Intel Smart Response Technology - SRT @ [H]

[gathagan]

Interesting, thanks for the response, Dan. I would have thought a larger cache would result in a higher cache hit-rate. That's why I was hoping a fairly inexpensive but larger mid-range MLC might be better than a smaller write-optimized setup like the 311 seems to be.

Anandtech stated that Intel's tests were showing a performance plateau at 64GB, hence their decision to set that as the upper limit.

On a related note, I've not seen anything mentioned regarding long term SRT performance with regard to garbage accumulation on the SSD.

On the one hand, the fact that you are required to run the drive in RAID mode eliminates the ability to use TRIM.
On the other hand, the vast majority of drive access would be reads, as opposed to writes, so it may take a looong time for performance to suffer.

I also am unclear regarding the impact of block level writing vs. file level.
Would that have any impact on how quickly garbage accumulates on the SSD?

 

[Dan_D]

Anandtech stated that Intel's tests were showing a performance plateau at 64GB, hence their decision to set that as the upper limit.

On a related note, I've not seen anything mentioned regarding long term SRT performance with regard to garbage accumulation on the SSD.

On the one hand, the fact that you are required to run the drive in RAID mode eliminates the ability to use TRIM.
On the other hand, the vast majority of drive access would be reads, as opposed to writes, so it may take a looong time for performance to suffer.

I also am unclear regarding the impact of block level writing vs. file level.
Would that have any impact on how quickly garbage accumulates on the SSD?

Well you can always disable SRT and perform an erase on the drive then re-enable SRT if you had to. But you are correct, TRIM isn't supported in this configuration.

As for garbage accumulation, Intel's documentation does not specify how long this could take. However, the cache policy differentiates between high-value data (application, user, and boot data) and low-value data like that which may be caused by a virus scanner or other "single instance" type of data which won't benefit much if at all from caching. This tells me that garbage accumulation will be very slow.

 

[Shwick]

it's a good move by intel, ssd drives are still fairly expensive for a lot of people given their size. This technology allows you to maximize the performance of a mechanical storage device while leveraging the speed of a ssd and minimizing the cost

but would the cost of the srt technology be better spent on a larger ssd to simply install your os/apps

 

[Silenus]

I don't think we know that TRIM isn't supported. Perhaps it could be supported. Don't forget that recently Intel RST drivers added TRIM support for an SSD that was on a controller in RAID mode as long as it was NOT part of a RAID array. Remember that the SSD caching is not really a raid array..it is purely driver driven. On the other hand the OS doesn't see both drives but one. So depending on how the drivers present the single drive to the OS perhaps it allows TRIM commands to pass back to the SSD?

EDIT: Look like I was wrong. Legitreviews reports that TRIM is not supported. They say according to Intel the software leaves some free space on the cache drive to allow for maintenance.

 

[Dan_D]

I like the sound of this technology very much, specifically for my son and wife's computer. Now I don't have to buy and help manage the pure SSD, or worse explain to my wife why she can't install such and such on the C: drive.

I would have a few questions though, if you review guys are listening. Like could I have an installed OS, and then add the small 20GB SSD later and then enable the SRT? I know you mentioned it in the article, but I have seen some ambiguity on whether this does block or file caching? For instance, if I update an OS file, does the cache actually get updated or does it have to wait until that file is used three or four times? I agree it sounds a lot like the Momentus XT, which I have in our floater laptop and it works very very well.

Yes, you can setup the machine and then add the SSD / enable SRT later. The caching occurs with data that is deemed beneficial for caching by the cache policy. The data has to be accessed at least once for read caching. (Writes can sometimes see improvement from caching immediately.)

Interesting, thanks for the response, Dan. I would have thought a larger cache would result in a higher cache hit-rate. That's why I was hoping a fairly inexpensive but larger mid-range MLC might be better than a smaller write-optimized setup like the 311 seems to be.

