SSD questions- Caching

I just searched the net and found this Notebook upgrade article. If this is your notebook it seems that you need to decide to choose between HDD or SDD. You can get great performance or cheap space not booth.
If you want to go with SSD I can recommend a Samsung 830 or the upcoming 840 and 840 Pro.

Mad Max is right, you only have room for one SSD. Get the largest you can afford and make sure you have a USB enclosure to do the cloning. Unless you want to do a clean install from a disk that came with the laptop.

I have failed to see where in the article the OP has to choose between HDD or SDD.

If it has room for a SSD and a HDD, then go for it -- if it has not room, go for the SSD anyway, you will not regret that!  

The SSD wil speed up performance!

If you are able to use both SSD and HDD, then the SSD will be your primary driver ("C"), and the HDD a secondary driver ("F" or whatever).

As for caching you would need another SSD just for caching. So a primary SSD for OS and main program, and another one just for caching.

Generally a OS + Program SSD is preferable to a Caching SSD.
Advantage of OS + program SSD is everything on it is speeded up, and YOU get to choose. Only requires ONE drive bay (laptops). Disadvastage is size, ie a 500 gig SSD is expensive.

Advantage to a caching SSD, Retain Large storage space, But what is NOT in cache is NOT speeded up - It's biggest disadvantage and you are at the mercy of the algorthum that chooses. And for Laptops requires TWO drive bays!!

Bottom line - If Have two drive bays the go SSD for OS + Programs and use your HDD for storage. IF single Bay, SSD (=> 128 gig) for OS + programs then get a USB3 2 1/2 enclouser and put HDD in that.

Myself, I have a 2 bay laptop (Samsung 17" i5-2410m) and first swapped the HDD for a SSD (used the HDD for storage). later stuck a 2nd one in the 2nd bay for "fast" storage.

Which One. Samsung 830 -> Curcial M4/Plextor M3/M4 -> samsung 840.
The performance of all are very close, along with Low User complaints ratings. So Choice is Tied to Lowest power consumption (barring price differences).
The new Samsung 840 has improved performane (at least in benchmarks), while cutting the Power consumtion from the 830. NOTE: power consumtion only a factor when used on battery. The 840 is going to be the Higher priced one, so if cost a factor between the Samsung 830 and the Curcial M4, excluding power consumption, which ever is cheapest.

Have 3 Curcial M4's, 3 Samsung 830's and 2 Agility III's
Only recommend drives that use the SF22xx controller if at a bargain Price.
PS newer intel SSDs use the SF22xx controller, but does have a rep for a very reliable drive - still I normaly perfer the drives I quoted over the Intel drives.

So do you suggest i replace my HDD with an SSD? (just clarifying). I'm a little reluctant to do so because I do like the extra storage... And yes, my computer has two bays, like yours. And i'm a little unclear on this: to get the added speed of an SSD, one would have to have programs installed on that SSD and run them from there. This means if I want speed form my games (which take a decent amount of space), I would have to put all on an SSD?

Here is my standard answer about caching:

Intel's caching technology was designed for buyers who could not justify or afford the cost of a larger capacity solid-state drive. According to Intel, the original idea was that for about $100.00 a user could purchase a small capacity ssd of about 10 to 20GB and use it as a cache to improve hard disk drive performance. The Operating system and programs were actually stored on a hard disk drive. The actual improvement could not compare to a stand alone ssd. Intel also looked at different capacities all the way up to 512GB and concluded 64GB was the point of diminishing return. It made more sense to use a 64GB ssd as a boot drive that also contained software programs. Intel was hoping that if business clients saw an increase in performance, then they would be induced to purchase larger capacity ssd's that promised an even greater boost in performance.

A lot has changed sinced then, especially prices. For $100.00 you can definitely purchase an ssd that is much larger than 20GB. Currently you can buy a 128GB SATA 3 6Gb/s solid state drive for less and have money left over. Might as well take full advantage of ssd performance.

