reading from on your storage drive? 32gb isn't a lot of caching space for 2TB. Unless you are constantly reading the same 60 or 70 gb of data at which point I would ask why not just put that data on a 60gb SSD or even the one you already have if you have space. Also as I understood it the SSD caching on the Z68 boards covered the whole system so if you set it up it would try to cache windows and the files you already have on SSD, I may be misinformed there though but my previous point stands. Another question (sorry I don't have the answer) is can you set up SRT for a non OS drive?

I will also point out that while SSDs are awesome at random reads compared to HDDs the comparison on sequential reads isn't that much greater. If the new drive you are talking about really is a "storage" drive I have to ask if you really are going to see much benefit adding a SSD to the equation.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If the new drive you are talking about really is a "storage" drive I have to ask if you really are going to see much benefit adding a SSD to the equation.

This. 100x.

 

[bioprez]

What sort of data will you be reading from on your storage drive? 32gb isn't a lot of caching space for 2TB. Unless you are constantly reading the same 60 or 70 gb of data at which point I would ask why not just put that data on a 60gb SSD or even the one you already have if you have space. Also as I understood it the SSD caching on the Z68 boards covered the whole system so if you set it up it would try to cache windows and the files you already have on SSD, I may be misinformed there though but my previous point stands. Another question (sorry I don't have the answer) is can you set up SRT for a non OS drive?

I will also point out that while SSDs are awesome at random reads compared to HDDs the comparison on sequential reads isn't that much greater. If the new drive you are talking about really is a "storage" drive I have to ask if you really are going to see much benefit adding a SSD to the equation.

@Puppies04 - Thank you for the response, you bring up some good points.

The data on the 2nd drive will be a mix of documents, music, games, and installed programs - i do like to game alot so i will be installing several games on this secondary drive, which is why i was looking for anyway to make this faster than just a normal mechanical drive. Also, i do have several large video files that i update and edit occasionally, and was planning on moving these to my 2nd HD to free up space on my main SSD.

In regards to using SRT for the secondary HD + 2nd SSD, i'm pretty sure this can be done after reading around. Found a few posts from people saying you can do this, use one SSD as your main OS drive like i have now, and a second SSD for caching a 2nd HD.

So i guess now, given the fact that i will be installing programs and games on my secondary mechanical HD, is there really going to be any performance benefit in setting up SRT on the 2nd HD that is worth justifying the purchase of another SSD? I mean i can pick up a 64GB SSD for under $100, so if it will make things any bit at all faster, i'm willing to drop an extra $100 for the speed.

Let me know your thoughts, and i greatly appreciate the help and responses!

 

[Borkil]

Not to thread jack, but I've been having the same thoughts and I was wondering if using my vertex 2 60gb as a cache for my 1 tb games drive would do much. Also does SRT require the motherboard to be in raid mode? right now I am on AHCI, will there be a problem switching to RAID from AHCI like IDE to AHCI?

 

[bryanW1995]

What you want to do can be a real pita but will pay off in the end: You can partition your current 240gb ssd into a "data" array and a "cache" array. It does show up as Raid 0 to the OS, and it will probably take a couple hours probably from start to finish, but you will get all of the benefits of buying that 2nd ssd without actually having to buy it. The only question is do you want an 18.6 or 64gb cache? That question is not a slam dunk, even with such a large drive. I had to use the 18.6gb cache size on my rig b/c I'm using an older 80gb drive, but I've found that it is still fantastic for my usage (mostly gaming/web surfing, usually running DC in the background unless it's a "modern" game like bfIII, civ5, or DAO, rarely more than 5-6 windows open at a time). Here's a link with instruction on how to do it, feel free to pm or post here if you have additional questions about it:

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

It took me a couple of hours to read the entire thread, and I'd never set up a raid array before so I hit ~ 45 minute snag while I tracked down and installed the raid drivers, but otherwise it was a piece of cake.

Not to thread jack, but I've been having the same thoughts and I was wondering if using my vertex 2 60gb as a cache for my 1 tb games drive would do much. Also does SRT require the motherboard to be in raid mode? right now I am on AHCI, will there be a problem switching to RAID from AHCI like IDE to AHCI?

You can do it, though you'll be limited to a cache size of 18.6 gb (which as I mentioned has been great for me btw).



edit for both posts: A couple of notes.

1. SRT is possibly the best single upgrade I've ever made. It's better than buying the 80gb x25m g2 a couple of years ago. It's better than going from an fx55 to an e6750 @ 3.6. I have a 2 tb 5400 rpm storage drive that now (often) behaves like an ssd.

2. If you put the OS (data) volume + srt cache on the same ssd, you will likely have slower performance, at least in benchmarks. I don't know why. It doesn't feel slower to me at all vs my old setup with just the x25m with OS + some programs on one disk and everything else on the other. However, in ATTO benchmarks I'm currently getting 140mb/s sequential reads and 92mb/s sequential writes. My random reads are still ~ 35 times faster than my spindle drives. I was running in ide mode (no NCQ) before, however, so maybe the extra snappiness from NCQ has made up for having the lower sequential reads. Or maybe sequential read speed really isn't that important, and Anand was right when he said that random read/write performance is the biggest advantage that ssd's have over hdd's. Regardless, it will look slower on benchmarks.

 

[Borkil]

thanks bryan for the info, i'm still slightly confused and have some more questions so i'll just post a new thread.

 

[bioprez]

What you want to do can be a real pita but will pay off in the end: You can partition your current 240gb ssd into a "data" array and a "cache" array. It does show up as Raid 0 to the OS, and it will probably take a couple hours probably from start to finish, but you will get all of the benefits of buying that 2nd ssd without actually having to buy it. The only question is do you want an 18.6 or 64gb cache? That question is not a slam dunk, even with such a large drive. I had to use the 18.6gb cache size on my rig b/c I'm using an older 80gb drive, but I've found that it is still fantastic for my usage (mostly gaming/web surfing, usually running DC in the background unless it's a "modern" game like bfIII, civ5, or DAO, rarely more than 5-6 windows open at a time). Here's a link with instruction on how to do it, feel free to pm or post here if you have additional questions about it:

@bryanW1995 - Thanks for the response...do i need to partition my existing 240GB SSD though if i'm willing to buy another drive? I would rather just buy another SSD and set it up to cache my secondary HD. Let me know, thanks!