A larger cache does give you a greater hit rate. More data can be cached and that's a good thing. MLC drives should perform well in SRT configurations but Intel has chosen SLC based drives for their recommended configuration because SLC drives have better wear characteristics. Intel's white paper on the SSD 311 shows that it is designed to have a minimum life span of 5 years of useful life writing 20GB of host writes to it every day. You will not get nearly that much out of an MLC based drive.

I do see your point that the VMDK files attempting to be cached involved are pretty big, though. That's one reason I'm excited about the block-level caching going on - only the relevant (accessed) portions of the file would be cached. And since I use a lot of VM cloning, I was hoping the important portions of the clone source file would be even better cached since it's hit a lot, probably in consistent patterns. I load/unload VM's (run builds, regression tests, etc) a LOT and am badly I/O bound on the input side, it really slows down the VM load.

It's possible you'd see some benefit to the caching technology, as it is block level. However you'd have to use the same data set a lot for that to come into play. A lot of times large files bypass the cache completely. It's what is generally considered one touch data by the caching algorithm. Specifically most people don't watch the same movie every day. So if you got to watch a movie, that single 2-4GB file (or however large you've got it) will only get used once or twice a year. With your VM's you'll see use more frequently. So it might help you. Then again if your VM's are large and you do this a lot, the SRT caching algorithm's 64GB limit may be too little for you.

I should have explained better. Their 20GB SSDs are too expensive. In the marketplace, people look for numbers. What they are going to see is "20GB for $100 or 64GB for $100" ad you can guess how they are going to vote. I do think this technology is compelling for read-acceleration, but I think it belongs as a low-cost motherboard-integrated option for lower end platforms. No one seeking a Z68 is going to care for this, and those looking at more affordable platforms are going to feel some serious sticker shock at Intel's tiny and expensive SLC slice. This might go over better with the general public if VARs take a somewhat Apple-esque approach and simply integrate a 30GB or 40GB MLC bank right onto low cost motherboards.

Again MLC is not ideal for this type of usage scenario where the data on the drive is more dynamic and less static necessitating more writes than a normal SSD usage scenario would probably dictate. $100 for an SLC drive or less isn't a bad deal. I agree most people won't know any better and opt for larger MLC drives. With lighter usage patterns this may be OK, but my gut tells me that many will experience more rapid degredation of the MLC drive's performance and earlier failures than they might expect. Just like when Ready Boost first came out, we saw tons of dead flash drives because most of them weren't durable enough for that type of caching scheme.

it's a good move by intel, ssd drives are still fairly expensive for a lot of people given their size. This technology allows you to maximize the performance of a mechanical storage device while leveraging the speed of a ssd and minimizing the cost

but would the cost of the srt technology be better spent on a larger ssd to simply install your os/apps

That's exactly the point. As for the money being better spent on an SSD for your OS and Apps, that's a matter of opinion. For the average user, I'd say no. They want a single drive, they want larger drives, and will simply look at cost vs. size above all else. Again this isn't a feature for the enthusiast, but rather the mainstream users. We might even see this find OEM usage at some point.

I don't think we know that TRIM isn't supported. Perhaps it could be supported. Don't forget that recently Intel RST drivers added TRIM support for an SSD that was on a controller in RAID mode as long as it was NOT part of a RAID array. Remember that the SSD caching is not really a raid array..it is purely driver driven. On the other hand the OS doesn't see both drives but one. So depending on how the drivers present the single drive to the OS perhaps it allows TRIM commands to pass back to the SSD?

True, I do not know 100% for sure that TRIM isn't supported in this configuration. I'll see if I can find out about that. I do know that the SSD 311 is supported in the latest version of the SSD Toolbox, so we'll see.

 

[Endgame]

My question is, can you RAID 0 the SSDs used for the Cache drive? I have a couple of old 30GB Vertex Turbos, and since the max cache size is 64GB, I could raid 0 two of the Vertexes and pickup extra cache space as well as some extra speed. Was looking at building the wife a box, but was only going to RAID my 4 old 150GB Raptors since I didn't want to deal with multiple drive letters. This could be an excellent solution for space and speed.

