Using PCI-E M.2 drive as an (RST / SRT) cache drive?

[VirtualLarry]

Anyone do this? I was pondering how to implement a 128GB M.2 PCI-E AHCI SSD in a Z170 rig. Then I had the idea, why not use it as a cache drive?

What would be a good primary HDD to use?

And are there any BIOS limitations, to using a HDD bigger than 2TB (UEFI boot), AND using RAID mode for your Intel SATA ports? If there is, then I'll just stick to a 2TB HDD.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I'm using an ASRock Z170 Pro4S, and Windows 7 64-bit.

 

[Johnny Lucky]

Larry - It's been a while since someone has asked about Intel Smart Response technology. It is an old technology from a few years ago. Here is my standard answer about using an ssd as a cache:

Intel's SRT caching technology was designed for buyers who could not justify or afford the cost of a larger capacity solid-state drive. According to Intel, the original idea was that for about $100.00 a user could purchase a small capacity ssd of about 10 to 20GB and use it as a cache to improve hard disk drive performance. The Operating system and programs were actually stored on a hard disk drive. The actual improvement could not compare to a stand alone ssd. Intel also looked at different capacities all the way up to 512GB and concluded 64GB was the point of diminishing return. It made more sense to use a 64GB ssd as a boot drive that also contained software programs. Intel was hoping that if business clients saw an increase in performance, then they would be induced to purchase larger capacity ssd's that promised an even greater boost in performance. Think of it as an advertising gimmick.

A lot has changed sinced then, especially prices. Might as well take full advantage of ssd performance.

Every once in a while someone also asks if it is possible to use an ssd cache to speed up another ssd or hard disks in a RAID array. The short answer is no. It will not improve performance.

There is another alternative. Have you experimented with using a portion of your motherboard's memory as a virtual ramdisk? My motherboard is populated with 32GB of memory. I use a ramdisk application to allocate 12GB to Windows and configure 20GB as a virtual ramdisk. It is very old school but it works quite well. The downside is having to wait a few extra seconds for the ramdisk application to set things up and another few seconds waiting for everything to be saved.

AMD has partnered with another company that specializes in ramdisk technology. Newegg has a video clip explaining how a ramdisk works. Here is a link to the video clip:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820103036

Just scroll down to the video clip. Change the settings to 1080p HD and full screen mode.

There's also a fairly decent web site that explains it:

http://www.radeonmemory.com/software_4.0.php

There are other companies that offer ramdisk applications. Some of them are free.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks, guess I'll skip that idea.

 

[Cerb]

Windows 7: SLIPSTREAM THOSE USB 3.0 DRIVERS, FIRST.

I wouldn't bother, unless the user can't handle multiple drives, and then would just stick with SATA SSDs, too.

Windows 7 handles >2TB drives just fine, as data drives. You can technically make a booting drive that's bigger, but it's tricky, requires partitioning, and I don't think it's worth bothering with. best to just use a <2TB OS drive, IMO.

 

[DudeRocks]

Did you successfully use the ramdisk to speed up your 2TB harddrive?

I'm going to research on this AMD solution this weekend. Let me explain how I use my storage and if this would also be a fit. The RAM disk idea looks promising however from the video tutorials I just watched it was not clear how it would help speed up a large storage HD in the same manor as adding a cache disk would, it looks to only speed up 4GB of disk space and in the tutorial they used this turning it essentially into an 8GB partition (Lets be real we are likely going to use the free version with the limitation of 4GB to see what it can be set up to do).

I have the same type board a Z170 (Asus Z170e). This has a few different options for drives. I find from first hand testing that drives attached to the 6 sata slots can be used for a cache, I know drives on a pci raid controller cannot be used by RST as those are not being managed by the Intel RST, and I have not tested and do not have devices to test with if the M.2 slot or the Sata Express can be included as a caching device on the RST array, I assume they can, but I'm leaning more toward a cheap SSD for this scenario. With all that out of the way, I have 3x5TB drives in a Raid5 array, and a 500GB SSD for the OS. You make a good point above to use your OS and programs etc on the SSD, ok, that's exactly what I have done. So why would I want to cache the storage array? Easy answer, I'm sorting out a couple hundred photos and videos I took from last summer (Ozzy, Pink, Five Finger Death Punch, Niel Diamond, Sammy Hagar, Journey and Styx, Breaking Benjamin, The Killers, a couple weddings, the list goes on) and when I access multiple photos to edit in a photo editor, and have a video editor going in the background at the same time, I get lots of lag for every image I open or browse to. My temporary fix to this is to copy the concert to SSD, make edits, then copy back. However if I start copying back to HD and try to do anything else the system just can't keep up with doing much of anything else.

Solutions?
1. Buy a raid controller. - Looking at a cheap used LSI 9265 or 9275 with 1GB ram cache that may do the trick on this. May be over a typical users head but I'm hopeful it would work for my needs.
2. Buy a cheap SSD and plug it up to use the RST cache to make the drive run smoother. *See below for why I'm reluctant to try this again.
3. Use a RamDisk to cache the hard drive. In my case a Raid5 array on the Intel RST.

