Sandisk ReadyCache 32GB SSD Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Sandisk ReadyCache 32GB SSD Review - SanDisk enters the caching solution market with the SanDisk ReadyCache 32GB SSD. This SSD provides instant acceleration to users' computers through intelligent software provided by Condusiv Technologies and hardware from SanDisk. By adding two tiers of data storage, both SSD and RAM, this solution looks to up the ante for SSD caching solutions.
 
While it looks like a nice choice I think its a little bit overpriced. Considering that 120gb drives are now under a dollar/gigabyte (finally).
 
Might team one of these up on my other PC with my old 10k Raptor!
 
Stoly said:
While it looks like a nice choice I think its a little bit overpriced. Considering that 120gb drives are now under a dollar/gigabyte (finally).
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I think the idea is more that you don't have to interrupt a working system to make this work, just install the drive and software and off you go, which is really attractive to a lot of people with a lot of programs.

What I want to know is if the software can be expanded to use more than 1 GB of RAM? it's not much and with RAM cheaper than ever (as always), why not go 8 or 16 or more as a max amount?
 
I wonder if its possible to use any sandisk ssd with this software and see the gains?
 
What I like about this setup over the 45GB Corsair Accelerator that I have is that it isn't invisible to the OS once configured and running.
 
Maybe I missed something, but how come there was no comparison with the "native" RST caching available on the Z68 motherboard there using a conventional 64GB SSD? Those two Corsair Accelerator drives are also "onboard caching w/software" drives, not RST setups, yes?
 
sounds like good solid tech. Make it $40 and i buy today :)
 
At this point is doesn't seem to make much sense. You can get a very good SSD for under $1 a gig.
 
wtiger said:
At this point is doesn't seem to make much sense. You can get a very good SSD for under $1 a gig.
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Depends on your usage. If you have Adobe CS, Finale, Office, ProTools...and a few other massive professional apps on your drive...You need a 256GB OS+apps SSD before even worrying about moving your Steam directory to another HDD.

These are a nice way to not have to rebuild your system all over again. After spending $200+ on an SSD and still not having enough SSD space.
 
Yeah if you run a lot of Adobe software, re-building your PC is not a fun thing to do.

Heart in the mouth time as you hope it all registers again okay.
 
Just got one!

The nice thing about this drive is that it doesn't replace an existing drive - at one given moment in time I probably only have around 20GBs of stuff that I care about and that I'm actively using. I want that to be cached, not the extra drivers in system32 or what not.

The biggest reason why I went with this rather than a replacement drive is that I can use it in my work computer without having to call IT to have them transfer their "corporate image" over to my new drive. I'll just pop it into an additional bay and install the software!
 
Hmm, this is pretty interesting to me. I'm still rocking my mildly oc'ed E8400 system, and I'm kinda hoping to get another year outta this box before I spend the 1k to get something new. This might be a way to help me get there.

That said, I'm still only rocking 4GB of ram. Another 4GB of DDR would probably cost about the same as this drive and would definitely benefit me.

The advantage of the Sandisk drive would be that I could transfer it to my new system whenever I build it, as opposed to 4GB of DDR2 ram, which wouldn't make the jump.

Any thoughts on what would be the better choice?
 
SidewinderX said:
Hmm, this is pretty interesting to me. I'm still rocking my mildly oc'ed E8400 system, and I'm kinda hoping to get another year outta this box before I spend the 1k to get something new. This might be a way to help me get there.

That said, I'm still only rocking 4GB of ram. Another 4GB of DDR would probably cost about the same as this drive and would definitely benefit me.

The advantage of the Sandisk drive would be that I could transfer it to my new system whenever I build it, as opposed to 4GB of DDR2 ram, which wouldn't make the jump.

Any thoughts on what would be the better choice?
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Entirely depends on exactly what you're doing with your box, and if you're currently paging due to too little RAM now....presuming for discussion that you already have a 64bit OS.
 
why do you have to rebuild your pc to install a new drive/new ssd? anyone heard of acronis or ghost?
 
Skripka said:
Entirely depends on exactly what you're doing with your box, and if you're currently paging due to too little RAM now....presuming for discussion that you already have a 64bit OS.
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Yeah, I'm in Win7 64bit. I play games, but my big driver is photo editing. I play a lot with panoramas and they eat up RAM quickly!

