FEATURED Warning about SSD caching (SRT) on new Z68

[EarthDog]

Awesome! Thanks for the link!

I dont think the bandwidth will matter since its SATA3 and its not being saturated with even Vertex 3. Not to mention, I would guess that there are rare instances where you are thrashing the OS partition and a data drive at the same time to cause slowdowns...though this is where I would imagine a max IOPS drive would come in handy.

Again thanks, glad we now know it can be done!

 

[Atheus]

Hi all - if I may hijack this thread for a minute....

So I've got a very fast (Vertex 3) 120GB SSD for OS and apps, and a much smaller cheaper Crucial SSD for SRT caching etc. My question is, can I partition the smaller/slower SSD for SRT caching AND the Windows 7 page file. I would also like to know if this is a good idea

Any help appreciaed! Cheers.

 

[ratbuddy]

Hi all - if I may hijack this thread for a minute....

So I've got a very fast (Vertex 3) 120GB SSD for OS and apps, and a much smaller cheaper Crucial SSD for SRT caching etc. My question is, can I partition the smaller/slower SSD for SRT caching AND the Windows 7 page file. I would also like to know if this is a good idea

Any help appreciaed! Cheers.

You sure can, in IRST you'll see the option to use as much of the SSD as you like, up to 64GB. Personally, I wouldn't bother, RAM is so cheap right now, you can just toss 8GB+ in there and not worry about paging at all.

 

[Atheus]

You sure can, in IRST you'll see the option to use as much of the SSD as you like, up to 64GB. Personally, I wouldn't bother, RAM is so cheap right now, you can just toss 8GB+ in there and not worry about paging at all.

I've already got 8GB of 1866mhz RAM sitting here - you reckon I shouldn't bother setting up a page file at all and just using the entire 64GB SSD for SRT caching?

I have a feeling about disabling page/swap entirely... previous versions of windows didn't like that... no matter how much memory you have it seemed to use some kind of secret page on the boot disk anyway.

Do we even know this kinda stuff about the win 7 memory management???

 

[johan851]

Turning the page file off isn't worth it. Windows 7 is good enough about memory management that it won't touch the page file unless it needs to, though it will still reserve space on disk for one.

Like you said, turning off the page file doesn't mean Windows won't use one if necessary.

 

[Atheus]

Turning the page file off isn't worth it. Windows 7 is good enough about memory management that it won't touch the page file unless it needs to, though it will still reserve space on disk for one.

Like you said, turning off the page file doesn't mean Windows won't use one if necessary.

So in your own opinion, keep the page file fully active on the OS drive? Or partition the 64GB cache dive? I could give it 4...8...12gb?

The size of my small SD (64GB) is the max for SRT caching of the storage drive so i'm fine with the a small page file on the bigger Vertex OS drive if that's the fastest option.

---


As a side note - something which just popped into my head - most mechanical HDDs these days come with 32/64MB of 'cache', which I assume is specialist RAM, and they seem to be able to produce it in large quantities for next to nothing... wouldn't 64GB of cache on the HDD be way faster than a 64GB SSD cache anyway? Why does this improve performnce?

[just a thought...]

 

[johan851]

So in your own opinion, keep the page file fully active on the OS drive? Or partition the 64GB cache dive? I could give it 4...8...12gb?

I'd just leave it on the fast OS drive. 2GB? Shouldn't really matter that much, and it's easier than partitioning your cache drive.

Again, not a big deal for speed since Windows 7 won't really touch it - it's just good to have it enabled and a place reserved for it somewhere.

The cache on an HDD is just a RAM chip, exactly the kind of stuff that ends up on system memory sticks. It is getting much cheaper, but most HDDs won't benefit a ton from a lot more storage in memory without adding a lot of cost and complexity that users don't want. The HDD manufacturer would essentially have to implement Intel's caching technology on the HDD itself, and I imagine that would be a pain.

There is one HDD that uses a 4GB SLC NAND cache from Seagate, and it performs pretty well for a laptop drive.

 

[McGondy]

So what was the SSD life like with the caching enabled vs. SSD as OS/ HDD files?

 

[Mordachai]

From what I understand the general thinking is that the worries about SSD life are not really connected to reality.

SSDs will last longer than your HDDs in all but the rare case of an SSD that has manufacturing defects, more or less.

 

[johan851]

From what I understand the general thinking is that the worries about SSD life are not really connected to reality.

SSDs will last longer than your HDDs in all but the rare case of an SSD that has manufacturing defects, more or less.

This really should be the case. At least theoretically the NAND should last longer than most HDDs. And it probably does. We've been seeing a lot of controller-related failures, though, and that's annoying.

 

[Mordachai]

Yes, seems that the controllers are still a bit of a moving target. Only time will tell.

But the early SSD's w/o trim I think are what caused most of the concerns. Anything with trim should be fine (as long as you put it into a system that supports the trim feature!).

Intel RAID can still function with TRIM, but I'm not aware of any other controller's RAID that still allows TRIM to function properly.

 

[ratbuddy]

I have been running an M4 64GB as a cache drive since just after Z68 came out, under Vista so no TRIM. Haven't seen any performance drops, and I'll probably disable the cache for a bit to check SMART status on the drive just out of curiosity. What's a good free program for checking it?

 

[Mordachai]

There might be better, but here's one that I just started messing with:
http://ssd-life.com/

It wants money eventually, but for the short term useful.

 

[ratbuddy]

I used Crystaldiskinfo to check it. The flash has seen an average of 10 writes per cell. Safe to say any warnings over SRT killing SSDs are pure FUD.

 

[TomBrooklyn]

Does Linux Work on Z68 Motherboards?

The problems I see with Z68 for enterprise is that it's mostly implemented at the driver level, not the hardware level, so it doesn't work in linux-based systems.

Linux can't be used with Z68 motherboards?

 

[Bobnova]

Linux can be used with Z68.
Intel Z68 SSD Caching may or may not be linux compatible.

 

[Robmoo]

Thank for the info!

 

[TomBrooklyn]

I've been told by an ASUS rep that the new SSD cauching (also called SRT -- Smart Response Technology) only works with the OS on a HHD and does its caching on a spare SSD. It could be common knowledge but if so, I missed it (my bad).

It was my impression from the beginning, from reading the reviews and technical blurbs about SRT, that is was just to hold the cache, with the OS placed on a mechanical hard drive.

This was not so much because I saw it specified the OS couldn't be put on the SSD; but simply because I don't recall seeing it specified that it could be. And if it could be, I think that would have been talked about more.

As far as what most users posted about SSDs, however, it always seemed to be about putting the OS on the SSD. And I've seen little to nothing from users about using the SRT caching function.

That got me to wondering also, if the SRT caching function could be used with the OS on the same SSD. (I haven't read this this whole thread yet.)

Going a step further, I wonder if the SSD SRT cache would work if the OS were on a separate SSD?

 

[EarthDog]

Stay with us TB...

RE: Going a step further. That has been covered before... yes, you can do that. Its a bit more of a convoluted process, but yes it can be done (finish reading the thread its covered in here or the other one by Eldonko).

I do not think you can partition a SSD for an OS and cache. That doesnt make sense actually as you would be caching an SSD which doesnt need it.

 

[johan851]

That got me to wondering also, if the SRT caching function could be used with the OS on the same SSD. (I haven't read this this whole thread yet.)

Like Earthdog said, it's convoluted but technically possible.

Going a step further, I wonder if the SSD SRT cache would work if the OS were on a separate SSD?

You can have two SSDs, put the OS on one, and use the other to cache a mechanical drive. That would work fine.