I would like to give 2 fair warnings for the OP about using cache with RST and if you venture out to use Raid with that 2TB drive by adding say 2 or 3 more 2TB drives in the future.
1. It seems the last 3 motherboards I've had, Z68 on up to the Z170e I'm using now, any time you do anything, and I mean anything to your system, the thing decides to drop a drive from the Raid array. Install new video card? Degraded array typically only missing 1 drive. It's there, it's still plugged in, just plan to rebuild/re-add a missing drive to the array every time you open your case. I always plan to have that whole array backed up somewhere else just in case. Why this happens? I blame RST for being cheap software and there not being dedicated hardware on board for the RST.
2. Using an SSD for cache on the RST crashed and lost the entire array. SSDs wear out quickly from too many overwrites. I had an OCZ drive bite the dust while being used in a 5x2TB array with the 6th drive set to the SSD for caching. Worked amazing until the drive died and Windows overwrites the partition data as new drives, all 5 of them. I imagine it would do the same to a single HD too. Data, poof! I used many Raid recovery programs but with the SSD gone it was all garbled data. Also using a dedicated OCZ cache SSD device did the same thing when it wore out and died.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I don't know! I posted several lengthy explanations about this in other threads!

I can't see how a RAM-disk will do caching unless you have software that would utilize it as such. Instead, I use a RAM-CACHE together with SSD-caching of slower devices. I did enough investigation of what was available beginning 2014. Of the two feasible choices, Primo-Cache won hands down because it would allow even two-tiered caching with SSD and RAM, it was hardware-agnostic and therefore didn't need a proprietary solution like SRT or RAPID, and you could cache with multiple controllers and drives -- including the boot drive. You don't need RAID configuration (as with SRT), you don't particularly need AHCI (as with RAPID), and you can cache across different modes (RAID vs AHCI), RAID arrays or single drives. It seems like a sure thing that you can cache a StableBit Drive Pool by caching the individual drives that make up the virtual drive of the pool.

Here are my successes thus far;

Was able to create a caching volume on a larger NVME M.2 containing in addition the system volume.

Was able to create a caching volume on a smaller NVME M.2.

Was able to create a configuration caching to NVME and then to RAM.

Was able to cache a 5,400 RPM 2TB SATA HDD to the NVME caching volume and RAM

Was able to cache an SATA SSD to NVME and RAM.

Was able to create a PRimo RAM-cache to work side by side with RAPID, but this proves pointless if you already have the software.

I have fewer problems with system stability than I ever had with my earlier systems, or with earlier systems using SRT caching. More succinctly -- I have no problems. The software is a Swiss-army knife of caching options and caching configurations. A "Lego-Blocks" of caching, depending on your hardware choices.

The downside of it: The lifetime license to the software is PC-specific, and costs $30 ($50 2-PC or < $70 3-PC). IF you want to transfer an installation to a different PC or new hardware, you can simply e-mail their customer support -- I'd done it twice. Trial period is still 60 days with full functionality.

Put it another way, whatever other proprietary options are available, this one allows you to do more.

All the other options (other than SuperCache by SuperSpeed) are faux-proprietary:

ISRT is proprietary to Intel controllers
RAPID is proprietary to SATA Samsung SSDs
Hyper-Duo is proprietary to Marvell controllers

SuperCache only provides a RAM-caching option.

I can post my Anvil Benchmark scores, my Magician Benchmark scores etc. But I've pasted them all over the forums in different threads as the topic inclined me.

AFTERTHOUGHT AND ANSWER TO OP QUESTION ABOUT HDD: Any reliable HDD will work. And it wouldn't matter whether it is connected via SATAIII or SATAII port, nor would it matter if it was a drive spinning at 5,400 RPM. Just be sure it's a good, reliable drive. You could use a WD Blue drive, and it would do just fine. The faster the device -- for instance, an SATA SSD being cached to an NVME M.2 -- would not result in faster performance, because the performance is defined by the caching drive and not the source drive.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Felt compelled to add another post in sequence. Larry? Are you talking about a PCIE M.2 SATA SSD, or a PCIE M.2 NVME SSD? I assumed you meant NVME, but you called it "AHCI."

 

[VirtualLarry]

First of all, Bonzai, there is no such thing as a PCI-E M.2 SATA SSD. If it's SATA, it cannot be PCI-E. However, there are PCI-E AHCI SSDs, just as there are PCI-E M.2 NVMe SSDs.

If I said PCI-E M.2 AHCI, then that's what I meant.

Anyways, this is a two year-old thread necro, and not relevant to my situation anymore.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

First of all, Bonzai, there is no such thing as a PCI-E M.2 SATA SSD. If it's SATA, it cannot be PCI-E. However, there are PCI-E AHCI SSDs, just as there are PCI-E M.2 NVMe SSDs.

If I said PCI-E M.2 AHCI, then that's what I meant.

Anyways, this is a two year-old thread necro, and not relevant to my situation anymore.

I must have got mixed up about the AHCI storage mode. Yes -- so all of those M.2 drives I'd seen that weren't NVME were "AHCI."

I saw all this flurry of discussion, and I got into it up to my neck, it seems . . .