OCZ Wants To Cache Your HDD With an SSD

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OCZ Wants To Cache Your HDD With an SSD

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 23, 2011 @05:01AM from the wonder-if-this-will-cache-on dept.

sl4shd0rk writes "OCZ is coming out with Synapse Cache; an SSD cache for your hard drive. The SSD runs software that copies data into the cache from your hard drive as you work with it. The data sits on the SSD until it gets less activity and gets flushed to the hard disk. Aside from boosting your IOPS to 10k/75k (read/write), the SSD also supports AES encryption, SMART and TRIM."

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So... by Jailbrekr · 2011-09-23 05:02 · Score: 1

Its ZFS for Windows then?

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1. Re:So... by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2011-09-23 05:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Exactly! ....In the same way that a meatball is a golf ball for those playing the game of spaghetti.
  
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2. Re:So... by TheSpoom · 2011-09-23 05:13 · Score: 2
  
  That's simultaneously the best and least sensical analogy I've read on Slashdot in a long time. Kudos.
  
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3. Re:So... by ToasterMonkey · 2011-09-23 05:20 · Score: 1
  
  Windows ReadyBoost would work about the same way as ZFS's l2ARC if it allowed using whole SSDs instead of flash drives. It's basically the same idea, a second level page cache that can be removed or fail at any time.
  Why desktop PCs continue to be built with the 'one large spinning disk one small SSD for important stuff' design while desktop operating systems totally ignore the potential of using them as cache boggles my mind.. I swear it is a conspiracy to make people buy larger SSDs than necessary instead of a more sensible blend of cost/performance like what Sun was after.
4. Re:So... by arth1 · 2011-09-23 05:30 · Score: 1
  
  Windows ReadyBoost would work about the same way as ZFS's l2ARC if it allowed using whole SSDs instead of flash drives. It's basically the same idea, a second level page cache that can be removed or fail at any time.
  No, it's not the same. ReadyBoost provides a compressed paging file cache, it doesn't work as a cache between the OS and the HD.
  In other words, it only gets what is written to the paging file, or pages that are dropped from memory. Combined with SuperFetch, ReadyBoost gives a good boost in starting applications, but it neither works as RAM (the most common misconception), nor does it increase disk write speeds.
  That said, Windows already has an API for hybrid disks, with both SSD and HDD that does what this solution promises. So I fail to see what's new, except perhaps a more user friendly setup?
5. Re:So... by Reber+Is+Reber · 2011-09-23 05:55 · Score: 2
  
  Bravo sir.
6. Re:So... by TorenAetonra · 2011-09-23 05:59 · Score: 2
  
  This! Yes!
7. Re:So... by operagost · 2011-09-23 06:04 · Score: 1
  
  BadAnalogyGuy has a contender to deal with.
  
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8. Re:So... by GameboyRMH · 2011-09-23 06:21 · Score: 1
  
  On this topic, does anyone know how to set up something like an unRAID cache drive using only FOSS tools? bcache is the closest thing I've seen and it's not really the same thing either.
  
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9. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 06:25 · Score: 0
  
  More like the L2ARC of ZFS, but a far sight from ZFS.
10. Re:So... by Strange+Ranger · 2011-09-23 06:47 · Score: 2
  
  Prepare to have your mind unboggled:
  For most people, the OS has been fast enough for the last decade. Boot times happen once per day at the most, programs launch once or twice per day and reside in large amounts of fast RAM. Even games reside just fine in 12GB of DDR3 and run like a champ on mid grade video cards. Where the speed breaks down for home users is Photos and Video. Everybody and their mom has digital photo and video equipment that fits in a purse or pocket.
  It's working with these files where the SSD shines. Forget OS caching. We want media files _initially_ read from disk to be FAST. I want to transfer 24GB of hi res images to my pc and build a Lightroom catalog all in 2 minutes so I can work on them.. (I'm still waiting.). I want hd video to load and take edits without a pausing every 3 seconds while the disk spins. Storage AND Caching for these types of apps is great on an SSD. I certainly don't want windows contaminating my sacred SSD with it's super high, low ROI IOPS.
  
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11. Re:So... by hairyfeet · 2011-09-23 06:47 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Well according to this answer by a developer you CAN use an SSD for readyboost, its just isn't as straight forward and you can't use the whole drive. personally I've been avoiding SSDs until they get the bugs out as the experience from my gamer customers (who spent waaaay more than i would have for top o' the line SSDs) is that Jeff Atwood at coding horror is correct that SSDs should be judged on a hot/crazy scale as while they are crazy fast the fail crazy often.
  To me it isn't THAT they fail it is HOW they fail that has me avoiding them. With HDDs I can't remember the last time I had an HDD that failed without plenty of clear warnings something was up. Windows delayed write fails, or SMART errors, temp going nuts, there was ALWAYS a clear warning that there was trouble in HDD town. With both of the gamers there was NO WARNING with the SSDs, they just flipped the switch and....nothing. With the HDDs I was always able to get the data off before they bought the farm, minus a few bad sectors of course, but with the SSDs it was like they didn't exist, it was just...nothing.
  so while using it as a cache (as long as the cache is ALWAYS backed up like Readyboost) sounds fine i really can't see recommending an SSD until they get the bugs out. you would have to spend all your time running back ups or RAIDing the drive constantly to remove the risk, and that is just more trouble than its worth. Besides with Superfetch and Readyboost if you have a large amount of RAM (and what geek don't right? hell even my netbook is gonna have 6Gb on it) then everything you use often is already preloaded into RAM so unless you boot daily i doubt you'd see much difference, as nothing yet beats RAM speed.
  
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12. Re:So... by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2011-09-23 08:03 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, wow, that guy is like hero to my overbite!
  
