[SOLVED] Any point in using 8GB ExpressCache SSD, when main drive is SSD?

[Mr Creosote]

I just swapped the original i5 motherboard in my Samsung Chronos notebook for one with a i7 CPU, and found that as well as the more powerful CPU, I had also gained a couple of other extra features, such as a dedicated AMD Radeon GPU, and an 8GB SanDisk ExpressCache SSD soldered onto the board.
I already have a 256GB SanDisk SSD with my operating systems installed on it, so do I have anything to gain by making use of the 8GB cache drive? Or does it only improve performance when the main drive is mechanical?

 

[USAFRet]

Serves no purpose. 1 SSD as a cache for another SSD.
Might even be a bit slower, due to the processing overhead, and almost certainly that 8GB space is slower than your normal SSD.

 

[Turtle Rig]

Serves no purpose. 1 SSD as a cache for another SSD.
Might even be a bit slower, due to the processing overhead, and almost certainly that 8GB space is slower than your normal SSD.

Also to add, that is a great thing if you have a hard drive, but won't do jack for your SSD my friend.

 

[Mr Creosote]

Thanks both, I thought this was most likely the case.
While my operating systems are installed on the SSD, I have also swapped the optical drive for a second hard drive, which is a mechanical, 1TB SATA drive. Could the 8GB drive be of any use as a cache for that, for instance if I were to install games on the 1TB drive, or when I'm accessing audio files stored on it when making music?

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks both, I thought this was most likely the case.
While my operating systems are installed on the SSD, I have also swapped the optical drive for a second hard drive, which is a mechanical, 1TB SATA drive. Could the 8GB drive be of any use as a cache for that, for instance if I were to install games on the 1TB drive, or when I'm accessing audio files stored on it when making music?

Not really.
It is for sectors (not files or applications) that are accessed repeatedly. Unless you're playing the same mp3 over and over...

You can try it though.
I doubt you'll see any difference except maybe the placebo effect.

 

[Mr Creosote]

Well I have spent more time than could be considered healthy listening to the same damned snare drum sound over and over recently..........
ok, thanks for the answers, looks like a better use for it might be to put some kind of linux repair toolkit type OS on it.

 

[USAFRet]

ok, thanks for the answers, looks like a better use for it might be to put some kind of linux repair toolkit type OS on it.

Only if you can actually access that 8GB space independently. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't.
Depends a lot on the motherboard BIOS.

 

[Mr Creosote]

It's accessible, yeah. After I initialised and formatted it with aoemei partition assistant, it shows up as normal storage.