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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!"

8 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Save your money... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Or, you can just use ZFS and turn on the L2ARC, which will use the SSD as a cache for the hard disks and not need any custom hardware.

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  2. You mean like in... by kungfuj35u5 · · Score: 5, Informative

    ZFS? Hybrid storage pools have been around for a long while, and exist as a pretty well balanced software solution to this problem. Hybrid solid-state/magnetic disks were in the market as well which used a similar technique. There is nothing new or impressive about this device.

  3. Re:What 2TB HD? by NitroWolf · · Score: 4, Informative

    This adapter is for 2.5" hard drives - if you put a 3.5 drive in it, you wouldn't fit drive+adapter+SSD into a 3.5" bay. Who makes a 2TB 2.5" SATA drive currently? I am not aware of any...

    Seriously... did not one read the article? You mount the fucking 2.5" drive in the caddy and mount your 3.5" HD where you would normally mount it and run a fucking cable from your HD to the caddy. Is this so fucking hard to get a grasp on? For christs sake.

  4. Re:Pick the false statement by Seth+Kriticos · · Score: 4, Informative

    They are a bit confusing. The manual ( http://www.silverstonetek.com/downloads/Manual/storage/Multi-HDDBOOST-Manual.pdf ) though says, that the HDD has to be de-fragmented before usage. They don't mention other software, though they mention Windows here and there. The manual states though, that any OS supporting SATA will do.

    (It's a Windows pussy thing again, you can freely ignore it).

  5. For those that didn't RTFA by HannethCom · · Score: 3, Informative

    This solution uses two 3.5 inch drive bays in your computer, one for your large platter drive, the other for the caddy with a SSD drive.

    Some software is installed (Windows only) that makes the two drives look like one.

    The most used files from the large drive are copies to the smaller SSD drive. When files cached on the SSD drive are requested, they are read from there, if they do not exist there the request is passed onto the bigger drive. If the file is being used enough it will be copied to the SSD drive at the same time as the information is getting sent to the computer. You will not get SSD drive speeds in this case.

    Yes, this is just using a SSD drive as a cache.

    The product does not come with SSD storage, you have to buy a SSD drive of your choosing as well as this caddy.

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  6. Re:Save your money... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    USB drives speeds are in the 20-30 MB/s. SSD drives are 150-250 MB/s. Conventional HDDs are 50-100 MB/s

  7. Re:Save your money... by jgagnon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Except that then you're at USB speeds instead of SATA speeds.

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  8. Re:Pick the false statement by complete+loony · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, it simply mirrors the start of your HD, up to the size of the SSD. It doesn't look like there's any intelligence in the way it caches content. So if you have more data stored on the HD than the size of the SSD, the performance of reading this data will be ever so slightly slower than reading from the HD directly.

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