A Hybrid Approach For SSD Speed From Your 2TB HDD

Claave writes "bit-tech.net reports that SilverStone has announced a device that daisy-chains an SSD with a hard disk, with the aim of providing SSD speeds plus loads of storage space. The SilverStone HDDBoost is a hard disk caddy with an integrated storage controller, and is an easy upgrade for your PC. The device copies the 'front-end' of your hard disk to the SSD, and tells your OS to prefer the SSD when possible. SSD speeds for a 2TB storage device? Yep, sounds good to me!"

Comments

Re:RTMFA already

[damn_registrars]

The 2.5 caddy is for your SSD. Mount your 3.5 wherever you like.

So the caddy is just a collossal waste of space and money, then. You should be able to fit a 2.5 HD with a 2.5 SSD into a single 3.5 bay. Instead you're going to use a 3.5 bay for your SSD, so that you can achieve some minor performance gains on your regular HD?

Why not just buy a caching HD controller instead?

Re:RTMFA already

[damn_registrars]

You have now apparently read the article (or at least looked at the picture)

I read the article - and looked at the picture - before my first post on this topic.

and you now hate it for the right reasons.

I don't really hate it. I dislike it. It has not wronged me so significantly that I would use the word hate as a description of how I feel about it.

I previously disliked it for being a waste of space and money. I now dislike it for being a waste of space and money.

Re:Impressive is that it works with Windows

[Ant P.]

Fine by me!

People using a toy OS designed solely for video games and $500 Office Reinstall 2010 can go STFU and keep buying these hardware workarounds for their box of treacle and molasses - after all it's not like they're short of cash. Everyone else will simply have to make do with the steadily growing stream of advances made in filesystem design since 1993.

Re:RTMFA already

[damn_registrars]

The device requires TWO 3.5" bays.

That is exactly the problem I have with it. The device itself is a waste of physical space inside a computer case.

Well, it wastes space and money, to be more specific...

caching disk controllers usually require special drivers

I don't know what kind of ultra-shitty walmart-grade caching controller you have in mind. A quality caching controller (like the ones DPT made back in the day) is completely OS-agnostic. No special drivers - or drivers of any sort - required. A good hardware caching controller does its job in hardware.

Re:RTMFA already

[damn_registrars]

Did you expect the extra componentry to somehow consume zero space?

I think there are more intelligent ways to consume physical space than this. For example, if we look at Hard Disk Form Factors we see that in the physical space allocated for a single 3.5 hard disk drive bay (4 x 1.63 x 8 inches) we can easily fit two 2.5 hard disk drives (2.75 x 0.374-0.59 x 3.945 inches each). Instead they waste the space by placing only a single 2.5" (or smaller) SSD into a 3.5" bay. And being as most 3.5" drives are now only 1" tall (in a 1.63" tall bay), there is enough space to place the SSD on top of the HDD and still fit the space.

And there is history of adapters taking up (essentially) zero space - look for 80pin SCA to 68pin SCSI adapters. And if you want to cache your HDD access, a hardware caching controller could well be a more intelligent choice (and would be OS-agnostic as well).