My guess is the RAM is more useful in the short term, but I guess I'm torn with the thought of not just throwing away the $50 for a year of use. Plus, I don't have any SSD in the system, so fast boot = fun! :)
 
sundansx said:
why do you have to rebuild your pc to install a new drive/new ssd? anyone heard of acronis or ghost?
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When not everything from a disk image will fit on the SSD...there's not much choice within my knowledge. And besides, lots of things like Adobe CS and other professional softwares throw fits if you try to Ghost them...whereas they don't seem to care one bit about SSD caching within my knowledge.

SidewinderX said:
Yeah, I'm in Win7 64bit. I play games, but my big driver is photo editing. I play a lot with panoramas and they eat up RAM quickly!

My guess is the RAM is more useful in the short term, but I guess I'm torn with the thought of not just throwing away the $50 for a year of use. Plus, I don't have any SSD in the system, so fast boot = fun! :)
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Not to make you decision harder, but Sammy 830 drives are popping up for sale everywhere right now if you're in the USA. You can get a 256GB 830 for $160 from Microcenter or $180 from Amazon. If I had the coin I'd grab one. I wouldn't spend money on DDR2 at this point but that is me, especially if you're planning on a new build in the near future. An SSD can carry over, though the upgrade wouldn't be so noticable now in your actual workflow..
 
Skripka said:
Not to make you decision harder, but Sammy 830 drives are popping up for sale everywhere right now if you're in the USA. You can get a 256GB 830 for $160 from Microcenter or $180 from Amazon. If I had the coin I'd grab one. I wouldn't spend money on DDR2 at this point but that is me, especially if you're planning on a new build in the near future. An SSD can carry over, though the upgrade wouldn't be so noticable now in your actual workflow..
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Yeah, I don't think I'm as interested in a straight SSD right now -- prices are good for right now, but I can only imagine they will continue to drop before I build my new machine.
 
Also, there are configuration errors that can crop up when ghosting. When you install WIn7 if it detects an SSD the OS configures itself to operate somewhat better with that type of storage solution. If you just clone over the HDD to the SSD, the OS inst configured correctly. You can run winsatdisk from an elevated cmd prompt to force the OS to detect the SSD and recognize it, BUT there is no guarantee that it will reconfigure the OS. I have heard that it will reconfigure the OS at that time, but have yet to see proof of that.
Also, SSDs are very sensitive to alignment issues when installing, so you will have to use a '4k aware' cloning solution when transferring an OS from HDD to SSD.
For average users all of this is a serious PITA, hence the easy to use caching solutions. Be prepared to see more come forward, this segment is only going to grow.
All of the dollar a GB in the world isn't going to do a thing for the guys/gals that need 2TB of storage :) or do not have the time or desire to learn all of these tidbits...
 
At the end of page one, the review says: "With the SanDisk solution we will try to pull the plug while the SSD is in operation to test the validity of the claims."

But I can't find any mention of such a test in the rest of the article.
 
Hope it's more stable than that Nvelo crap. I tried the OCZ cache drive earlier this year and the caching software was a source of much heartburn. Not shutting down / coming back up properly, blue screens during standby/resume, blue screens at random, etc. And every time that happened it had to run a super slow integrity check on the next boot, like 15-30 mins of waiting. That sucker got returned and I just went with a Corsair 180gb SSD for OS drive.
 
I have not had any of the problems described above on my OCZ Synapse. Has worked perfect over the last six months.
 
So is this an SLC or MLC device?

I can't seem to find any details on that in the article or elsewhere.

You'd think that a cache drive with its frequent writes would need to be SLC. I know that Intel's Larson and Hawley Creek models are SLC. How about the Corsair accelerator drives? Are those SLC or MLC?
 
Something that should be stressed in the review is that this caching SSD is Windows 7 ONLY. It won't work with Vista or XP. I have Vista and already bought the thing, hope I can cancel my order in time. Sucks :/
 
I installed the SanDisk ReadyCahce on my Dell Server, PowerEdge T300. That I have at home.
It is running Windows Server 2012 and the ExpressCache software, it works with no issue at all.

Nice addition to speed a bit the system that has 4 x 2TB drive in a Raid5 on the Dell PERC6 controller.
The virtual machines on Hpyer-V are speeded up by it.

No sure however I would recommend this on a true enterprise system as I only use my server at home and sandbox.
 
What I'm trying to determine is this:

Can you use the ReadyCache against another drive (non-boot, single drive) in the installed system? I know the Corsair/Nvelo solution was for the boot drive only. Just trying to see if it is feasible.

