RealBeast :
IRST for an SSD cache, i.e. accelerating a HDD is pretty much useless compared to just using an SSD.
If you decide to do this, you need to have your bios mode set as RAID.
There is no performance degradation for an SSD if it is not part of a RAID array (or cache) and your bios mode is set to RAID, as AHCI is a subset of the RAID command set. The only issue will be that some software (like Samsung Magician) will not function if your bios mode is set to RAID even though the drive is not part of the array.
Thanks for confirming. I can't yet get a Z%TB SSD to hold all my media, photos, backups , ect.., so that the reason I went with a HDD for secondary and though I could increase performance using an older SSD laying around. So, before trying to figure out how to switch SATA modes without reinstalling OS, I wanted to save some benchmarks first so that I can compare speeds after enabling RAID.
AND THEN.. I ran into some unrealistinc results:
http://screencast.com/t/6LSZhQSb
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CrystalDiskMark 5.1.1 x64 (C) 2007-2016 hiyohiyo
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes
Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 6702.590 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 6337.129 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 820.969 MB/s [200431.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 334.426 MB/s [ 81647.0 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 9229.121 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 5461.875 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 856.279 MB/s [209052.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 339.078 MB/s [ 82782.7 IOPS]
Test : 1024 MiB [C: 40.0% (167.5/418.5 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2016/01/31 17:50:31
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 10586] (x64)
I though I may be using a version of CrystalDisk that does not support SSDS but Samsung magician gave same results. Any idea what this means?