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13. Re:So... by bill_mcgonigle · 2011-09-23 08:20 · Score: 1
  
  so while using it as a cache (as long as the cache is ALWAYS backed up like Readyboost) sounds fine i really can't see recommending an SSD until they get the bugs out. you would have to spend all your time running back ups or RAIDing the drive constantly to remove the risk, and that is just more trouble than its worth
  Not really, with decent software. Here's my primary SOHO server's vm storage array, on ZFS:
  
  NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM storage DEGRADED 0 0 0 mirror-0 DEGRADED 0 0 0 sdd UNAVAIL 0 0 0 sdg ONLINE 0 0 0 logs mirror-1 ONLINE 0 0 0 sdi1 ONLINE 0 0 0 sdf1 ONLINE 0 0 0 cache sdh1 ONLINE 0 0 0
  
  Ignore that mirror disk I need to replace, but the 'log' (write cache) device is a pair of Intel 32GB SLC SSD's (~$110 each), partitioned for sharing across two arrays, and the 'cache' (read) disk is a chunk of 64GB Transcend MLC SSD (was about $80 on sale). The main disks are 2TB Hitachi SATA drives (spinning rust type). So, for less than $500 I've got an array with very fast reads, writes, and usually seeks and good reliability. It also cuts down on the power consumption by a good amount (Sun claimed 80%) which cuts down on the power bill, AC costs, etc. Not mirroring the log device or going with MLC for the log devices would have saved me a bit of money in the short term, but I'd have no peace of mind.
  For enterprise clients, I've spent much more on faster and more expensive SSD's, but the principles remain the same at any level.
  
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14. Re:So... by nigelo · 2011-09-23 08:29 · Score: 1
  
  Just think of the time you will save, though, by immediately deciding to retrieve from backup, as opposed to copying files, worrying about bad sectors, hoping the drive doesn't completely fail while you are copying, etc,etc.
  
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15. Re:So... by ToasterMonkey · 2011-09-23 08:30 · Score: 1
  
  so while using it as a cache (as long as the cache is ALWAYS backed up like Readyboost) sounds fine i really can't see recommending an SSD until they get the bugs out. you would have to spend all your time running back ups or RAIDing the drive constantly to remove the risk, and that is just more trouble than its worth. Besides with Superfetch and Readyboost if you have a large amount of RAM (and what geek don't right? hell even my netbook is gonna have 6Gb on it) then everything you use often is already preloaded into RAM so unless you boot daily i doubt you'd see much difference, as nothing yet beats RAM speed.
  The idea is you're unlikely to find 64+G of ram in a desktop, and it could potentially be persistent. Backups and RAID have nothing to do with this, a SSD used as page cache can have a failed read or write at any time and the OS wil just move on.
  I think they make perfect sense as a page cache in desktop systems.
16. Re:So... by Synerg1y · 2011-09-23 08:31 · Score: 1
  
  Yep, this is about the only application I can think of, where you have a tera on your spinning disk, and like a 60gb ssd "wrapper", considering the wrapper costs $300~ and the tera is 4 figures, that is the market for this technology.
  I still think I'd rather buy a 120, load my HD video from spinning to 120, LOAD windows, all my apps, and games off the SSD, and work on the HD video once it finishes copying. If you can't wait for 24gb to copy off a spinning disk (10 min?) and spend $300 to circumvent it, you better be working in video editing :P
17. Re:So... by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2011-09-23 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  Er... I mean a gyros to my groin. Sigh... * shakes head of lettuce in knockwurst * my I still have much to yearn from hymns.
  
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18. Re:So... by fa2k · 2011-09-23 09:20 · Score: 1
  
  From what I could read, ZFS supports "log" devices, essentially write caches, and "cache" devices which are read caches. The read caches get cleared on each reboot. Neither of these devices support TRIM. On a server this does'nt make much difference, but on a workstation it's a big deal (a workstation doesn't have a constant stream of writes, so TRIM on the log device makes a lot of sense). I was very much considering going with FreeBSD for my desktop for this reason, but I settled for Win 7. With a 60 GB SSD I can't really install anything but MS office and a couple of browser, Python and Java. I'm sure that 50 % of that is never accessd though, so a cache would make much more sense! I would consider paying $300 for just the software if it worked well with TrueCrypt. It's the right way to go until we have multi-TB SSDs for cheap. (would be really cool if OCZ offered this for their old drives, but I guess that' s unlikely)
19. Re:So... by citizenr · 2011-09-23 10:43 · Score: 1
  
  No. More like Eboostr
  www.eboostr.com/
  
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20. Re:So... by iamhassi · 2011-09-23 13:17 · Score: 1
  
  Consider 2 terabyte hard drives are under $100, $500 sounds like a mountain of cash for a storage solution. $500 is more than your average decent desktop costs now days.
  
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21. Re:So... by guruevi · 2011-09-23 15:39 · Score: 1
  
  Either way, SSD or HDD, they fail and sometimes they fail spectacularly. I currently manage over 100TB of data combination of SSD and spinning disks. GOOD SSD's don't fail that often, it's the "cheap" crap you buy at $3/GB. Even if they do, that's what RAID, ZFS-style filesystems and backups are for. HDD's fail silently a LOT more than you imagine. About 1% of my disks each month develop 1 unrecoverable read error (which is fairly good given I read a little over 10TB from an individual disk), 3% per year fails completely. Usually nothing is wrong in SMART but once there is an issue, the data is toast anyway. I imagine a lot of latent corruption happens on consumer disks too but it doesn't get noticed.
  I recommend SSD's because in a rack, they're cheaper than HDD's. 2.5" 10k RPM hard drives get about 150 IOPS, 50MB/s on most of my (very random) work loads. Getting 5000 IOPS and 150MB/s on an SSD (the 20k+ IOPS on non-RAM SSD's is marketing speak, RAM-based SSD's either come on a PCIe card at $350/GB or SAS-based come in at about $500/GB) saves a lot of space (RAID enclosures are expensive too). If you're worried a RAID1 won't do, do a 3 device mirror or a RAID1 of 2 phys. disks and RAID1 those logical disks again. Even if you kill 1/3 or 1/4 of your IOPS you're still better off.
  
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22. Re:So... by bill_mcgonigle · 2011-09-23 16:08 · Score: 1
  
  .Consider 2 terabyte hard drives are under $100, $500 sounds like a mountain of cash for a storage solution. $500 is more than your average decent desktop costs now days.
  A bare drive is on one end of the 'storage solution' continuum. The slow, unreliable, hot end. The OCZ hybrid storage device is $500 itself, for 1TB unmirrored.
  Wait, have you ever priced out reliable storage? The cost of a desktop PC isn't really relevant unless you're going to do a big storage cluster like Google does.
  