 

[Dan_D]

My question is, can you RAID 0 the SSDs used for the Cache drive? I have a couple of old 30GB Vertex Turbos, and since the max cache size is 64GB, I could raid 0 two of the Vertexes and pickup extra cache space as well as some extra speed. Was looking at building the wife a box, but was only going to RAID my 4 old 150GB Raptors since I didn't want to deal with multiple drive letters. This could be an excellent solution for space and speed.

That's a good question. I do not believe you can do this, but I can't rule it out either. The documentation doesn't make any mention of doing this at all. I will see if I can find out.

 

[sphinx99]

Again MLC is not ideal for this type of usage scenario where the data on the drive is more dynamic and less static necessitating more writes than a normal SSD usage scenario would probably dictate. $100 for an SLC drive or less isn't a bad deal. I agree most people won't know any better and opt for larger MLC drives. With lighter usage patterns this may be OK, but my gut tells me that many will experience more rapid degredation of the MLC drive's performance and earlier failures than they might expect. Just like when Ready Boost first came out, we saw tons of dead flash drives because most of them weren't durable enough for that type of caching scheme.

Unfortunately SLC is not ideal for this type of usage scenario either, because of cost. This is a comparatively expensive way to boost performance, and if enthusiasts are skeptical about $5/GB then I do not see general buyers latching on. It also seems like a tech with a short shelf life; given the rate at which MLC performance and capacity are increasing and cost is decreasing, a $20 SLC accelerator is going to look downright archaic in a year or two.

Again, I applaud Intel for making the effort, but this is not the level at which I would have introduced another tier of cache. The tier it is intended to buffer, namely spinning magnetic disk, is in the very midst of being replaced by SSD that is just as fast. You cache tiers that are going to stick around forever; you don't cache tiers that are in the midst of being replaced by something much faster anyway. Personally I would rather spend the money on something much smaller and faster to buffer SSD to system RAM, where there is a much larger gap that is not being addressed. For example, a highly parallelized 4GB non-volatile cache sitting right on the chipset bus reading/writing at say 2GB/sec speeds to close the two-orders-of-magnitude gap between system RAM and SSD.

 

[LoneWolf]

Interesting concept.

I'd love to see Intel develop it in conjunction with mSATA --just plug in a 20GB or 40GB SSD into an mSATA slot on your mainboard or in a laptop build, and have instant caching technology in a small form factor.

 

[Dan_D]

Interesting concept.

I'd love to see Intel develop it in conjunction with mSATA --just plug in a 20GB or 40GB SSD into an mSATA slot on your mainboard or in a laptop build, and have instant caching technology in a small form factor.

Intel also has a version of the 20GB SSD 311 series drive in mSATA form factor.

 

[dderidex]

Again, I applaud Intel for making the effort, but this is not the level at which I would have introduced another tier of cache. The tier it is intended to buffer, namely spinning magnetic disk, is in the very midst of being replaced by SSD that is just as fast. You cache tiers that are going to stick around forever; you don't cache tiers that are in the midst of being replaced by something much faster anyway. Personally I would rather spend the money on something much smaller and faster to buffer SSD to system RAM, where there is a much larger gap that is not being addressed. For example, a highly parallelized 4GB non-volatile cache sitting right on the chipset bus reading/writing at say 2GB/sec speeds to close the two-orders-of-magnitude gap between system RAM and SSD.

Still, the underlying technology is very much simpler for spinning platter disks. As cheap as SSDs may get, for the same price you are always going to get MANY times more space with a spinning platter. And there are things that are always going to push the boundaries of whatever storage medium is available.

Games, for one, spring right to mind as something that does their darndest to fill up disk space...and also things that could benefit from intelligent caching of key files. They seem like they'd be a natural fit for seeing enhanced performance with this kind of technology.

