Best utilization of SSD+HDD?

[helz IT]

Hi,

I bought all the components for a new PC on Black Friday, and I'm now trying to figure out how I should set up my new PC's storage. I already own a 1tb WD Black HDD, but now I'll have an Intel 330 180gb SSD as well.

Would I be better off installing Win 7 64bit to the SSD and just using the HDD for storage, or should I install the OS to the HDD and enable Intel's SRT cache technology to substantially speed up the HDD? I have an Ivy bridge cpu and z77 mobo.

I understand that I can allocate up to 64gb to the cache, and then the rest of the SSD will available as a separate partition. Will running Windows 7 like this compare to installing it directly on the SSD? Even if its a little bit slower, I think it'd be worth it because it'll speed up everything I run from the HDD, instead of just the data that's installed directly on the SSD.

Anyone with experience using SRT? I can't seem to find much current information from people who've tried it. Thank in advance.

 

[dingo07]

SSD should be the boot drive - feel free to put some games on it and programs as well

keep the HDD for data

 

[RealBeast]

Don't use SRT for caching. Use the SSD for the OS, key programs and data, and the HDD for storage. 180Gb is really a lot of space if you optimize your SSD properly: http://thessdreview.com/ssd-guides/optimization-guides/the-ssd-optimization-guide-2/

 

[helz IT]

Okay, thanks for the quick replies. I'm a little curious why nobody uses the caching though. Is it because the performance is a lot worse, or does it have to do with wearing out the SSD?

Also thanks for that link, lots of good info on there.

 

[RealBeast]

Nothing to do with wearing out the SSD, that will not happen unless you write many hundreds of terabytes to the drive, which is very unlikely for 99.9% of users.

The performance is just not worth wasting valuable SSD space -- the SSD performs so much better than the cached setup that it is just a waste of your time.