I can't recommend any OCZ products due to the financial and legal problems they are facing. At the beginning of the year the company reported it had suffered a financial loss. Last Spring there were rumors that OCZ was for sale. Rumors and speculation suggested either Seagate or Western Digital might be interested in acquiring OCZ. The rumors proved to be false. At the same time OCZ released the Vertex 4 ssd prematurely, possibly in a move to generate additional revenue to make the company appear more attractive for a takeover. Validation was not properly completed resulting in six firmware updates being issued. Recent news reports indicate OCZ is drowning in red ink and facing 4 separate lawsuits claiming OCZ's financial reports were misleading. The CFO abruptly resigned. The CEO was forced out by the Board of Directors. The value of OCZ stock has dropped dramatically. It's gotten worse this past week. OCZ started employee layoffs.

I maintain the ssd database listed in the sticky at the very top of this ssd forum section. Here is the link to the database:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.ht...

Scroll down to the brands and models you are interested in and follow the links to the technical reviews.

If you have 2 HDD bays - Best option is Move HDD to a storage drive, Install 1 128 gig SSD in primare bay.

Best is to Do a Clean install on the SSD (with the HDD disconnected and Verify that bios is set to AHCI)
Alternative is to use a Migrating software such as EasyUS of EZ-Gig ( Apricorn) to Migrate HDD -> SSD. DO NOT recommend a direct clone of HDD-> SSD

what is the most cost effective solution? like speed (most concerned in how it affects boot time/ game performance)?

SSDs are Like comparing a car to a Bicycle in a race.
SSDs are about 40+ x faster than a HDD. Do not look at Sequenical performance (least important parameter for OS + Program drive); But look at access time and 4 K random performance.
Acess time typical HDD around 12 mSec, SSD around 0.1->0.2 mSec (At least 60x faster)
Random 4 K, SSD about 20 -> 40 X faster (This is what IS IMPORTANT for an OS + program drive.

Boot time: Time from "start loading OS" to able to open first program. Both My laptops and My desktop, around 12->15 Sec.
Program Load times: I click on a Excel spreadsheet and both the program and the Spreadheat are loaded in the blink of an Eye!.

While Boot time is decreased (Normally considerably) and program Load times are very fast, as are any files read/writen to an SSD; A SSD does NOT make a program run faster, email/web surfing/and downloads are not faster (limited by internet). FPS are not increase (loading a new map, as long as the MAP is on SSD will be faster).

So an SSD for my OS and some other programs? I don't think i can affordably fit my most of my programs on an SSD. like games and stuff

Compare - I use 128 Gig SSDs in two laptops and a desktop.
In all my systems Win 7 + all my programs use approx 35 gigs. I'm not a gamer so no games.
With a 128 Gig, true usable space is about 100 gigs so 100 - 35 gig = 65 gigs for games.

Since you will have a SSD as OS +programs, you also have the HDD in HDD bay #2 - You will NOT have a Problem.

There are some space saving tweeks that I use:
1: I turn Hybernation off - On my 8 Gig laptop that saves about 8 gigs SSD space.
2: I set my virtual memort (swap file/page file) min and max both to 1024 mbs - that saves upto about 11 gigs of SSD space.
3: I disableded restore points (but can just limit the space they are allowed to take). NOTE just 10 Restore points = 3 Gigs od SSD space. Over time Restore space can become huge if not managed.

so can I keep my HDD as well? and only things ACTUALLY on the SSD will get a load time boost, correct? sorry, I'm new to this...

Infact, if you remove the HDD and do a clean install, or do a migration (SSD connected as a USB drive and after migration is installed). You should be able to daul boot either to the HDD or the SSD.

Do this all the time, Only delete the OS from the HDD when positive all is well with the "New" SSD. With My two desktops, I can hit a key during post that will bring up a boot menu and I just select which drive to boot to - NOTE: this does not change the Boot priority set in bios. My Gigabyte it is F12, for My asrock it is F11, For My samsung, well Samsung did Not take the Time to include, so have to set in bios which to boot to.

what does any of that mean? again, i'm a noob in this regard