 

[Trepidati0n]

I've been waiting on this for my new "server". However, I really wish they would get beyond the 6 port hard limit. If they would have lets say up to 10 ports, that would at least allow a local drive and a decent sized RAID (8 drives) on all one motherboard. Oh well...i'll keep dreaming.

 

[Dan_D]

I've been waiting on this for my new "server". However, I really wish they would get beyond the 6 port hard limit. If they would have lets say up to 10 ports, that would at least allow a local drive and a decent sized RAID (8 drives) on all one motherboard. Oh well...i'll keep dreaming.

I think that if you need that kind of storage, you'd want to look into a better option in the form of a real RAID controller.

 

[KOOLTIME]

What really is the difference of this vs seagates hybrid drive tech, other then seperating a ssd from mech drive the same principle is their, more overhead and such, but not new.

Make more hybrid drives then no need for this SRT at all unless to re-use more legacy drives more recycling.

Hybrid drives serve this SRT purpose already, why by 2 drives for volume caching tricks, seems like added expense not really needed. With SSD prices falling makes this even less realistic feature for running 2 separate drives in this kind of mode. OCZ 120 ssd at newegg for $177 w rebate or kingston 128gb ssd for $159 w rebate, why pay 110 bucks for a 20gb slc at this range.

 

[Dan_D]

What really is the difference of this vs seagates hybrid drive tech, other then seperating a ssd from mech drive the same principle is their, more overhead and such, but not new.

Make more hybrid drives then to need for srt at all less to use legacy drives more recycling.

I had the same thought but the fact is that hybrid drives really haven't caught on and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

 

[thenapalm]

Page 3 - I can't click on any of the pictures for a larger image. Just me or is it broken?

Same thing here.

 

[KOOLTIME]

But is any of this even really needed, why 2 separate drives with system overhead, vs aka Seagate Hybrid drive. We need more hybrid drives on the market, then this caching trickery with a SLC is totally un-needed separate item to buy. Hybrid drives have capacity, get a nice hybrid sata 6gb's drive ( well we need those in market ) then the rest of this stuff is no need.

 

[KOOLTIME]

I had the same thought but the fact is that hybrid drives really haven't caught on and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

Agreed, only Seagate has 1 hybrid out in retail i think its their 500gb xt, probably a licensing deal for others to get hybrids made, as to not get into copy-write tech issues.

Hopefully more Hybrids will arrive soon, once we get a larger pool of them they should take off better,

If someone could do a bench test this SRT vs Hybrid drives and see if its even remotely worth it, that would be cool.

 

[Dan_D]

Agreed, only Seagate has 1 hybrid out in retail i think its their 500gb xt, probably a licensing deal for others to get hybrids made, as to not get into copy-write tech issues.

Hopefully more Hybrids will arrive soon, once we get a larger pool of them they should take off better,

If someone could do a bench test this SRT vs Hybrid drives and see if its even remotely worth it, that would be cool.

I also don't know anything about the caching policy of the hybrid drives, but the one for SRT is actually pretty good and about as robust as one can expect. And again the nice thing about SRT is it's brand agnostic.

 

[dderidex]

I also don't know anything about the caching policy of the hybrid drives, but the one for SRT is actually pretty good and about as robust as one can expect. And again the nice thing about SRT is it's brand agnostic.

DISK brand, maybe.

But it is pretty motherboard-brand specific. Indeed, even more than that - while something done in drivers/software, it's actually only even supported on a single *chipset* at present. And how many of us have Z68 systems?

So....yeah.

Would be kinda nice to see this feature back-updated to the P67/H67 version of the RST drivers...

 

[Dan_D]

Fair enough.

 

[sphinx99]

Still, the underlying technology is very much simpler for spinning platter disks. As cheap as SSDs may get, for the same price you are always going to get MANY times more space with a spinning platter. And there are things that are always going to push the boundaries of whatever storage medium is available.

Games, for one, spring right to mind as something that does their darndest to fill up disk space...and also things that could benefit from intelligent caching of key files. They seem like they'd be a natural fit for seeing enhanced performance with this kind of technology.