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23. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 19:17 · Score: 0
  
  With HDDs I can't remember the last time I had an HDD that failed without plenty of clear warnings something was up. Windows delayed write fails, or SMART errors, temp going nuts, there was ALWAYS a clear warning that there was trouble in HDD town.
  Anecdote time: the last hard drive that failed on me - the only one that failed on me since 2001 - ran flawlessly for years until the one day it died. According to SpeedFan's SMART readout, it was still in the 90+% health range. It was about four years old. It died so hard that the computer refused to boot with it plugged in, no matter which SATA port it was plugged in to. It was adequately cooled for its entire lifetime, and not abused. I wish it had died as gracefully as yours had; I'd already migrated everything really important off of it simply due to its age and my paranoia., but I did lose a few things that inconvenienced me.
  The one that died in 2001 didn't go gracefully either.
24. Re:So... by spongman · 2011-09-23 19:45 · Score: 1
  
  Its ZFS for Windows then?
  no, more like ReadyDrive on a hybrid drive. Both of which have been around since 2007.
  I'm not quite sure what's new here, except maybe the size of the flash cache is somewhat larger.
25. Re:So... by drsmithy · 2011-09-24 00:53 · Score: 2
  
  No, it's not the same. ReadyBoost provides a compressed paging file cache, it doesn't work as a cache between the OS and the HD.In other words, it only gets what is written to the paging file, or pages that are dropped from memory.
  
  That's not how Mark Russinovich describes it here.
  "After the ReadyBoost service initializes caching, the Ecache.sys device driver intercepts all reads and writes to local hard disk volumes (C:\, for example), and copies any data being written into the caching file that the service created."
26. Re:So... by arth1 · 2011-09-24 01:16 · Score: 0
  
  "After the ReadyBoost service initializes caching, the Ecache.sys device driver intercepts all reads and writes to local hard disk volumes (C:\, for example), and copies any data being written into the caching file that the service created."
  I'm sure Russinovich believed that based on the information he had available at that time. However, it's very easy to show it's false - turn on ReadyBoost and watch the drive light of the ReadyBoost device.
  If the above where true, it would always blink when the HD light blinks, plus any time it serves something from cache instead of HD. That's not what happens at all.
  And that's good, considering how USB/SD/MS devices don't last long if constantly being written to, and how horribly slow they can be for random writes. Their main benefit is fast access time, for quick serve of few blocks or fragmented data.
  By using it as a compressed shadow paging file, it serves that purpose. It allows the OS to use paging more aggressively, which in turn means more memory can be used for disk caching.
27. Re:So... by drsmithy · 2011-09-24 01:19 · Score: 2
  
  I'm sure Russinovich believed that based on the information he had available at that time. However, it's very easy to show it's false - turn on ReadyBoost and watch the drive light of the ReadyBoost device.
  If the above where true, it would always blink when the HD light blinks, plus any time it serves something from cache instead of HD. That's not what happens at all.
  Do you have a source more authoritative than a blinking LED ?
28. Re:So... by arth1 · 2011-09-25 00:58 · Score: 1
  
  I've shown you a way to repeatably falsify the claim that it buffers all writes - what could possibly be more authoritative?
  If the map doesn't match the terrain, it is usually safe tp assume that the terrain is correct.
  Anyhow, if you believe authority more than your own eyes (i.e. are religious), this might help you.
  Important part:
  "Windows ReadyBoost will use the flash drive to create a copy of virtual memory"
  (Emphasis mine.)
  I.e. normal disk writes will not go through ReadyBoost at all, like with a hybrid disk solution.
'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by unity100 · 2011-09-23 05:03 · Score: 1

And its called momentus. it has a ssd cache which keeps most accessed files in itself. how clueless was the poster ?

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1. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by characterZer0 · 2011-09-23 05:05 · Score: 1
  
  Is it aware of the filesystem and keeps most accessed files, or just the most accessed blocks?
  
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2. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by alphatel · 2011-09-23 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  It holds the high usage data until it can be written to disk (cold data). It won't be useful if you're running SQL databases with 80gb instances, but would certainly speed up your everyday PC-type activity.
  
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3. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:24 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, the momentus only has a read cache. This one can cache both read and write.
4. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by Anthony+Mouse · 2011-09-23 06:16 · Score: 2
  
  Is it aware of the filesystem and keeps most accessed files, or just the most accessed blocks?
  How is that an advantage? If I have e.g. a 5GB mail archive file which is my most accessed file, but I really only frequently access a few dozen MB of it which represent the most recently received mail, the performance will be much better if it will cache the frequently accessed blocks only and then use the rest of the SSD to cache other recently accessed blocks than if it uses up half the SSD to cache the whole mail archive even though I haven't accessed 7/8ths of it in the last two years.
5. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by Hatta · 2011-09-23 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  What's the difference between this and just keeping your swap file on SSD?
  
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6. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by rthille · 2011-09-23 06:28 · Score: 1
  
  Well, the database example really depends on how much of the 80GB database is "hot". Even then the flash-based cache will probably help thruput as smaller writes to the platters can be reordered and combined.
  
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7. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by unity100 · 2011-09-23 06:36 · Score: 1
  
  the difference in between these is, you end up keeping often accessed small (4kb or similar size) operating system or program files in ssd. ssds perform over 40 times faster or more for accessing such files. the difference that results in speed is phenomenal. also it is noticeable for bigger program files.
  
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8. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by Hatta · 2011-09-23 06:44 · Score: 1
  
  Isn't that what would happen if you used your SSD for swap? Or is disk cache simply freed instead of paged out when RAM is needed?
  
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9. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by wagnerrp · 2011-09-23 07:34 · Score: 2
  
  It depends entirely on the use scenario. Consider someone loads up a video game, and loads several files from a given folder. If the cache is aware of the filesystem, it will precache other content from that same folder, such as additional models, maps, and textures. When the game then wants to retrieve those files, they are ready to access, rather than having to pull them off the disk.
10. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by Anthony+Mouse · 2011-09-23 07:50 · Score: 1
  
  But that's not caching at all, it's prefetch. The filesystem driver or the program itself can do that completely independent of the underlying cache architecture simply by reading the data in anticipation of it being needed soon.
  And prefetch is no panacea. It makes huge mistakes. If you're playing that same game and there are 10GB worth of 300 different levels and it tries to load them into the cache when you're loading the first one, you're creating a bunch of unnecessary disk activity (and wearing out the SSD), and pushing things out of the cache that have actually been used recently, even though the user is very unlikely to want to use all 300 levels during one session.
11. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by unity100 · 2011-09-23 08:32 · Score: 1
  
  no it isnt. swap file is for usage as an extra memory in case programs need it. it doesnt contain program files, or system files, be them large or small. it is just 'extra memory' , a relic of 90s. but it is still important when the computer running it has low memory.
  
  currently it is not advised to put swaps on ssds, despite microsoft recommends it. because of constant, neverending writes, it kills ssds quite fast. ssds currently have a maximum write amount they can handle. then they die. reads are unlimited though.
  
  so currently its best to put program files, system files on ssds for very fast access, and put any kinds of logs, swap, virtual memory, records that program keep on traditional hds.
  
