SSDs for both system drive AND SmartResponse? - Calgarypuck Forums - The Unofficial Calgary Flames Fan Community

BloodFetish · 05-24-2012, 09:27 AM

Hi techies!

It's time to retire my venerable Core2Duo 6600 and climb aboard the V77 train!

I few weeks ago I purchased a 60GB SSD drive with the intention of taking advantage of Intel's SmartResponse feature in the V77 chipset, but then I thought "Nuts to that - why not use it as the boot drive instead?"

I plan to install a large capacity drive (or two) as well to install games, iTunes library, media files, etc. Would it make sense to get a second small SSD for use with SmartResponse to speed up access to the storage drive(s)? Does it even work like that?

I'm a newbie to both SSDs and SmartResponse, so any answers are mucho appreciated!

Hack&Lube · 05-24-2012, 05:35 PM

Smart Response works by basically taking your SSD and making it a big cache for your harddrive. It can only speed up your mechanical drive by slowly over time building algorithms that understand your usage patterns and the files you access the most and knowing to cache them on the SSD.

Personally I would prefer to have an actual SSD as my main boot drive as the speed would be predictable and you could manage what's actually on it yourself and minimize unnecessary writes to the drive which is important for SSDs.

BloodFetish · 05-24-2012, 06:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Smart Response works by basically taking your SSD and making it a big cache for your harddrive. It can only speed up your mechanical drive by slowly over time building algorithms that understand your usage patterns and the files you access the most and knowing to cache them on the SSD.

Personally I would prefer to have an actual SSD as my main boot drive as the speed would be predictable and you could manage what's actually on it yourself and minimize unnecessary writes to the drive which is important for SSDs.

Yeah, I do understand the way SmartResponse works, I'm just wondering if it is worth the cost to pair a small SSD with any drive other than the boot drive. Not having used it before I don't know what to expect.

sworkhard · 05-24-2012, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloodFetish

Yeah, I do understand the way SmartResponse works, I'm just wondering if it is worth the cost to pair a small SSD with any drive other than the boot drive. Not having used it before I don't know what to expect.

If you do the smart response thing with a ssd as they system drive, expect a significant drop in performance. The smart response algorithms will only serve to increase latency and lower the throughput cap on a high performance system drive. It works on mechanical drives because the response time of doing the processing is faster than the access time of the mechanical drive, but the opposite is true when you have an SSD as the main drive.

BloodFetish · 05-24-2012, 07:25 PM

Okay, good info, thank you!

I recall reading somewhere that when setting up SmartResponse you assign it to another drive, but I don't know if that's true.

If it is, and assuming my D:\ drive is a 1TB mechanical drive with a combination of program files, games, itunes, and other media on it my thinking was to use a 2nd SSD to speed up what I commonly access on D:\

I guess the key is how Smart Response works, whether it is tied to a single drive or if it's caching data from several drives. I might have to consult with The Google (or do it the lazy way and wait for more responses!)

Hack&Lube · 05-24-2012, 07:29 PM

Tied to single drive, set controller to RAID mode. Smart Response will only work on RAID enabled ports on your motherboard (usually only 2) so one SSD and one HDD is all you will be able to use in one typical system with a consumer level motherboard running Smart Response. At least this was the case with the first gen tech which is what I have on my home PC.

A 256GB SSD can hold everything you need that requires speed. Windows is about 40GB, most people don't play more than 1-3 games at a single time. I use symbolic links to trick games to thinking they are on the SSD when I archive them to mass storage (so they still work). For mass storage items like music and movies, you won't see any difference between mechanical and SSD. They are not speed dependant and already highly optimized and compressed.

The only reason I would ever use SmartResponse is if I was running software development or virtualization. If you want to learn about it more, check out Anandtech's articles.

sclitheroe · 05-24-2012, 08:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

The only reason I would ever use SmartResponse is if I was running software development or virtualization. If you want to learn about it more, check out Anandtech's articles.

Great assessment. The average consumer workload doesn't merit automatically tiered storage. The two workloads you've mentioned are prime candidates.

Virtualization especially - it sucks that I've got 20 gigs of virtual disk sitting on SSD right now when I need only a fraction of those blocks on fast disk to make the VM really responsive.

BloodFetish · 05-24-2012, 08:22 PM

Thanks H&L. I think your post added the perspective I was after. SmartResponse has gotten a fair bit of positive interest from the tech review sites, but I haven't really got the "but what good is it, really?" question.

So I think I'll stick with the 60GB SSD for C and a mechanical drive for D. Eventually I'll swap out D for a largish SSD and invest in the NAS I've been thinking about. (Mrs. B has been bugging me for a way to stream shows to the TV when I'm on the computer)

sclitheroe · 05-24-2012, 08:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloodFetish

Thanks H&L. I think your post added the perspective I was after. SmartResponse has gotten a fair bit of positive interest from the tech review sites, but I haven't really got the "but what good is it, really?" question.

