any one use a SSD as a cache drive?

[ShambleS1980]

ok il try to make a long story short (im not very good at that)

my 250gb os drive is getting moved to my tv pc. (its getting old but has no errors)
i am Planning to replace it with a wd red 1tb. and a intel ssd 40gb Sata II which will be used as 100% cache drive.
However i am getting conflicting information about how effective this would be.

some people say to just get a bigger ssd (cant really affoard that) use that as my os drive then just put games on the WD.
Others say that it will make it Noticably faster once the system has cached my most used data.

I would imagine that the latter is true. but i would like to know if any one here has done similar.

Even when i asked if making a 128gb os ssd primary, then having a raid srt setup with 1tb wd red + 40gb ssd cache for my games i was given the same conflicting info of "it will be faster/its pointelss"

so any one done it?

 

[Sardine]

the best way to go as suggested is larger SSD for OS and mechanical drive for games

My setup on i7 is 128gb ssd and 2tb data for steam library etc. works great.

256gb ssd down to as low as £65 best value price per gb.

 

[Monkeh]

I looked into it on my last rebuild, didn't see any real point so stuck with an SSD boot/OS drive and mechanical main drive.

Like Sardine I opted for a bigger SSD atm I'm on my third, have had a 60GB intel, 120Gb Sandisk and atm using 256Gb Corsair mSATA because I was building an mITX system and one less drive and cables equals better airflow, tho its now mounted in a full ATX desktop case . Can honestly say I can't tell the difference in boot/access times between the 3 systems which have been a Q9450 @stock, i7 2600k @4.2Ghz and i7 4770k @4.5Ghz respectively and includes the jumps between SATA, SATA 2 and SATA 3.

 

[ShambleS1980]

cheapest ssd in stock any where i trust thats 256gb is ~£80 ish its hard to justify when i can get a 3tb wd red for about the same money.

but have you tried using a smaller ssd as a cache for a mechanical drive?

 

[Zoltar]

If may make a recommendation... Get the 250gb SSD. Then get your big mechanical drive for storage at a later date when you start getting low on free space. Or, even better, get another SSD. The speed difference between a good SSD compared to a traditional hard disk more than justifies the £s you'll spend. Plus, they're absolutely silent in operation, use less power and generate less heat inside the case.

When I build PCs for people, I always recommend they go for a smaller, faster SSD over a larger HD.

SJ

 

[Sardine]

+1

once you've used an ssd as your os drive you will never look back. worth every penny.

turns a core 2 duo laptop into a joy to use where previously it took 5 minutes to be useable.

the only time i would say don't use an ssd is in a htpc which is usually on all the time sleeping etc

 

[ShambleS1980]

my pc is on 24/7 and 250gb would only replace my current os drive and id have no space lol.

but have any of you tried using a ssd as a cache drive? every one i find that has says its good. and every one that tells me its pointless either say they used ram to cache a ssd which didnt help or they havent at all.. (i dont see why you would cache an ssd personally)

 

[Sardine]

for example my laptop that I sold. had Msata 256gb and 750gb Hybrid drive (8gb ssd)

copying to the 750gb was around 150mb/s

reboot and transfer again and its over 500mb/s

thats 1 HD X264 or 1 large game (8gb) cached, as soon as I load another game the cache is useless.

cache drives only work on OS drives with lots of frequently used small files. so i dont see the point of using 40gb ssd to cache a 2 tb drive. uneconomical as as soon as you have read 40gb of data (couple of games maybee a film in hd or 2) then your cache has been wiped and windows take the usual 5 minutes to load while its "re-cached", i don't see the point.

a stripped down windows 7(just what you need) is about 25gb with all the required files to do what you want. just move the hibernation / virtual mem files to the 2tb and keep the 40gb clean and use it as an OS boot drive not a cache drive.

 

[sputnik]

You'll hate to hear this, but as Sardine says either optimise your OS or just wait till you can afford a larger SSD - really.

 

[Zoltar]

my pc is on 24/7 and 250gb would only replace my current os drive and id have no space lol.

Get a 250gb SSD, then partition it with a 50gb C: for Window$ and the rest as D:, you can now use the HD you've already got as your storage drive until you can replace it with a larger one and can copy all your stuff over. As well as having a sizable chunk of free space on a superfast SSD to use as you see fit.