See, I don't see games as benefiting much over the long term. To the contrary, game developers are doing their darndest to NOT fill up disk space! Game developers have to be extremely conscious of packaging logistics. Games distributed on physical media have to contend with trying to limit themselves to a single SL or DL DVD lest installers and the installation process starts to get cumbersome. Games distributed online have to contend with the reality of poor broadband performance in one of the largest markets (USA). Thus, game size actually is not growing all that fast, and is growing at a pace nowhere near the year-over-year capacity increases of SSD. Yes, a few people with 45 Steam games are going to have issues and need that magnetic media, but the majority are going to find (increasingly) that their OS, typical apps, and games fit just fine in standard size SSDs.

 

[Lazn_Work]

See, I don't see games as benefiting much over the long term. To the contrary, game developers are doing their darndest to NOT fill up disk space! Game developers have to be extremely conscious of packaging logistics. Games distributed on physical media have to contend with trying to limit themselves to a single SL or DL DVD lest installers and the installation process starts to get cumbersome. Games distributed online have to contend with the reality of poor broadband performance in one of the largest markets (USA). Thus, game size actually is not growing all that fast, and is growing at a pace nowhere near the year-over-year capacity increases of SSD. Yes, a few people with 45 Steam games are going to have issues and need that magnetic media, but the majority are going to find (increasingly) that their OS, typical apps, and games fit just fine in standard size SSDs.

I disagree.. I am not an avid gamer at all, and my "games" directory is approaching a TB. (I play at most a game for a few hours every few months) I guess I don't need to still have Age Of Empires 2 installed etc, but then again it is nice to be able to just fire it up if I ever get the hankering.

Now if TB SSDs become affordable, (on the order of 3tb drives) then I'd be all over that.. but that would be great for a totally SSD computer even for data hogs.. they could start building SSD arrays instead of magnetic ones.

 

[Trepidati0n]

I think that if you need that kind of storage, you'd want to look into a better option in the form of a real RAID controller.

Why...serioulsly...why? WHS has done fine without a "uber controller" for years. The only real downside of WHS is efficiency..it sucks. Right now all we sort of have is ~4-5 port or go with Linux and something like a supermicro port card.

I think many would be satisfied with a modestly performing raid 5 or 6 just for the purpose of effiicient redundancy...not performance. Going with a real card adds 50% or more effective cost to a drive...for what, performance we really can't use in most home applications.

However, I guess it will not happen. There is just gong to be this eternal gap for RAID5/6 from a 4 ports on board to selling your sould for a card. You could build a whole new PC cheaper than the cost of a good RAID card with 8 ports. Only if something like the areca ARC-1880i would be in the $200 range and not $400....then well, things would change.

 

[Dan_D]

RAID 5 using onboard controllers blows. Sorry, but I've tried it and it sucked.

 

[Trepidati0n]

...define "blows". To me spending $50+ a port "blows"

 

[Dan_D]

...define "blows". To me spending $50+ a port "blows"

I found the performance even on the ICH9R and ICH10R to be lacking. Not just in synthetic tests, but application load times, system boot times, etc. all suffered. Granted if you are just using a RAID 5 array in addition to your OS drive, then that's fine, but if your OS partition is on the RAID 5 array, it sucks.

 

[flenser]

I sure wish this were enabled on current laptops... I just got a lenovo T420s and it has an msata/wwan slot. I'm not going to use a wwan card, so it would be nice to be able to drop in an intel 410 40gb msata drive in there and have it speed up the whole system. I got the laptop with the 320gb 7200rpm drive, but the HD must be only 7mm in height so even most SSDs won't fit unless I void warranty pulling off the case. So $100 for the intel 310 drive would be cheap and still let me keep the decent size spinner drive as the main storage drive.

If wishes were fishes we could feed the world...

 

[ckryan]

Well you can always disable SRT and perform an erase on the drive then re-enable SRT if you had to. But you are correct, TRIM isn't supported in this configuration.

