Recommended cache only SSD size?

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jctusmc03

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Hey all, I'm looking for the recommended SSD cache size. My motherboard (rig stats in sig) supports a cache only SSD and I'm not currently taking advantage of that. I plan to go ahead and do that to assist with file transfers between both my internal and external HDD's.

I transfer large files (500mb-1.5gb) back and forth between all of my HDD's and sometimes to multiple drives at once pretty often so I figured I might as well take advantage of it, time is money after all. I'm not sure what size to go with and seem to be getting mixed answers with my google searches and research. Some say 64GB and under is plenty, and some say 128GB is the preferred size.

Halp!? Thanks! :D
 
I have a cache drive using Intel's RST on a Z68 and a Corsair Accelerator using Nvelo software (different PC). I say skip the whole thing. If you're willing to spend money on a 120GB SSD to cache then you might as well just get another SSD. The speed isn't there (don't care what generic benchmarks review sites use), I use them daily and they are unimpressive. The Nvelo solution is downright annoying. If the computer locks up (likely due to their software) and you have to hard reset there's a REALLY good chance anything in the cache drive is now corrupted.
 
Alright, thanks for the recommendation and saving me some cash then. I wasn't really THAT worried about it anyways since I already have a large SSD and my HDD's in raid but I figured if it could boost speed somewhat it was worth it since I have a little free cash right now.
 
FYI. Corsair has unlisted the Accelerator drives from their site.... Appears they are eol.
 
Bought mine in May and have used it maybe 3 weeks. I tried it in a few different computers and the Nvelo software kept hanging up and the speed difference wasn't there. If you want a speed boost transferring files get a couple Momentus XT drives and RAID 0 them (cache is already built in).
 
A cache drive won't help you transferring files between drives. The transfer is still going to be limited to the slowest read or write speed of the other drives.
 
i thought the caching was only helpful for frequently accessed files like OS and programs, dont think itt helps with file transfers
 
i thought the caching was only helpful for frequently accessed files like OS and programs, dont think itt helps with file transfers
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That is what these are supposed to do. Although I never notice the cache benifit on any of my 4 Momentus XT drives at work so I would highly advise against buying these unless you need a notebook drive and the price premium over a non cached drive is not that much.
 
Skip it... the only way to noticably increase read/write speeds is to go all SSD, but that's going to hammer the shit out of your wallet to get comparative sized RAIDs. That's eventually what I want to do, and what I thought I was going to be able to do by this past Christmas, but SSD prices seemed to jump about 25-30% over what they had declined to around July-September. :/

Example: Crucial M4 256GB was regularly priced at about $160 back then, and today it's $200.

I was really hoping for 512GB SSDs in the M4 class to be had for around $200-250 this past holiday shopping period, but the prices kept going UP...damn it.
 
I have Sandisk SSD with expresscache. It is certainly as fast as a SSD most of the time. It takes several uses of a file before the file is cached.

It does not help with file transfers as the file is only accessed once.

The SSD is 64GB. After a couple months it appears to only be caching 32GB. So it is certainly large enough for my needs.
 
If you are moving large files that you don't use that often the cache will most likely not help at all, in most cases just getting more Ram will have a similar if not better effect. I have 32GB of Ram and if I watch a movie (even only a few minutes of it) and then transfer it to one of my big arrays the first 20GB or so goes really fast .
 
Cache drives only keep the files that you use often for reads. For writes they cache just about everything. I ran a virus scan one time and my drive wrote almost 100GB of data. So it will probably increase the speed of 0.5-1.5GB writes to a noticeable extent.

But it's kind of complicated because a cache drive only works on a single physical volume, only one hard drive. If you write files to that one drive it will be faster, but not for the other drives. So it's really not going to help you.

Skripka said:
FYI. Corsair has unlisted the Accelerator drives from their site.... Appears they are eol.
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I see it right here. http://www.corsair.com/en/ssd.html

Major_A said:
I have a cache drive using Intel's RST on a Z68 and a Corsair Accelerator using Nvelo software (different PC). I say skip the whole thing. If you're willing to spend money on a 120GB SSD to cache then you might as well just get another SSD. The speed isn't there (don't care what generic benchmarks review sites use), I use them daily and they are unimpressive. The Nvelo solution is downright annoying. If the computer locks up (likely due to their software) and you have to hard reset there's a REALLY good chance anything in the cache drive is now corrupted.
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Download the newest version of RST since you are using an Intel chipset. Also get Dataplex version 1.2.0.4, the newest one. I couldn't use my cache at all before I did those two things, it wouldn't be detected.
 
Thanks but I already have the latest version of RST and I've tried 4-5 versions of Dataplex and it's the same thing, garbage.
 
DejaWiz said:
but SSD prices seemed to jump about 25-30% over what they had declined to around July-September. :/

Example: Crucial M4 256GB was regularly priced at about $160 back then, and today it's $200.

I was really hoping for 512GB SSDs in the M4 class to be had for around $200-250 this past holiday shopping period, but the prices kept going UP...damn it.
Click to expand...

For the last few months I have been getting emails from DRAMeXchange about spot prices increasing after production was decreased for dram and flash. I was not sure if and when that would make it to SSD and DIMM prices.
 
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