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12. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by V!NCENT · 2011-09-23 08:37 · Score: 1
  
  Swap is only used as a protection method, so you can run more stuff than you can put in RAM.
  If you have enough RAM (like most of us), then your swap is never going to be used. So what's the point of caching the HDD?
  Well the point is that your HDD is a 1.000 times slower than RAM, which is a 1.000 times slower than cache, which is a 1.000 times slower than CPU registers.
  Considdering that 'the magic happens' in the CPU, you can't supply your CPU fast enough if you don't cache larger and slower memmory.
  Considdering that you HDD is the slowest memory, and there is a file that you need to edit with the CPU that's on your HDD and it's very large, you are going to notice this as a user. A tiny file could maybe take so little time that you won't even notice this delay. But if you can speed up your HDD with a very smart, smaller and faster cache, then large file readings needed for the CPU or even GPU is going to be sooooo much faster!
  
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13. Re:'coming out' ? Seagate already has it by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 19:34 · Score: 0
  
  > But that's not caching at all, it's prefetch
  Semantics. Almost every type of caching method may cache more data than you will actually be actively reading. This is true all the way down to at least the L2 cache of your CPU cores (each line of cache is multiple contiguous machine words). In your block example, not every part of every block the system caches will always be needed either, for the same reason.
  That said: I doubt this flash cache system will be so fancy as to grab multiple GB of a filesystem ahead of time; that'd be kind of silly unless it was also doing some sophisticated profiling in the background all the time (along the lines of "hmm. Last time user asked for this block, it asked for blocks n...m within the next few seconds. They're asking for the first block again, so I'll get the rest now." Weighed to favor data fetched very often and in a read-only manner.)
  More likely the read-ahead would only be a small amount per file. In fact, given the way blocks on the flash side have to be fully cleared to rewrite, the algorithm will almost certainly be set to always use the entire flash block. IIRC, the blocks are 128KB, so on average that's already a read-ahead of about 64KB.
Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by zaibazu · 2011-09-23 05:04 · Score: 3, Insightful

They need to make the controller logic bullet proof, Seagate had quiet some problems with their hybrid disks
1. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:24 · Score: 0
  
  Exactly. I replaced a Seagate Momentus drive I got in an Alienware laptop with one of the Seagate Momentus XT Drives. The XT drives are the ones with the SSD cache.
  It provided zero improvement in anything. It went straight back to the store after a weekend and some benchmarks. Sounds good in theory but not in practice as I've seen it yet. Hopefully the OCZ drives actual benefit the user.
2. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-09-23 05:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  A best I can tell, this is simply a basic SSD that is shipped with a bundled OEM copy of "dataplex" software from these guys(nice clip art...) (Here is a presentation by them about their product.
  
  The SSD itself is a Sandforce 2281-based MLC drive with 50% overprovision for redundancy. Unless they've really screwed the firmware, it should be just fine, though no word on how it competes in price with other drives of similar size.
  
  The caching function(unlike the Seagate hybrid units) is simply software: Supports Windows 7, no BIOS goo or specialized SATA features required; plugs into the OS somewhere in the storage handling area and shuffles data between the main mechanical HDD and the designated cache SSD.
  
  On the plus side, that should(at least conceivably) give it considerably higher-level knowledge of what the OS is doing with which to make caching decisions(unlike caching firmware, which only has the SATA commands to go on). On the minus side, it means Win7 only, and your storage system is Not the place you want potentially flaky code, so if they aren't on the ball, we could see some serious bluescreening and/or OS hosing going on....
3. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by arth1 · 2011-09-23 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  That's because it pretty much only caches "startup files" on the SSD, and the SSD part is ridiculously small. You get a boost for boot speed, not much speed boost otherwise (unless you happen to re-read the files that were used during startup), and likely a worse MTBF, because there are more parts that can fail.
  DNW.
4. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by gknoy · 2011-09-23 06:22 · Score: 2
  
  Would that kind of software be available so that I could do that with my own SSD+HD? I currently have an SSD that I keep gaming stuff on, but I wouldn't mind repurposing it as a cache if I knew how. Is there an easy way to do this?
5. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by deroby · 2011-09-23 06:38 · Score: 1
  
  I beg to differ, although I will agree that it depends a lot on your usage profile.
  Personally I find that that things like booting and launching apps is REMARKABLY faster than most people sitting around me having 'ordinary' drives.
  (eg Outlook & VS2010 open up in a fraction of the time it takes the others). That said, yes, 4Gb is kind of 'low'. When I ('m forced to) use Word for a couple of days, *that* will start up much faster after a couple of days, but then after a week Excel will be slower to start and vice versa...
  Frankly, I find the software mentioned in the article much more looking like what eBoostr did, but then for both read & write. I liked eboostr before I got my XT, but then again I always had this nagging feeling : how can you be sure the cache is always uptodate ? I'm having this very same feeling with this OCZ thing.
  They should have hooked it up hardware-wize IMHO : mobo SSD HDD, doing it via software is just wrong.
  
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  If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
6. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2011-09-23 07:05 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not sure. ZFS as support for using an SSD or SSDs as cache in a larger storage pool; but the phrase "that I keep gaming stuff on" usually does not imply "I run Solaris/BSD/Linux with ZFS/FUSE". In Linux, btrfs either has, or is working toward, some sort of SSD optimizations, I'm not certain how close they are to ZFS'.
  
  Most of the reasonably nice SANs and storage appliances have support for some similar caching thing, to RAM, SSD, or a combination; but "Buy a SAN and bootable HBA" isn't exactly a desktop cost saving move.
  
  I don't know of any commercially-available standalone software packages equivalent to this bundleware stuff, and I don't think that even the server versions of Windows do anything like that in NTFS or their software RAID modes.
  
  Intel has something somewhat similar; but it is tied to motherboards with the z68 chipset, so that is likely either already helping you, or of no use.
  