As for garbage accumulation, Intel's documentation does not specify how long this could take. However, the cache policy differentiates between high-value data (application, user, and boot data) and low-value data like that which may be caused by a virus scanner or other "single instance" type of data which won't benefit much if at all from caching. This tells me that garbage accumulation will be very slow.

If I recall correctly, Intel had worked out a way to pass TRIM commands in RAID arrays (Intel SSD controller + Intel SATA/RAID controller). I'm not sure to what extent they were sucessful (or whether this was exclusively enterprise level gear), but I wouldn't count out TRIM in this caching scheme at some point down the line. At any rate, Intel's new 20GB SLC drive is probably tuned for sustained perfomance as a cache drive -- even if it is kind of a rip off.

It piqued my interest when I first heard about Z68 caching previewed earlier this year. Most of the critical comments point out that it doesn't always make that much sense if you have a SSD and an HDD anyway. But enthusiasts upgrade. Future upgrades to newer and more spacious SSDs will leave an old drive behind. With your older, slower SSD you can enable caching on your mechanical storage drive. That way you can still get Windows and (some or all) applications on one fast solid state drive while getting a boost to the games on you storage drive thanks to your old SSD. I keep my Steam folder on my mechanical HDD, and it seems like game loading scenarios would be noticably faster with Z68 caching.

I thought it was a good idea at any rate. SSD Hybrid systems have been around for a while - Silverstone had one, HighPoint has a newer one - but none have the potential or support of Intel where money and brains are concerned. Making SSD caching practical for enthusiasts is a nice step in the right direction as a bridge to the future of storage when SSD are large, fast, and cheap.

 

[ckryan]

I sure wish this were enabled on current laptops... I just got a lenovo T420s and it has an msata/wwan slot. I'm not going to use a wwan card, so it would be nice to be able to drop in an intel 410 40gb msata drive in there and have it speed up the whole system. I got the laptop with the 320gb 7200rpm drive, but the HD must be only 7mm in height so even most SSDs won't fit unless I void warranty pulling off the case. So $100 for the intel 310 drive would be cheap and still let me keep the decent size spinner drive as the main storage drive.

If wishes were fishes we could feed the world...

Then you're in luck. Intel's X-25 drives are 7mm high, but have a 2mm spacer on them so they fit in normal laptops that use 9mm drives. The spacer just comes right off with a couple screws. You don't have to dismantle the case.

 

[flenser]

The point is (mainly) that I'd sure like to be able to put a reasonably priced msata drive in there and use it to cache the larger spinner drive, instead of spending several hundred bucks on an SSD with half of the capacity of the spinner drive. That's why I went with the spinner instead of the SSD when I bought the laptop... I need more space and don't have an extra $500 to spend on a big SSD. I use my optical drive a lot too, so putting in a 7mm SSD as a boot drive and a high capacity spinner drive in the ultrabay adaptor isn't a very good option either. The msata option is great and I might end up putting the OS and program files on an msata drive, but for now they're hard to find and fairly expensive at almost $200 for just 80GB, and not nearly as fast as the latest SSDs either.

That means that an msata drive used as a cache for a spinner drive actually makes sense for this specific application, since the 40gb msata drive would be perfect at only $99, if the laptop would do SRT.

 

[ckryan]

I just realized two days ago that my Dell Latitude D630 has a WWAN slot that could be equiped (as an option) with a "FlashCache". I wasn't familiar with it, but I think it was an mSATA SSD -- probably very small -- to use exclusively with Vista's ReadyBoost. So while I'm stoked to play with SSD Caching when I get a Z68, it's an idea that's been around as long as hard drives have been slow. Which is to say, forever.

 

[Dan_D]

The feature in theory is just like Ready Boost or any other caching technology. It just hasn't been used this way exactly.

 

[faring]

I'd love to see the benchmarks re-run using the SSD as a ReadyBoost drive and compared to SRT to see what kind of performance difference this really offers.

