What is the purpose of the small 32GB SSD in my new Ultrabook?

[Christopher Corley]

A few days ago i purchased a Lenovo u410 ultrabook. It came equipped with a 750gb HDD and a 32gb SSD.
I believe it might be some sort of a hybrid drive. I can see both the SSD and HDD partitions in explorer.
The SSD contains only some of the default drivers and stuff the laptop is pre-installed with from the factory.

First off, what is the purpose of the small SSD?

Second, I was thinking of performing a clean windows 8 install from a retail disk, to remove some the bloatware and such.

Would this be a bad idea?

Thirdly, can i install the OS to the SSD for a speed boost, and then map the other program files and user files to the HDD? Would this actually give me a speed boost?

I have also read that maybe the SSD is for a cache drive, but i dont quite understand this concept. I have looked around for a few hours now and cant find much information on this, so i'd appreciate if someone could shed a little light on the subject.

Thanks!!!

 

[bak0n]

It acts to cache files that are most commonly used speeding up access to those files. It's more or less 2 drive acting like a Momentus XT.

 

[Solandri]

It acts as a cache. Files you use more frequently are automatically placed in it. So for your current system, I'd just leave it as it is. It's highly unlikely you'll do a better job picking which OS and program files to put on it.

However, the vast majority of these cache SSDs are mSATA drives. In most cases you can replace them with a larger mSATA SSD. mSATA SSDs are currently available up to 256 GB for only slightly more than a 2.5" 256 GB SSD. 480 GB ones are supposed to be available soon. So if you wanted a "full" SSD in the system, you may be able to buy a 128 or 256 GB mSATA SSD and replace the 32 GB one.

 

[Christopher Corley]

Ok that makes perfect sense, I appreciate the quick responses!
However I still do intend wipe and put a clean install of Windows 8 on it.
Are their any special steps involved to maintain the SSD as a cache drive?
Can I format both drives (like you normally do before installing a OS) without messing up this caching system?

 

[bak0n]

The software would be with your manufactor. My Z77 motherboards both have the mSATA slots on them and it goes through a piece of Intel software. iRST if I recall. So long as you have it installed, you can build a raid with both the traditional drive and the SSD. I have not done it but it seemed easy enough.