  I'm assuming that, sometime shortly after this product ships, cracked copies of the accompanying software will start filtering out; but I don't know when that will be...
7. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by derinax · 2011-09-23 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  I very strongly disagree; I went from a Caviar Black to a Momentus XT (same size) in my Macbook Pro, and I see improvements everywhere. I dual-boot this with Windows 7, so I don't see the full improvement that I would if it were a single-OS-system, but even after I run an extended Windows session, restarting into OS X largely comes off the SSD. My "bouncemarks" (dock bounces are often used as a bench) are very low or nonexistent for frequently-used apps (like Mail, or Outlook), where before with the Caviar they could take a dozen seconds or more to start up.
  There are likely differences for each system as to how effective it is (and possible ROM version differences, this one is SD26), but I see real improvements with the Seagate hybrid drive.
8. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by citizenr · 2011-09-23 10:47 · Score: 1
  
  Would that kind of software be available so that I could do that with my own SSD+HD? I currently have an SSD that I keep gaming stuff on, but I wouldn't mind repurposing it as a cache if I knew how. Is there an easy way to do this?
  www.eboostr.com/
  
  --
  Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
9. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 11:46 · Score: 0
  
  If you're into writing drivers... you might be able to do it with a file system filter driver (Windows).
10. Re:Good idea, how will the implementation be ? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-24 07:32 · Score: 0
  
  True, Seagate had some issues with their Momentus XT hybrid hard disks. In fact, I bought one, installed it, then uninstalled it a few weeks later due to significant hits in battery life and stability (especially after sleep). Fortunately the drives can be flashed with new firmware. The difference between Seagate's SD23 and SD25 (and now SD28) firmware is significant. Plus, there seems to be something in OS X 10.7 Lion which simply works better with these drives. I'm a happy user now. The caching action makes for startlingly quick boots, and it has sped-up my most-used applications significantly. Subjectively, the hybrid drive took a good eighteen months off my MacBook Pro's apparent age. It screams.
  My experience does suggest to me that the OS matters, as does field-testing. Seagate seems to have these drives sorted-out now, and I recommend them to anyone wishing a bump-up in their computing experience. I'd let someone else be the guinea pig for Synapse Cache for a while, though.
Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Greyfox · 2011-09-23 05:05 · Score: 1

Modern operating systems do that automatically anyway, as long as there's free RAM. It'd probably be less expensive to add another 32-64GB of RAM to your PC, than it would be to buy dedicated hardware to do that job.

--
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
1. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by EdZ · 2011-09-23 05:09 · Score: 1
  
  A 64GB SSD is about £100 nowadays. 64GB of RAM (ignoring the price of a motherboard with enough slots in which to fit it) is closer to £320 (buying cheapest-of-the-cheap 2gb stocks).
2. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Mitchell314 · 2011-09-23 05:10 · Score: 1
  
  Why would you want to cache your RAM to an SSD? :P
  
  --
  I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
3. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by myurr · 2011-09-23 05:12 · Score: 2
  
  No. The problem with caching in RAM is that it is volatile so if the power fails you'll lose the changes. Where this SSD helps is in providing a speed boost over a magnetic hard drive but without the volatility of RAM. The RAM cache will still be used to provide a further speed boost, but when a program issues an fsync to make sure that all the data held in the RAM cache is flushed to a physical disc, it will be the SSD that is picking up the slack.
  For a read heavy environment with lots of RAM that is hardly ever switched off then probably not. For more general applications then it should provide a healthy speed boost without the cost of going all SSD.
4. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by NitroWolf · 2011-09-23 05:13 · Score: 1
  
  Modern operating systems do that automatically anyway, as long as there's free RAM. It'd probably be less expensive to add another 32-64GB of RAM to your PC, than it would be to buy dedicated hardware to do that job.
  This doesn't help you when you need:
  1: Access to a file or files totaling more than 64 GB (or however much ram you have for caching)
  2: Files not yet cached
  Mostly I'm thinking games is where FS caching is less than optimum, since some of the resource files can easily exceed the amount of system memory available and if you like being competitive, the faster you load the game the better... and the FS cache won't help you there.
  You also run into the problem of most motherboards don't support more than 8 GB (for older MB's), 16 GB for semi-newer MB or 32GB for some of the newest boards. Only a select few will support more than 64GB and those are the expensive boards, but to be fair most anyone considering an SSD purchase and/or 64 GB of RAM is likely to have a board like that anyway.
  I run 24 GB on my system, and I don't see the FS cache filling up available RAM like I think it should. I'm not sure if that means I'm using less than 24 GB of data regularly (unlikely, since I play a lot of games and do large photo work), or the FS caching isn't designed around caching that much data and kind of tapers off after 8 or 10 GB.
5. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by hedwards · 2011-09-23 05:14 · Score: 1
  
  For servers that would possibly be worthwhile, but I'm not sure why a home user would need 64GB of cache. 2GB would probably more than enough. Folks needing more than that would probably just opt for a 64GB SSD and be done with it.
6. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by h4rr4r · 2011-09-23 05:16 · Score: 1
  
  The cost of going all SSD?
  Have you priced SSDs recently?
  You can get 100GB drives for ~$150. How much cheaper does it have to be?
  Sure you might still want a few spinning drives for bulk media storage, but that can be in one machine in the house not all of them.
7. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Baloroth · 2011-09-23 05:17 · Score: 1
  
  Umm, are you aware just how expensive 32GB of RAM is? It isn't quite as pricey as I was expecting, Newegg has 24GB of DDR3 for as low as $160 (holy shit RAM is getting cheap), but that assumes you have 6 RAM slots, and I've not seen a consumer board with more than 4. If you want 8GB DIMMS (for 32GB on a consumer board), you're looking at more like ~$800 USD for 4. On the other hand, a 120GB SSD is around $160. Build a 64GB into a HDD, and it's still cheaper than anywhere near that in RAM.
  The whole idea is to have a gradient for caching. RAM for stuff you need really fast, an SSD for stuff you often use and want pretty fast but don't need always, and an HDD for everything.
  
  --
  "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
8. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Ex+Machina · 2011-09-23 05:18 · Score: 2
  
  Quick Google says:
  64GB SSD = $86
  64GB RAM = $2000
9. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by timeOday · 2011-09-23 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  RAM cache is not persistent. That means when a user writes to a file, the system cannot (usually) return immediately after it's copied into cache; it must wait until the data is persistently stored. Thus slow persistent storage (HDD) is still a bottleneck even with lots of cache. (If you are doing non-blocking writes to a 64 GB non-persistent cache you could lose the whole system in a crash! Simply flushing that cache to disk could take an hour - does your UPS last that long?)
  Also, the amount of disk reads necessary to fill a 32-64GB cache in the first place is huge. It would take hours for the system to fully warm up after being booted, because the first time you did anything it would still be HDD slow.
  The problem I see with this is I would rather just choose what to put on HDD vs SSD manually. Most of my huge files are TV recordings that are written once sequentially, then read once sequentially, then deleted. That sort of activity tends to ruin cache by filling it with bulk data that will never be needed again. So having an SSD system drive and a HDD media drive is a pretty simple and effective separation.
10. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by countertrolling · 2011-09-23 05:22 · Score: 1
  
  How much cheaper does it have to be?
  Lots... The prices will always be too high while people are willing to pay it, but the cost of production does not justify it. I have a very hard time believing all that monkey motion going on in a regular hard drive costs less to make.
  