 

[Dan_D]

I'd love to see the benchmarks re-run using the SSD as a ReadyBoost drive and compared to SRT to see what kind of performance difference this really offers.

An interesting idea.

 

[dderidex]

An interesting idea.

While throwing that out there - I'd love to see a comparison, too, of pure software solutions.

In reading up about the HDD caching from all the Z68 articles, and Readyboost on SSD-like systems, I'd come across references to a software product eBoostr, which CLAIMS to offer Readyboost-like capabilities, only configurable. IE., if you had SSDs and spinning disks, you could use this on just the spinning disks (which Readyboost doesn't seem to allow for).

I've tried searching around for feedback or comments in various places on it, and I'm coming up dry. For something ?on its fourth version? Seems to be very little information on it comparing it to Readyboost...and, now that we have this Z68 chipset doing something similar in hardware...

I'd really love to see a head-to-head on this kind of thing. Using smaller SSDs to get a performance boost on spinning platter disks on "quite large things" (IE., games) is a very attractive idea.

 

[Toconator]

Good article. The bottom line sums up everything I was thinking as I read it. I'm happy with my Momentus XT for now. Will go for a full SSD when prices drop a little more. Nice to see those new Sandforce numbers too as I was penciling them in at the top of my short list. Hadn't heard about the impending surprise from Intel so I'll keep my eyes peeled for an article when the new tech hits the streets. Thanks Dan

 

[xer0]

I'm curious how badly this caching beats up the SSD. I assume there is a reason Intel chose SLC NAND, and I assume because of its much larger write cycles over MLC and faster write speeds when completely full. Figure a normal consumer SSD does not have the majority of it's cells re-written constantly nor is it generally completely full, while a SSD used to cache a hard drive "is" going to to be constantly full and completely re-written to every cell.

Example, one installs the OS, MSOffice, and any other standard apps to a normal bootup SSD. In regular usage, other than pagefiles and temp files, the majority of the cells retain the same data pretty much forever over the life of the SSD. With a SSD used in a HD caching capacity, I assume it's going to cache until completely full very quickly, and then overwrite all the data continuously as it constantly caches different/new HD data. That's a lot of writing/erase cycles if the SSD, acting as a cache for the HD, if it gets flushed often.

Now take this with a grain of salt, as I am just conjecturing with my limited understanding of how Intel is actually caching the HD but coupled with the question on why Intel would press an relatively "expensive" SLC SSD for its SSD of choice in this particular usage leads me to believe that this type of HD caching duty is gonna beat up normal MLC SSD's as the wear pattern is not the same as the expected use patterns designed into consumer SSD firmware.

 

[LoneWolf]

I sure wish this were enabled on current laptops... I just got a lenovo T420s and it has an msata/wwan slot. I'm not going to use a wwan card, so it would be nice to be able to drop in an intel 410 40gb msata drive in there and have it speed up the whole system. I got the laptop with the 320gb 7200rpm drive, but the HD must be only 7mm in height so even most SSDs won't fit unless I void warranty pulling off the case. So $100 for the intel 310 drive would be cheap and still let me keep the decent size spinner drive as the main storage drive.

If wishes were fishes we could feed the world...

You can buy an Intel 310 80GB mSATA SSD and use it as a boot drive. It is faster than using SRT cache.

This is what I am doing with my ThinkPad T420. Intel 310 80GB for boot, Scorpio Black 500GB for storage. I have moved all temp-file directories, browser caches, and user folders over to the mechanical HDD. It boots fast, loads apps fast, it's just darn nice.

 

[flenser]

80GB Intel 310 drives seem to be out of stock everywhere. Plus they're one or two generations old already, so dropping $200 on an old 80GB SSD seems like a bit of a risk. Still, I expect to try out my new computer for a few weeks while I decide if it needs any upgrades. Depending on what happens with the 80GB SSD availability and news of any potential new products, I expect that this will probably be my best option.