Intel SRT SSD Z68 caching system vs using a SSD hard drive

[tankman1989]

I'm going to build a new system after Intel releases their new hardware in the next month or so and I'm wondering if there is any benefit to running a motherboard that has the Z68 chipset with the SRT caching system in addition to running a SSD hard drive.

I already have a 80Gb Intel drive that performs very well and I know that I could use that as the cache with the remaining space being used as another drive (non cache). I am able to install my OS and all apps on this 80GB drive on my current setup with about 25Gb free.

I'm wondering if there is any benefit to using this caching system over a regular setup with running a SSD like I have now. Since all the files that load often are already on a SSD, is there any benefit to running it as a SRT cache?

I understand that if I had 160Gb of apps installed and lots of documents like audio, video, web templates that load often that this caching setup would work better but any benefit when all apps/data already fit on an existing SSD?

Also when using a SRT cache with a mechanical drive is all the data in the cache also stored in the mechanical drive? This would be a nice way to have a semi RAID 1 setup with the most used OS and apps stored on the cache and if the cache goes out the system falls back to running on the mechanical drive. I would rather a setup like this than buying 2 80GB SSD's and RAID 1'ing them as it is cheaper and you have more storage space over-all. Knowing that SSD's seem to drop dead with little to no warning, maybe a blue screen or two before the curtain comes down, this seems to be decent protection in case of SSD failure (assuming the system runs if the cache dies).

 

[Tepin]

From everything I understand about it you won't see any performance difference if you cache a SSD with a SSD.

SRT does use RAID technology to perform it's function and it's most similiar to RAID 0/striping. There isn't any true redundancy of your data. Regardless of how you set it up if your magnetic storage fails you won't be able to recover data from the cache partition on the SSD. SRT allows you to essentially convert the drive from storage to memory.

If the SSD fails your situation depends on if you configured the cache for 'enhanced' or 'maximum' performance. If you configured it as enhanced your file system should be completely intact on the magnetic storage. In enhanced mode everything written to the cache is immediately written to the magnetic drive as well.

If you configured it for maximum performance then the machine only synchronizes written data at timed intervals. When the SSD fails anything that was stored on the SSD between intervals will be lost.

Most benchmarks I have viewed show the difference between enhanced and maximum modes to be minimal, usually about a 10% performance gain. The bigger gaps are in write operations, read times and application load times are almost equal.

For a reliable setup that benefits from SRT I would get 2 magnetic drives and cache a RAID 1 volume in enhanced mode.

 

[Rob_NNCC]

^^ I totaly agree with Tepin. Caching an SSD with an SSD will get you nothing but the 'Yo dawg, I heard you like SSD' Effect.

Do like Tepin reccomends and get 2 good magnetic HDDs RAID them, then an SSD. The other option is to look into hybrid drives...