Intel Smart Response, Raid-0 question

[Zafaron_96]

So it's been about a billion years (In computer years) since I've upgraded my personal system. I've been looking over some of the newer technology in preparation for the upgrade and Intel Smart Response seems like it has potential. I've read a lot of the details about it and I know that there's not much of a performance benefit to using it if you have an existing hard drive array that reads and writes faster than your cache SSD. Which brings me to my first question..

Can you make an array of small, inexpensive SSD drives and use that array as your cache drive? At this point it is still too expensive for me to spend the money on a large enough SSD for a system drive, but a few(2-3?) of the 200mb+ read/write drives as small as I could find them in raid-0 for system cache seems like it has potential, if such a thing is even possible?


I am looking at running 4 western digital 250mb drives in raid-0 as my system drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136797). People have posted numbers in the 200mb read/write range for 2 of the disks in raid-0, so I'd assume I would already have read and write speeds approaching that of the better SSD drives. Obviously random read/writes would still be much faster with SSD. So my second question is.. would the real world performance benefit even justify the hassle of setting up Smart Response?


I've also toyed around with the notion of simply using a software ram drive and putting my pagefile on it. I don't think this would be helpful in quite the same way as the smart response cache, but I plan to have 16gb of ram, so I'll have more than I can use.

In case it matters, the primary use of the system is gaming, followed by c++, c#, asp and java development.

 

[kwrinn]

So it's been about a billion years (In computer years) since I've upgraded my personal system. I've been looking over some of the newer technology in preparation for the upgrade and Intel Smart Response seems like it has potential. I've read a lot of the details about it and I know that there's not much of a performance benefit to using it if you have an existing hard drive array that reads and writes faster than your cache SSD. Which brings me to my first question..

Can you make an array of small, inexpensive SSD drives and use that array as your cache drive? At this point it is still too expensive for me to spend the money on a large enough SSD for a system drive, but a few(2-3?) of the 200mb+ read/write drives as small as I could find them in raid-0 for system cache seems like it has potential, if such a thing is even possible?


I am looking at running 4 western digital 250mb drives in raid-0 as my system drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136797). People have posted numbers in the 200mb read/write range for 2 of the disks in raid-0, so I'd assume I would already have read and write speeds approaching that of the better SSD drives. Obviously random read/writes would still be much faster with SSD. So my second question is.. would the real world performance benefit even justify the hassle of setting up Smart Response?


I've also toyed around with the notion of simply using a software ram drive and putting my pagefile on it. I don't think this would be helpful in quite the same way as the smart response cache, but I plan to have 16gb of ram, so I'll have more than I can use.

In case it matters, the primary use of the system is gaming, followed by c++, c#, asp and java development.

yes, it is possibile to use ssd raid arrays for ssd caching, as well as using raid 0/1/5 for the primary drive. HOWEVER raid0 DOES NOT mean CHEAPER! nor does it mean faster (in benchmarks, yes, but noticably, no.) have you looked at what 3tb hitachi drives are going for right now???? its cheaper than the array that your looking on setting up, also more reliable, less space room in your case, less heat (bigtime), more space to put stuff, and possibly faster too. see it here

(p.s. its GB, not MB, got me confused when i first saw your post)

now, as far as the ssd, the MAX you can use for caching is 60GB (not sure if that 200mb was actually a gb) and the MINIMUM ssd you can have is 18.6gb. Now, if, say, you use a 120gb ssd for caching, you can use 60gb for caching, the other 60 can be used for system storage, like say software you use regularly that you want to run fast, like Steam, movie making software, etc, or whatever you use for you java and c++ developing would also be good.
60 gb i would consider small, and its also the smallest ssd you can get on sata III 6gb/s. they are all around 100-150. here's the one that i am using for my cache currently.

would the real world performance benefit even justify the hassle of setting up Smart Response?

YES!!!!!! With your human perception, you will not be able to tell the difference between an entirely ssd system and an intel smart response ssd-cached system, other than the smart response system costs 1/4 as much. it is FAAAAAAAST!!!!! i rip movies alot from the local family video and i saw AMMMAAZINGLY better rendering speeds with the smart response vs plain hard drive, i have a 2500k i5 and hd alone took about an hour and a half, with the smart after the first time of doing it that time was reduced to 20 mins, and now the only thing that is bottle necking that performance is my dvd drive. (do mind i have 12 gigs of ram and a 5400rpm hitatchi 2tb sata III drive)

just do it, 60gb sata III ssd, 1tb+ sata III hd. and a z68 mobo. you wont regret it.

 

[tokencode]

Look at the Intel Z68 chipset, it has built in HDD caching to SSD. This allows you to use a smaller SSD and gain some performance and have the inexpensive space of a traditional HDD. Performance wise a dedicated SSD is far better, but SSD caching does signifcantly increase performance.