OS currently runs on a 60gb SSD with a 1TB in-line behind for data/applications. The ReadyCache drive would be used to improve the performance of the 1TB.
 
G&B said:
What I'm trying to determine is this:

Can you use the ReadyCache against another drive (non-boot, single drive) in the installed system? I know the Corsair/Nvelo solution was for the boot drive only. Just trying to see if it is feasible.

OS currently runs on a 60gb SSD with a 1TB in-line behind for data/applications. The ReadyCache drive would be used to improve the performance of the 1TB.
Click to expand...

The answer is yes, it takes all the local drives and paritions and improves the performance of all of them.
 
Well guys sorry for the late return on this...however i was awaiting a reply from SanDisk as to the type of NAND used for the ReadyCache SSD, and the reply is rather unsatisfying tbh.
"We do not disclose the type of memory used in ReadyCache."
Yup, that's it. hardly something to wait a few days for. This only tells me that it is NOT SLC, but probably run of the mill MLC. This is fine of course, as other solutions use this type of NAND as well. It also intn uncommon for vendors to not reveal the type of NAND they use when it is re-branded such as the NAND on this device so I am not entirely surprised at least.
As to the Pull the Plug testing, we did do that, several times in fact. Even during the middle of benchmarks that were actively pounding the drive! No failures, not one I am happy to report, sorry that I forgot this para in the conclusion!
 
mine should be here tomorrow, hopefully it gives some new life to my aging pc. Not quite ready to start a new build.
 
Mine arrived today, installation tonight in my HTPC/TV gamer. The system's currently running a Q6600, 3gb ram, and runs off of 2 1TB WD greenpowers. Should lend a nice boost.
 
Im tellin ya, this is the best type of upgrade for aging computers, that Q6600 is going to be rocking again :)

Let me know how it pans out guys, there is nothing more important than feedback :)
 
I bought one of these and have been using it about a week now. I started getting interested when Corsair came out with theirs. What kept me from buying that one was a few things. Didn't work well with ACHI, had to be installed on the boot drive, only worked with the boot drive. Then the Sandisk one came out that worked with all of those issues. I decided to give it a try since I've never had any experience with SSD drives before. Well cost me $50 and after a week of using it, it was money well spent. Works with all my drives, installed it on second HDD and I definitely have noticed performance increases and boot speed. The 32 meg cache is plenty for me cause after a week of use, it's still not all the way full yet. All in all, I'm happy I got it.
 
Excellent~one thing that is impressive to me is how intelligently it caches the data. The second reboot was exponentially faster, yet there was an amazingly small amount of cached data on the drive. Pretty cool how it can just pick out the smallest cross section off data that actually needs accelerated and provide such explosive speed.
Technical explanation-the algorithm studies the access time of each file request, they only accelerate those blocks that have the worst access time. This would usually be random access and fragmented files/blocks. That is part of the reason that i find the fact that it defrags the HDD very well as a good value-added proposition. That way you can eliminate the majority of bad access times on the HDD anyway, before you even cache. So they are getting both ends of the solution tidied up, and this help to make the amount of actual NAND based caching even lower.
 
Just received mine in (ordered Saturday 10/18) and installed into main system which is an AMD 965 Black @ 3684MHz, 16GB RAM (G-Skill F3-12800CL9), Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3, 3 1TB WDC Black SATA 6 (64MB cache each),AMD Radeon HD6750 using to two monitors, Antec TP 650, and W7 Ultimate running just over 3 years installed.

This is my main rig and before install the boot RAM in use was at 2.21GB, cores never were more than 5% usage across all. AV, VPN, Display Fusion 4.2, 12 devices and five printers. Now it is 3.31GB with all 4 cores jumping from 4 - 22% (constantly) depending on typing with OL2010, TaskMgr, one open folder Explorer, Opera x64 12.2 and Palemoon 15.2 x64.

I keep seeing a climb in memory usage and do not see it dropping. Yes, this rig does have 16GB, but I rarely went over 3.7GB (unless running a VM) before installing this.

Has anyone else noticed such increase in RAM after installing it?
 
got mine today and tried to install. The computer will not find the readycache drive, keep getting the same message everytime I try and install the software. Switched sata ports with those that are currently working, followed their instruction to the T and took the battery off the mobo..etc..etc(thanks for resetting all my bios for nothing). Switched sata cable just to make sure...still nothing. Im pretty sure this thing may be DOA, any more ideas?
 
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