So I think I'll stick with the 60GB SSD for C and a mechanical drive for D. Eventually I'll swap out D for a largish SSD and invest in the NAS I've been thinking about. (Mrs. B has been bugging me for a way to stream shows to the TV when I'm on the computer)

The other advantage of your proposed approach is that you can make easy backups of the C: drive to the D: drive for system restores. Windows 7 bare metal backups are a wonderful thing to have when something bad happens.

Hack&Lube · 05-24-2012, 08:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloodFetish

Thanks H&L. I think your post added the perspective I was after. SmartResponse has gotten a fair bit of positive interest from the tech review sites, but I haven't really got the "but what good is it, really?" question.

So I think I'll stick with the 60GB SSD for C and a mechanical drive for D. Eventually I'll swap out D for a largish SSD and invest in the NAS I've been thinking about. (Mrs. B has been bugging me for a way to stream shows to the TV when I'm on the computer)

Well that bit of information brings up another interesting scenario as a 60GB SSD in my mind is not really sufficient as a primary drive (for me) and that would be a case for myself where if that was my only option, an SSD of that capacity paired with a mechanical harddrive with SmartResponse might make sense. SmartResponse was developed with small SSDs such as this in mind and as a hybrid solution for those who could not afford larger SSDs when prices were a bit more astronomical even a year ago.

I do own a 60GB SSD but it's in a Netbook with a RT Se7en Lite copy of Windows 7 that cuts it down to about 10GB only. That might be something for you to consider with such a small SSD. http://www.rt7lite.com/

BloodFetish · 05-25-2012, 02:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

The other advantage of your proposed approach is that you can make easy backups of the C: drive to the D: drive for system restores. Windows 7 bare metal backups are a wonderful thing to have when something bad happens.

On a desktop I've always been reluctant to load all my program files on the same drive as the OS. Not sure how I developed that habit, but as you say taking images of the boot drive becomes easier.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Well that bit of information brings up another interesting scenario as a 60GB SSD in my mind is not really sufficient as a primary drive (for me) and that would be a case for myself where if that was my only option, an SSD of that capacity paired with a mechanical harddrive with SmartResponse might make sense. SmartResponse was developed with small SSDs such as this in mind and as a hybrid solution for those who could not afford larger SSDs when prices were a bit more astronomical even a year ago.

I do own a 60GB SSD but it's in a Netbook with a RT Se7en Lite copy of Windows 7 that cuts it down to about 10GB only. That might be something for you to consider with such a small SSD. http://www.rt7lite.com/

Yeah, I think we differ in how we normally structure the data on a desktop. Honestly I consider 60GB a perfectly adequate size to house just the OS and a few other programs. That link looks very interesting though - I'll check that one for sure!

But you've made my 60GB SSD feel very inadequate now, poor thing. I hope he doesn't suffer from performance issues when the time comes.

silentsim · 05-25-2012, 02:43 PM

On the topic of SSD's...am I better off with Intel 320 160gb for 150$, or crucial m4 120gb for 120$?

edit: my comp is SATA 3gbps

Hack&Lube · 05-25-2012, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by silentsim

On the topic of SSD's...am I better off with Intel 320 160gb for 150$, or crucial m4 120gb for 120$?

edit: my comp is SATA 3gbps

Tough choice. It's a tie I'd say.

Intel gives you about 40GB more for $30 more. M4 is SATA 3.0 capable but you won't see that level of performance except in benchmarks. Intel drive is only SATA 2.0. Since your computer is only SATA 2.0 you won't notice much of a difference but the M4 still has a faster controller despite your computer having a slower interface. Crucial is 128GB BTW.

I have both the Intel and Crucial drives (I've got a lot of SSDs in everything!) actually and in day to day usage I don't notice any difference. SSDs are so fast, it's tough to tell in every day usage.

Hack&Lube · 05-25-2012, 04:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloodFetish

But you've made my 60GB SSD feel very inadequate now, poor thing. I hope he doesn't suffer from performance issues when the time comes.

Did you just buy the 60GB SSD?

SSDs oddly also scale up in terms of performance when capacity goes up. The same brand and series of drive with the same controller will be faster in a 256GB version than the 60GB version. So going small is lose-lose in my book. Less space and slower.

BloodFetish · 05-26-2012, 01:56 AM

Recently bought it, yes, but I already destroyed the damned blister pack trying to get it open. It's a OCZ Agility III that I got from NCIX for $75 less a $15 rebate.

NCIX has a few larger drives with big discounts that put them well under $1/GB...

http://www.ncix.ca/products/?sku=628...d&promoid=1035
http://www.ncix.ca/products/?sku=593...y&promoid=1019

You're much more read up on these things than I am. How do you feel about cherry-picking this list of SATA III SSDs (from a price/performance aspect)? I'm not against buying a larger SSD and using is as my 2nd drive, so probably 240 GB and up I'd say.

http://www.ncix.ca/products/index.ph...inorcatid=1312