Smart Response Technology

[Atros]

I'm planning on building a new system in a few months, and I'm trying to decide how to go about setting up my storage. Tentatively, I'm planning on using ASUS P8Z68 DELUXE for my board, with Corsair CSSD-F240GBGT-BK for a SSD, a Western Digital Velociraptor 600GB for additional space for programs, as well as a more standard 2TB HDD for storage. I've seen enough about the Intel Smart Response on the Z68 chipset to know that if you use a larger SSD for a cache, the rest can be set aside to use for storage. I'm trying to make sure that you will still be able to boot off of the SSD, using it for programs (such windows itself, for instance) that you will ALWAYS want to run quickly, and saving the caching (maybe 30 GB set aside) for relatively infrequently run programs off or the HDD.

 

[inzone]

I would look into the SRT a little bit more to make sure that it is going to make that much of a difference for you. The reason I say that is because if you are using a SSD for your boot drive then how much of a performance boost are you going to see vs. a conventional hdd as the OS drive. It makes total sense to use SRT if you are using a conventional hdd for the OS drive because they are slower to begin with ,but with the speed of the SSD being so high now and the access times being in the ms is it worth the trouble setting it all up that way. That's why I say that you should do more research into how much performance increase you will see by using a ssd as the OS drive and a smaller ssd for the cache.

 

[Atros]

Well... the plan was to use the SSD for the OS, whilst setting aside a portion of it to cache a conventional hard drive. That way, the SSD is there for things that you want consistently fast, the cached hard drive is for the bulk of the programs, leaving a larger tertiary hard drive for most data. Since the SSD is already being used for the OS, though, it may be a moot point. The Velociraptor is pretty much as good as it gets as far as data transfer as it is, as far as standard hard drives go.

I did find a review at http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1587/5/ showing that the Velociraptor did gain some very significant performance improvements with the Intel 311 Larson Creek 20GB SLC SSD, which is the small SSD Intel designed specifically for SRT. The Corsair SSD I'm thinking about is 240GB. SRT is capped at 64 GB, with any excess being converted over into another drive letter. My idea is to cut off about 20-30GB or so for the HD cache, where I'd have the bulk of my programs (Steam being the biggest example). On the SSD volume itself, keep things like Windows, Firefox, and other things that would always enjoy higher performance.

Mostly, I'm trying to decide if a.) This will actually work, and b.) general impressions of the idea. If nothing else, I could just go with the straight up SSD/HDD set up without using a portion for the cache, but it seems to me like it it could take potential advantage of the feature of the chipset. I think it could be worth sacrificing a relatively small portion of storage on the SSD to boost the HDD.

 

[inzone]

The SRT is for the cpu to use as a cache for the OS and I don't believe it was intended to be used as a cache for a hdd the doesn't have the OS on it. The problem being is that the conventional hdd already has a cache on it so in effect you are trying to double cache the conventional hdd ? What will happen when you use a portion of the SSD for the SRT is that it will prefetch darta from any drive that is there in your Pc and hold it for the cpu to access. It will act basicly the same way ram acts only faster. So you will be getting the data from , the SSD , the Veloceraptor or the 2tb hdd and that is the purpose of the SRT. You can't designate what hdd you want the SRT cache to work with.

 

[nocturnal7x]

You CAN do that, of course, the partition used for windows will not be useable as cache, so if you have a 120gb ssd, and use 60 for the windows partition, you can use the other 60 for SRT. (you can tell SRT which HDD to use the cache for)

SRT is awesome, I have a 64bd ssd for cache only, I load Battlefield 3 so fast im almost always the first one in a MP match, and always 30 seconds to a minuet faster than my friend who has 2 WD caviar blacks in raid 0

chrome starts when I click it, no delay

 

[k1114]

A cpu's cache is ram, in the terms we are speaking of, SRT is adding more hdd cache. Cache is the temp files that are being read for faster access. Off the hdd it's a temp on the srt ssd where it goes to ram when it is used.

Do you really think you will have more than 200GBs worth of programs? I've got about 15 games and 5 cs5/autodesk apps (and os) and that takes a little less than 200GBs. There's really no point in a veloc when you can get a ssd especially with the prices of hdds now. I would never use srt even with a 60GB ssd.

Although as nocturnal said, it is possible and you do not need to make a partition. You select the ssd and it'll give the option for 20gb or the max of 64gb to allocate. http://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/intel_smart_response_technology_user_guide.pdf

 

[Viventis]

I'm planning on building a new system in a few months, and I'm trying to decide how to go about setting up my storage. Tentatively, I'm planning on using ASUS P8Z68 DELUXE for my board, with Corsair CSSD-F240GBGT-BK for a SSD, a Western Digital Velociraptor 600GB for additional space for programs, as well as a more standard 2TB HDD for storage. I've seen enough about the Intel Smart Response on the Z68 chipset to know that if you use a larger SSD for a cache, the rest can be set aside to use for storage. I'm trying to make sure that you will still be able to boot off of the SSD, using it for programs (such windows itself, for instance) that you will ALWAYS want to run quickly, and saving the caching (maybe 30 GB set aside) for relatively infrequently run programs off or the HDD.

I just put together a new box with a WD 1TB main drivedrive and a Crucial 64GB M4 SSD set entirely for SRT caching. I also have a second system with a 120GB Crucial M4 SSD as my main drive and a 1TB WD drive for storage.

To answer you original question, you MUST install the OS on the regular hard drive to use SST. Since SRT can only use 64GB, you can set aside a partion for SSD storage but that extra space can't run your OS.

I am extremely pleased with my SRT box! The one with the SSD running the OS boots faster, but ONLY because the other box has to load raid drivers with the short pause screens to access the raid menus. Because I only have the OS, one large game (Battlefield 3) and several apps on the SSD drive, the SRT box is actually quicker overall because all of my games and applications are taking advantage of the SSD cache, not just the ones loaded on the SSD on my SSD OS box. I saw a lot of posts by folks that don't use it, badmouthing SRT. Many posts say it's not worth it, just get a bigger SSD. If you can afford to buy an SSD only storage system, of course it will run faster. But my SRT box is quicker overall than my hybrid SSD OS, HD storage box.