The whole cache drive thing, to me, seems like a waste of time.

SJ

 

[ShambleS1980]

but the tv pc gets my current os drive lol.. it needs the space and its the only way i can convince the wife to let me buy more storage..

as for the os drive only.. i dont see how i benifit from a faster booting windows (pc is on 24/7) but my games get used.. i dont think the 40gb cache drive would get filled up to fast with the 2-3 games i play at a time.
and i wont have any media on the drive either.

i also didnt want a hybrid as they all seem to have 8gb nand. which i dont think is enough thats why i thought id do it my self and use 40gb. a whole bunch of review sites says its a night and day diference. but every one els seems to say they dont see the point.. (apart from a couple of people who have theirs set up like that) but maybe they just say its worth it because thats how they set their pc up?

I do notice one trend though.
Very few people have them set up as a cache drive.
and their is a lot of misconception as to how it works which make it confusing..
some people seem to think that files from a diferent hard disk (one not in the raid/cache setup) will get cached on it. others say that it simply will not cache a video or rar file any way as its smart. and others say video files will ruin the cache..

think i need to go find some really solid information some where. but it dosent seem to be any where really. and every thing i read is conflicting. but the general consensus is buy a big old ssd and use that for everything (which i think we would all do in a perfect world. (2x 3tb slc ssd'ds in raid for all lol)

any way il go read up some more. just need to find more people who have actually set up a ssd to cache a hdd and hear what they think. its just a bit like searching for hens teeth (although i have found a couple so far)

edit

did more research..

its totaly pointless to set up a mechanical drive with a ssd cache IF my os drive is a ssd to start it.

Setting a os drive as a mechanical drive + having a cache will give a Big increase vs having just mechanical, but not quite as much as just having a ssd

so i was thinking (because my pc is always on and i dont care about 30 seconds faster boot time, or how long it takes for windows to become responsive)

how about a mechanical hard disk for the os.
and then a ssd just for the apps and games i use the most.

(some benches here http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2594&page=4 )

 

[johnim]

hi as all have said ssd boot and mech storage, all my 4 pcs have 120gb ssds and 1tb or bigger storage i have 2 1tb wd reds in raid as a media drive

and in my media machine next to the tv a 60gb ssd

 

[Kawazu]

An ssd as cache + a normal hdd will be faster then just the normal hdd alone but still worse then a stand alone ssd.

Save the money and buy a larger ssd.

 

[protek]

I have the ReadyBoost utility in my Win8 laptop using an 8 GB SD card. There's a slight improvement in performance but it's still quite sluggish to use. I'm planning to replace my current hard disk with an SSD of same capacity. SSD prices are coming down so I concur with others about getting an SSD dedicated for OS and a bigger drive for games.

 

[slk486]

any one use a SSD as a cache drive?

If you have plenty of Ram, then PrimoCache (formerly FancyCache) by Romex is an incredible peace of software.

http://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/index.html
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/windows-and-office/review-better-performance-with-fancycache/

Can also use SSDs for level 2 caches. There's a demo and I really can't recommend it enough.

Even if you do get an SSD as primary disk, PrimoCache is still very helpful and will save on wear and tear on the SSD on top.

 

[ShambleS1980]

For now. i went for a small SSD and a large mechanical and running it as cache.
the os drive with my steam games right now after some tweaking and stuff (moving downloads and document folders default location, no hyberfile, stuff like that) is about 100Gb (only have steam games installed so far need the rest of my games too)
The hard disk i went for is only a 40Gb ssd. i went for 30gb cache (z77 board so using intel rst). 4gb for page file, and the rest free so it dosen't lose performance.

Even more research in the end showed me I could have a dedicated main SSD and then a SSD to cache a mechanical drive.
i will get a larger ssd for the OS only. but using the SSD as a cache has given me 90% of the speed of using just a SSD, but it has done it whilst allowing me to speed up all the games and windows instead of just windows and a couple of games.
All you have to do is reboot 2-3 times. and run your games 2-3 time and it has all the importaint files from all those things on the ssd so its a lot faster.

Write speeds arent any faster because i chose to write directly to the mechanical. rather than write to the cache then it writes to the mechanical..
so i get the normal HDD write speeds. But i get 90% ssd read speeds for my apps and windows. Also because i dont have the write cache. my data dosent get flushed out of the hard disk.
for my needs this ended up being the better option..

