SSD as read cache for HDD's: how?

I'm interested in using a SSD as a read cache for my HDD's, it would be for two things:
1. caching my applications (games - under both XP Pro and Windows 7 [dual boot setup])
2. caching my RAM disk under Windows XP Pro

Would it be possible to get a single SSD to do both of the above? I don't want to use
the SSD as a write cache (I want writes to go directly to the HDD's). Do I need
special software to do this? Or special hardware (other than the SSD)? Can it be done in Windows XP at all?

Well, I discovered that:
"Anything running an Intel desktop chipset and supporting Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) will support the Smart Response SSD+HDD cache feature."

It's strange that my motherboard manual doesn't have anything about this -- unless maybe the x79 Intel chipset is too old to support this.

1. Intel SRT will do that for you.
2. Why would you cache a RAMDISK with an SSD considering how much slower it is compared to the RAMDISK. The point of an SSD caching a HDD is to speed it up. I would imagine that caching a RAMDISK, if possible, would slow it down.

X79 supports Intel SRT. Go to your mobo's website and download it.

I think he meant to effectively RAID 1 the RAMdisk with the SSD, thereby making it nonvolatile. Which is unnecessary as the kernel automatically uses otherwise unused RAM as disk cache.

The Asrock Xfast RAM utlility stores the RAM disk image to non-volatile
storage on shutdown and reads it back in on boot-up. Since it has a large
multi-gigabyte swap file on it this takes time.

No need to restore swap on bootup (just recreate it on boot), plus swap on RAMdisk is pointless if the RAM is usable directly as is the case for software based RAMdisk. Swap on SSD can be used in a pinch but is not recommended.

NiHaoMike said:

No need to restore swap on bootup (just recreate it on boot), plus swap on RAMdisk is pointless if the RAM is usable directly as is the case for software based RAMdisk. Swap on SSD can be used in a pinch but is not recommended.

Click to expand...

The Asrock RAM disk utility is being used on an XP Pro installation.
The system has 8 GiB of RAM, of which only ~3 GiB can be used by the OS.
The RAM disk also holds the temp directory and cache files for Firefox.

flashcache

unijabnx2000 said:

flashcache

Click to expand...

I think flashcache is the *ix tech. The equivalent windows tech is ReadyBoost, which
is what I'm going to give a try.

If an SSD fails in a ReadyBoost configuration it won't bring down your OS right?
If you yank the bad SSD out windows 7 could still continue to function on the
HDD's without having the SSD present (if you disabled ReadyBoost)?

flashcache is on github