  --
  For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
11. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by h4rr4r · 2011-09-23 05:26 · Score: 1
  
  6 ram slots is not that uncommon on triple channel memory boards. Here is one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157163 it will set you back an entire $155.
12. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by ByOhTek · 2011-09-23 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  6 GB consumer boards have been around for about as long as Intel's i7 series of processors (2 or 3 years)?
  But, yeah, that's pretty inexpensive.
  
  --
  Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
13. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by h4rr4r · 2011-09-23 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  If people are willing to pay it, then by definition the price is not too high.
  I remember paying way more for HDs than $1.5/GB.
14. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by tnk1 · 2011-09-23 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  Cost of actual production is not the issue, bringing up assembly lines for new stuff like SSDs so that production capacity for making SSDs is the issue.
  Yeah, there's lots of fiddly things in a HDD, but we are really good at making them right now, and we also already have expanded production for them already. Startup costs are minimized. SSDs are still building up demand and production capacity is slowly coming up. It takes a lot of work to bring up a new process for a new product.
15. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Dunbal · 2011-09-23 05:32 · Score: 1
  
  Eh, I remember when 64K cost close to $1 million including the cost of a new wing for it. Now get off my lawn.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
16. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by gad_zuki! · 2011-09-23 05:33 · Score: 0
  
  >You can get 100GB drives for ~$150. How much cheaper does it have to be?
  I wish SSD enthusiasts would accept this simple fact: SSDs are not that reliable yet. RAM is reliable, barring a power outage.
  If you want reliability, you at the very least need to buy Intel. Now your "cheap" drive isn't so cheap. We can't cheaply RAID them either so because the storage industry is so set in its way, they still haven't released much in the way of TRIM enabled RAID cards.
  So lets say I wanted to do this in any way that was remotely reliable. I'd have to pay for a TRIM enabled RAID1 card and two 160gb SSDs, preferably intel. Now your $150 solution is more like $1500 solution.
  Depending on garbage like OCZ is really asking for a fall. Business as well as consumers have been burned by the current crop of "fast but highly unreliable SSDs."
  Unfortunately, we're probably years away from a cheap AND reliable SSD storage solution that can run for 5 years with the fail rate of a spinning disk. In the meantime I'm running expensive Intel SSDs and not worrying. I can't imagine selling OCZ to Joe or Jan consumer, inflating the price of their computers $200 for a mild speed boost. Not to mention laptops don't usually have a second slot for another drive. Either SSD all the way or spinning disk. Half-assed caching solutions have historically been big failures.
17. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by h4rr4r · 2011-09-23 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  Have you heard of this new thing called backups?
  I don't care if the drive only lasts 1 or 2 years. By then a bigger, faster, cheaper one will be out and I will buy that.
  I have backups if I use SSDs or HDs or clay tablets, so this changes nothing.
18. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Baloroth · 2011-09-23 05:50 · Score: 1
  
  Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't seen one of those before (but I use almost exclusively AMD boards, so I guess I wouldn't.) But note that even that board supports a max of 24GB of RAM, so you couldn't necessarily even get 32GB, even with 6 slots.
  
  --
  "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
19. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by myurr · 2011-09-23 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  So that's ~£1,500 per TB. Yet you can get a 1TB drive for less than the 100GB SSD... That's a HUGE discrepancy for bulk storage where the speed of retrieving every last byte doesn't matter.
  This technology has its place for now and provides a welcome speed boost for those unable or unwilling to invest in a full SSD solution for their bulk storage needs. Going all SSD is the best solution for some people; going all mechanical is best for others; and there's a whole range of people with needs in between each extreme.
20. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by networkBoy · 2011-09-23 05:54 · Score: 2
  
  I use all of 16 gb of ram as an advanced home user doing video editing (by no means am I a pro).
  That said, I use spinning disks for the video work because I amd rewriting blocks all the time with scratch and render files and while an SSD is faster, it's not enough to make up for the killing of the drive in short order (which I've already done once).
  -nB
  
  --
  whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
21. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:56 · Score: 0
  
  It also doesn't help when your bottleneck is transactions/second, not blocks/second. For example, your application wants to be sure the written data and metadata are atomically persisted before continuing to the next step. Having a persistent write-through cache would be great for this. The application (and OS) think the write is done, and it can happen at leisure for the big HDD, because it's already written to SSD. This is similar to how high-end RAID controllers have battery backup and/or flash backup for their RAM buffers, so they can acknowledge writes before they are committed to disk.
  I wonder if we'll ever see an SSD-based cache sold as a SATA intermediary: host controller cabled to cache, cache cabled to drive, and the cache presents itself as the entire drive with non-volatile writeback cache capability.
22. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by networkBoy · 2011-09-23 06:00 · Score: 1
  
  does your UPS last that long?
  mine lasts 40 min.
  I still don't trust cached writes.
  
  --
  whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
23. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by h4rr4r · 2011-09-23 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  Put the mechanical drives in another machine and use that for dedicated storage. All the other computers can have nice fast SSDs.
24. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by KingMotley · 2011-09-23 06:03 · Score: 1
  
  The performance chipset for intel is still the X58. All X58 motherboards have 6 slots. The fact that you've never seen a consumer board with more than 4 says taht you've never actually looked at Intel at all. Additionally, while not a typical consumer board, here's one with 12: http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=270-WS-W555-A2&family=Motherboard%20Family&series=All%20Motherboards&sw=5
  EVGA's dual 2011 board due in January 2012 should have 8 slots as well.
25. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by waives · 2011-09-23 06:08 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah, because restoring from backup is so much fun.. I've used OCZ drives in both a desktop and a laptop, in each case they failed within 6 months. While the speedup was awesome, it was not worth the constant pain of repairing serious filesystem corruption every time I had a power failure or hard reset.
26. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by fnj · 2011-09-23 06:09 · Score: 1
  
