Caching SSDs

[Kulgan]

I have a spare 500GB SSD, I also have a 8TB HDD, Should I use the SSD as a Cache for the HDD or Should I Just move the games and Servers that I use more often to the SSD?

[kyn1972]

You will take a performance hit I believe if you leave them on the HD but if I recall correctly its not a huge hit so if you have alot of games by all means use the SSD as a cache.

[narrdarr]

Well I would have windows on the ssd and your most common used things

[Kulgan]

39 minutes ago, narrdarr said:

Well I would have windows on the ssd and your most common used things

I do but have a second SSD

[Kulgan]

48 minutes ago, kyn1972 said:

You will take a performance hit I believe if you leave them on the HD but if I recall correctly its not a huge hit so if you have alot of games by all means use the SSD as a cache.

What would be, the best way to do that.

[kyn1972]

3 hours ago, Kulgan said:

What would be, the best way to do that.

I use Primocache.

[narrdarr]

6 hours ago, Kulgan said:

I do but have a second SSD

I see. Then go for it.

• Write-around SSD caching is best if you don’t want to flood your cache with data that you won’t be using very often. However, this leads to higher latency when loading the recognized “hot” data back to the cache.
• Write-back SSD caching is the fastest since it doesn’t have to wait for the underlying storage to complete. But even though this solves latency problems, the data will always be put at risk since power failure could corrupt the data.
• Write-through SSD caching is the most common type of caching today. Data is written both to the cache and the underlying storage at the same time and the write is only considered complete when it is written to your storage. This makes it the safest method, but also the slowest.

You don't need a third party software to set it up. Both intel and and have solutions for this. 

Intel srt

Amd storemi

You just need to choose what type of caching you want.

[FilmLensandPens]

2 hours ago, narrdarr said:

I see. Then go for it.

• Write-around SSD caching is best if you don’t want to flood your cache with data that you won’t be using very often. However, this leads to higher latency when loading the recognized “hot” data back to the cache.
• Write-back SSD caching is the fastest since it doesn’t have to wait for the underlying storage to complete. But even though this solves latency problems, the data will always be put at risk since power failure could corrupt the data.
• Write-through SSD caching is the most common type of caching today. Data is written both to the cache and the underlying storage at the same time and the write is only considered complete when it is written to your storage. This makes it the safest method, but also the slowest.

You don't need a third party software to set it up. Both intel and and have solutions for this. 

Intel srt

Amd storemi

You just need to choose what type of caching you want.

Intel SRT is phased out and based on my recent experience, no longer supported on 9th gen cores.

The Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) drivers and interface software v16 above won't display the SRT options.

Had to reinstall windows twice after two attempts of installing iRST v15 on a i7 9700 just hours ago.

 

Primocache looks to be the best (afaik only) option for using a spare SSD as a HDD cache (unless you run AMD, I guess)

Edited May 25, 2020 by FilmLensandPens

[narrdarr]

2 hours ago, FilmLensandPens said:

Intel SRT is phased out and based on my recent experience, no longer supported on 9th gen cores.

The Intel RST (Rapid Storage Technology) drivers and interface software v16 above won't display the SRT options.

Had to reinstall windows twice after two attempts of installing iRST v15 on a i7 9700 just hours ago.

 

Primocache looks to be the best (afaik only) option for using a spare SSD as a HDD cache (unless you run AMD, I guess)

I see

[RejZoR]

18 hours ago, Kulgan said:

I have a spare 500GB SSD, I also have a 8TB HDD, Should I use the SSD as a Cache for the HDD or Should I Just move the games and Servers that I use more often to the SSD?

Yes, have everything installed on HDD, grab PrimoCache program and pair the SSD as L2 cache. It'll act as permanent SSD cache and will hold most commonly used resources on it. You'll basically have a 8TB SSD in the end. And since you have 500GB SSD, it'll be able to fit huge amounts of stuff in it before requiring to dump something and replace it with other data, meaning you'll really see a difference. And best part of PrimoCache is that caches are non-volatile. You can remove the cache and SSD any time you want and not lose any data or be required to move things around just to decouple the caching. Unlike with most other solutions. PrimoCache isn't free though, but they have a lifetime license at 30 bucks so I think it's quite worth it. They have 30 day trial so you can test it out and see if you get the performance uplift.