Can I / Should I use tiered storage for my larger game drive.

[KageSong]

So, I've been looking into increasing speed of my loading and such on the cheaper side. I've been looking into caching, but nothing I can find is quite what I want.

 

What I'm after would definitely be a tiered solution. I need the "often used files" idea of caching to be "files actively being accessed" style tiering.

So, basically whatever game I launch, would load the active files to SSD, and then run from there.

Is there a way to do that, and is it worth it?

[Electronics Wizardy]

I do this on windows using storage spaces and it works reasonably well. Feels faster than a hdd. Its a bit of a pain to setup with powershell, but not too bad.

[KageSong]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

I do this on windows using storage spaces and it works reasonably well. Feels faster than a hdd. Its a bit of a pain to setup with powershell, but not too bad.

My understanding was that storage spaces would only cache 'commonly' or 'often' used files. I want on-the-fly tiering of 'currently' used files, regardless of how often I use them. Does it do that?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, KageSong said:

My understanding was that storage spaces would only cache 'commonly' or 'often' used files. I want on-the-fly tiering of 'currently' used files, regardless of how often I use them. Does it do that?

Basically every caching solution does this, finds the files you use the most and store it on the faster tier. Currently used files are normally in ram. Storage spaces will move items between tiers as needs, and uses the fast tier as a write cach

[KageSong]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Basically every caching solution does this, finds the files you use the most and store it on the faster tier. Currently used files are normally in ram. Storage spaces will move items between tiers as needs, and uses the fast tier as a write cach

So, there's not a solution that will move what I'm using to the higher tier, and then remove it when not in use? That would fill a small SSD pretty quickly wouldn't it? Am I understanding this wrong?

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 minutes ago, KageSong said:

So, there's not a solution that will move what I'm using to the higher tier, and then remove it when not in use? That would fill a small SSD pretty quickly wouldn't it? Am I understanding this wrong?

thats basically what all caching and tiering solutions do. They don't normally move files between tiers realtime though(to reduce overhead due to the copying), so the ssd will store often used files.

[KageSong]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

thats basically what all caching and tiering solutions do. They don't normally move files between tiers realtime though(to reduce overhead due to the copying), so the ssd will store often used files.

... but, then, wouldn't you need an SSD large enough to store, like all the games you play? What would be the point in tiering over just getting an SSD for your games at that point? I'm trying to understand this through mental disability, but it sounds like if I tier like this, and have say a 120 gig SSD, and play 1 100 gig game, boom that's it, I lose the benefit for all other games.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, KageSong said:

... but, then, wouldn't you need an SSD large enough to store, like all the games you play? What would be the point in tiering over just getting an SSD for your games at that point? I'm trying to understand this through mental disability, but it sounds like if I tier like this, and have say a 120 gig SSD, and play 1 100 gig game, boom that's it, I lose the benefit for all other games.

Normally your not using all the files in a the game at once, it won't have to store all 100gb, it will only have to use the files you use. It will still have a reasonble benfit.

 

But cached drive always has the downsides of not all files will be in the fast tier, but its normally a good amount better than no cache.

 

How many tb of storage do you need? If you can go all ssd do it.

 

 

[KageSong]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Normally your not using all the files in a the game at once, it won't have to store all 100gb, it will only have to use the files you use. It will still have a reasonble benfit.

 

But cached drive always has the downsides of not all files will be in the fast tier, but its normally a good amount better than no cache.

 

How many tb of storage do you need? If you can go all ssd do it.

 

 

I'm running out of space on both my 6 tb HDD and my 2 tb SSD, so... yeah. I have zero money and several spare 120gb SSDs. Unfortunately, just upgrading to all SSD is not an option as I'm unable to work, and my state has determined via the courts that "even though [I am] unable to perform any job within the jurisdictions per view [I am] not disabled".

So, I was really hoping I could boost performance with tiering. But I don't really access anything "often" as that goes. Sadly, I don't game all that often because there's so little else I 'can' do with my time, that I'm kinda burnt out on games. But, I still want better performance when I do game.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, KageSong said:

I'm running out of space on both my 6 tb HDD and my 2 tb SSD, so... yeah. I have zero money and several spare 120gb SSDs. Unfortunately, just upgrading to all SSD is not an option as I'm unable to work, and my state has determined via the courts that "even though [I am] unable to perform any job within the jurisdictions per view [I am] not disabled".

So, I was really hoping I could boost performance with tiering. But I don't really access anything "often" as that goes. Sadly, I don't game all that often because there's so little else I 'can' do with my time, that I'm kinda burnt out on games. But, I still want better performance when I do game.

You probably plan some games more than others, so tiering will help.

 

You can try out software like primo cache on the hdd you have with the spare ssds. Since you got the hardware no reason not to.

[KageSong]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

You probably plan some games more than others, so tiering will help.

 

You can try out software like primo cache on the hdd you have with the spare ssds. Since you got the hardware no reason not to.

Is there a mentally handicapped friendly tutorial for that somewhere? I need the most hand-holdy instructions that ever existed to get things done right. Otherwise I get overwhelmed and don't comprehend anything.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, KageSong said:

Is there a mentally handicapped friendly tutorial for that somewhere? I need the most hand-holdy instructions that ever existed to get things done right. Otherwise I get overwhelmed and don't comprehend anything.

try downloading primocache. Its basically as easily as picking the slow disk and the fast disk. I don't think you will have issues.

[KageSong]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

try downloading primocache. Its basically as easily as picking the slow disk and the fast disk. I don't think you will have issues.

Okay. But, just to be clear, there's really not a game I play much more than once a week. I don't think that qualifies as often. That's why my goal was on-the-fly tiering. On a related note, could I use 2 120s as my cache, just for the extra space?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, KageSong said:

Okay. But, just to be clear, there's really not a game I play much more than once a week. I don't think that qualifies as often. That's why my goal was on-the-fly tiering. On a related note, could I use 2 120s as my cache, just for the extra space?

you should be able to use both of the 120gb drives.

 

Just give it a try cause you have the hardware.

 

On the fly moving to the fast tier doesn't really help as with most games, once you load in all the files are in ram, so you can reload super fast the second time.