  Who uses 2GB sticks to get 64GB anyway? You can get a 4GB high quality stick for $21.99 at Newegg. That's $351.84 for 16 of them. That's £227 at today's exchange rate. You're right about the ratio, though. It's about 3:1 for price of RAM to SSD.
  And you know what? I'd take the RAM in a heartbeat. It would have at least 10:1 better read rate, and even more advantage in write rate. It never wears out. And you can use it for anything; not just a hard drive cache. In fact, I'd say the sweet spot for a hard drive cache is maybe 8GB, not 64GB, if you optimize what it caches. Now you're down to $44, and there are reasonably priced desktop motherboards that will hold this much more than you want to have for other purposes. On my desktop system, /bin, /lib, /usr/bin, /usr/lib, and /etc put together in their entirety total no more than 1.3GB. If you put all that and other well selected stuff in RAM drives and mount them, just about all programs will load essentially instantly. Just stick with the hard drive with existing linux RAM caching for the data (all other partitions).
27. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by h4rr4r · 2011-09-23 06:12 · Score: 1
  
  Sounds like you need to fix your backup strategy. It is not fun, but once a year or two is no big deal.
  I have not seen filesystem corruption, but at that point would get another drive and toss that one out. No point in having that happen more than once. I am not using an OCZ branded drive though.
28. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by fnj · 2011-09-23 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe you could join the 21st century sometime. 64GB of RAM costs 16x$21.99=$351.84, not $2000.
29. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by operagost · 2011-09-23 06:14 · Score: 1
  
  64K? Luxury! In my day, we hadn't invented memory yet so we had to hire vagrants to stand in the computer room, each holding a card with a "0" on one side and a "1" on the other. We only had room for about 32,000 of these, for a measly 4KB. Each was tattooed with a memory location. When we needed to read the "memory", we had to shout out the appropriate drifter... I mean memory location. If the dirty hobo didn't answer within the refresh interval, he was beaten severely. High latency was not tolerated. The trick was giving each street person enough whisky to keep him sufficiently content, but not enough to put him to sleep. Sanitation was a real issue, but that's a story for another time. Back to work!
  
  --
  
  Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
30. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2011-09-23 06:23 · Score: 1
  
  I remember paying about $33/GB for a HD. It was my first hard drive that I had bought separate from a computer. Granted this was back in early 98
  
  --
  Time to offend someone
31. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by waives · 2011-09-23 06:24 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, my backup strategy definitely needs work.. in the first case I had none at all.
  
  These were two separate drives purchased a year apart BTW though.
  
  The main problem was not the final failures but more that nearly every time I lost power I encountered corruption.. and if I put off fixing it that led to crashes requiring hard reset -> more problems.
32. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by fnj · 2011-09-23 06:25 · Score: 1
  
  You have inaccurate knowledge of how caching works. Normally, write calls return as soon as the data is written to RAM, which is VERY quick. Writing back to hard drive then occurs in the background. Isn't multi-tasking great? You have to take special measures in your file I/O calls if what you want is to not have the system return until the data reaches the hard drive. That is very seldom appropriate or necessary, though you can do it.
  It will never be necessary to wait an hour for writeback because the cache is writing back all the time in the background. Do you really think your apps are going to get 64GB ahead of writeback?
  Your use case may make a mess of a STUPID cache, but there is no reason why a cache needs to be that stupid. In fact in the case described, those files should be stored on a partition with no caching at all, or only very minimal caching.
33. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 06:39 · Score: 0
  
  Quick Google says:
  64GB SSD = $86
  64GB RAM = $2000
  Quick Newegg says:
  64GB SSD = $95
  64GB DDR3 = $352
34. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by h4rr4r · 2011-09-23 06:53 · Score: 1
  
  I would have been returning the disk the first time that happened and I was sure it was not an OS issue. Like writeback being turned on for an ext3 volume.
35. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Arlet · 2011-09-23 07:07 · Score: 1
  
  Oh, you had cards with a "1" on them? Lucky bastard.
36. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by petteyg359 · 2011-09-23 07:10 · Score: 1
  
  This doesn't help you when you need:
  1: Access to a file or files totaling more than 64 GB (or however much ram you have for caching)
  2: Files not yet cached
  Neither does a 64GB SSD, brainiac.
37. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by steveg · 2011-09-23 07:11 · Score: 1
  
  My first hard drive separate from a computer clocked in at, hmm, would have been $4500 per GB. Of course it wasn't that much, it was only $900, but it was a 200MB disk. It was worth it, though. There was no way I was ever going to fill that puppy up. It was huge!
  I had to decide whether to go with an ESDI drive or IDE. Fortunately I chose IDE, even though it seemed like a risky bet at the time.
  
  --
  Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.
38. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by bill_mcgonigle · 2011-09-23 08:05 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe you could join the 21st century sometime. 64GB of RAM costs 16x$21.99=$351.84, not $2000.
  I think you'll need to be a bit more specific with the time period.
  
  --
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  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
39. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by countertrolling · 2011-09-23 08:51 · Score: 1
  
  If people are willing to pay it, then by definition the price is not too high.
  Of course it is. We can't go around letting the top ten percent of the population set the price for the rest of us. And then there's all the skimming every time the product changes hands with all the middlemen. It's a total ripoff.
  And I, too, remember big ol' 5.25in. 20 megabyte hard drives at 2000 dollars.
  
  --
  For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
40. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by countertrolling · 2011-09-23 09:01 · Score: 1
  
  Production capacity is already there, but nobody wants to flood the market and drive prices down too fast. The scarcity is artificially created for exactly that reason. The same thing happens with RAM all the time. So somebody has to burn down a factory or two every once in a while to keep production down and prices "stable". That's how the system works. Abundance is an anathema.. a bad thing.. Just like with food, the speculation market does very poorly when people produce too much
  
  --
  For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
41. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by loufoque · 2011-09-23 10:13 · Score: 1
  
  I just bought 8 GB high-end (1600Mhz DDR3) RAM for 30 quid. That makes 240 for 64 GB.
42. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by petermgreen · 2011-09-23 13:48 · Score: 1
  
  I just bought 8 GB high-end (1600Mhz DDR3) RAM for 30 quid.
  I wouldn't call 4GB DIMMs (I very much doubt you got an 8GB stick at that price) of desktop ram "high end" even if they happen to be overclocked slightly.
  