Im not sure if the next ssd i buy will be dedicated just to games or if it will be smaller and dedicated just to windows. or if il use the 40Gb i have now just for windows and then the second ssd just for games and forget the chache alltogether (i dont think theres much point in cache if you have 2 ssd's)

performance wise.. initally dissapointing. (almost just scraped the idea and used it just for os or just for games, but decided to give it a chance..) glad i did give it a chance because once the data is cached then its alot faster.
Only running 8gb ram so i wont be using ram as a cache id want atleast 16gb to do that. and then thats volatile any way. so thats why i went for a ssd instead.
also i did not want to use ready boost rather than rst because it would cache everything from every where, i wanted it to opnly cache data from the 1tb drive and not from my storage drive (which now also has apps i dont want cached on there too.

Gonna be a few months before i can think of buying another ssd, and i really would prefer an i7-3770k which if i sold my i5-2500k i wopuld be able to buy if i added the money i would spend on an ssd to that..

Honetsly im being greedy. but something just makes me want my pc to be faster than it needs to be lol..

 

[ShambleS1980]

just to update..

been tinkering with my pc and had to restart (some drivers and apps i hadnt installed)
Any way. I had to wake my wife up "she was not impressed" but i am..

pc restarted.. I didnt even See the windows 7 logo. and before the fan fare music was finished playing i was at a fully functioning desktop. with all my start up apps loaded and already mimizied to system tray!
It was rediculous..
like i said wife was not interested or impressed so here i am.
I dont really ever restart my pc so its not something that really affects me. but if it was id be Utterly impressed.

I dont think i can explain how much faster it booted up to what im used to..
It really was. Post. raid controller tests// Fan fair music starts (similtanious booting of all start up apps. all loaded, fully functioning desctop ready to go no wating around) fan fair music stops..

i noticed my games seemed faster and apps seemed faster.. But for windows to do that compared to..
post.. raid check.. windows icon throbbing.. windows icon gone away.. fan fair music starts and stops. screen fades in. one app loads.. second app loads.. desktop sluggish.. 3rd app loads. desktop is finally useable.. you really see how much faster it is,
id probably need a stop watch to compare my apps and game speeds loading to be able to say how much faster they are. "like i said they do seem to be faster to me"
but that windows loading thing. It was faster than waking my wifes laptop from sleep.

and thats just with cache.. so im 10% slower than i could be. and my os drive is a wd red... some one needs to slap me because its so ridiculous il probably go sign up to a bunch of random forums just to tell them too.
colour me impressed

 

[Monkeh]

I honestly doubt you'd see anything with a jump from a 2500k to the 3770k unless you were overclocking the upgrade to buggery after running the 2500k @stock, or doing some pretty intensive video processing work that uses the extra threads. On my own PC with an SSD boot drive power on to windows takes ~30s, half of that is getting through the POST so I can live with that. A nice graphics card, something like a 670GTX/7950 or better depending on preference or availability and 8Gb or more memory if you're running on 4Gb or less would be the best places to invest, but not that minor cpu jump.

 

[ShambleS1980]

have a 7850 and 8gb ram. so im there or there abouts with those. i doubt it take any longer for me to boot windows either once post and raid check is done im in. the windows start up music hasnt even finished and everything is loaded.
id like a 3770k as its the max my board can support lol. i dont like thinking that it could have more and it dosent lol.
i suppose its time for me to either think of a few steps up with the gpu' like a 290(x) but thats just silly money. or settle with the fact that its prety close to being as fast as it can be and accept that any improvements will be diminishing returns from here on in.

 

[Monkeh]

Yup its exactly that now - diminishing returns .

From what you've listed then graphics card would be the place to spend if you have the upgrade urge, otherwise if everything is running the way you want it I wouldn't bother. The R9 290x are very nice - mine replaced a 7950 crossfire set up, but it kicks out more heat than the 2 cards it replaced combined and if you game at 1920x1080 then it's totally not worth it, a 7950 or R8 280x as they're called now would be a better investment. Also worth a look at the nVidia offerings, 670GTX or better is a very nice performance level but they are more expensive on the bang for buck atm and again hardly worth it unless you plan to game in high settings over 1080p.