  That makes 240 for 64 GB.
  Unfortunately it doesn't (I know the GP said ignoring the cost of the motherboard but the GGP didn't). To do 64GB with 4GB DIMMs would require 16 sticks. Given that desktop DDR3 only supports 2 DIMMs per channel and than a typical system has 2-3 channels this becomes a problem. To fit 64GB total using 4GB desktop modules would require a board with 8 ram channels. The most ram channels you get on a single CPU socket is 4.
  Unless it's already a high end server platform "Upgrading" an existing system to 64GB means ripping out the CPU and motherboard and replacing them with a server platform that can take all that memory. Further it most likely means use of more expensive ram
  Lets look at how much it would actually cost to do that first using 8GB DIMMs of registered ECC memory*.
  Motherboard: 1x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182240 : $225
  CPU: 1x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266 : $250
  Ram: 8x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139280 : $76 each -> $608
  total: $1083
  Now lets consider using 4GB DIMMs of desktop memory.
  Motherboard: 1x http://www.provantage.com/supermicro-h8dg6-f~7SUPM3F1.htm : $578
  CPU: 2x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266 : $250 each -> $500
  RAM: 8x http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313123 : $40 each -> $320
  total: $1398
  * 8GB DIMMs of desktop memory are like hens teeth at the moment and cost more than 8GB sticks of registered ECC memory.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
43. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by petermgreen · 2011-09-23 14:19 · Score: 1
  
  But note that even that board supports a max of 24GB of RAM, so you couldn't necessarily even get 32GB, even with 6 slots.
  Indeed single socket LGA1366 CPUs/motherboards max out at 24GB (which is a little weird because dual LGA1366 will support many times that). Being a high end platform though it's pretty expensive ($100+ for the MB, $300+ for the CPU).
  LGA1155 systems will do 32GB but to do so you need 32GB sticks of unregistered non-ecc memory which are insanely expensive at the moment.
  If you want 32GB and don't care about single threaded CPU performance your cheapest option is probably to go with an AMD G34 system. This platform has four ram channels and at least according to supermicro it supports desktop (unregistered non-ECC) ram. So you can load it up with 8x4GB of cheap desktop ram. Price for CPU/MB is in the same ballpark as LGA1366 but you get 8 slow cores instead of 4 fast cores.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
44. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by petermgreen · 2011-09-23 14:42 · Score: 1
  
  64GB DDR3 = $352
  Sure if it's 16x4GB modules of unregistered non-ecc DRR3. Thing is though that isn't a very realistic configuration because it would require EIGHT ram channels to support it (unregistered DDR3 has a maximum of two modules per channel). Single socket boards and most dual socket boards simply don't have that many ram channels.
  8x8GB modules of registered ECC DDR3 (a more realistic configuration) will set you back $608. Even then there is a good chance you will be looking at a CPU/MB replacement to support the ram.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
45. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by drsmithy · 2011-09-24 01:05 · Score: 1
  
  I wish SSD enthusiasts would accept this simple fact: SSDs are not that reliable yet.
  I am by no means an "SSD enthusiast", whatever that might be, but if you have any genuine reliability stats for SSDs, I'd be interested to see them.
  
  So lets say I wanted to do this in any way that was remotely reliable. I'd have to pay for a TRIM enabled RAID1 card and two 160gb SSDs, preferably intel. Now your $150 solution is more like $1500 solution.
  Or you could just use the software RAID1 that Windows, Linux and OS X all have built in.
46. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-24 03:52 · Score: 0
  
  We can't cheaply RAID them either so because the storage industry is so set in its way, they still haven't released much in the way of TRIM enabled RAID cards.
  Or, get SSD manufacturers to quit programming them as if they were spinning platters. Linux has had drivers for flash-based devices for a long time. I'm pretty sure Windows and OS X have similar drivers. Get the drive manufacturers to expose the damn drive to the OS, rather than hiding it behind stupid emulation. Maybe the RAID card manufacturers would be more willing to include a NAND driver in their BIOS than the kludge that is TRIM.
47. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by NitroWolf · 2011-09-26 07:42 · Score: 1
  
  This doesn't help you when you need:
  1: Access to a file or files totaling more than 64 GB (or however much ram you have for caching)
  2: Files not yet cached
  Neither does a 64GB SSD, brainiac.
  Hey dipshit, I have a newsflash for you: They have 500 GB SSD drives. 128GB SSD drives are under a $100 now a days.
  Buy a clue before posting, idiot. You fucking moron.
48. Re:Couldn't I just do this with a RAM cache? by petteyg359 · 2011-09-27 12:42 · Score: 1
  
  Excessive expletives exude eliteness. That's a lie. When was the last time you checked the price on that 500+ GB SSD? Who - without a government checkbook - needs 500GB of caching anyway? Those that do probably aren't going to be satisfied with the failure rate of current Flash controllers, and they might even be unsatisfied with the performance. Those who need that big a cache can likely afford battery-backed DRAM-based solutions with no problem.
Z68 SRT does it better by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:08 · Score: 0

Intel already has a tech that does this on Z68 boards and it works amazingly well.
1. Re:Z68 SRT does it better by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:26 · Score: 0
  
  It's a pretty big stretch to claim it works "amazingly well". If you have a (very expensive) Intel branded SSD, then yes it works pretty well, though I wouldn't go so far as to call the performance improvement amazing. However, if you have a different brand of SSD, you're potentially in for a world of misery. The management is partially handled by Intel software, and that software assumes your SSD supports the exact feature set of Intel SSDs. If it doesn't (most don't), then you'll find yourself wading through endless UEFI updates, driver updates, power management settings and registry changes trying as you desperately try to hem the never ending tide of BSODs. Look around on Z68 and SSD support forums, I am not the only one who felt this pain. The last wave of driver and UEFI updates were a massive improvement, but it's still not nearly as stable as it should be.
2. Re:Z68 SRT does it better by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 10:50 · Score: 0
  
  Better? Really?
  See slide 13 ... http://www.flashmemorysummit.com/English/Collaterals/Proceedings/2011/20110809_F1A_Lin.pdf [flashmemorysummit.com]
Smart Response Technology by DarkXale · 2011-09-23 05:09 · Score: 1

This is different from Intel's SRT present on all Z68 boards how? The basics is the same. You have a HDD - and a SSD which acts as a cache. At a glance, I'm guessing the sole difference is that SRT is motherboard managed, while Synapse is done... elsewhere?
1. Re:Smart Response Technology by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:19 · Score: 0
  
  Intel makes an SLC SSD specifically for SRT too. Is this OCZ one MLC? You want the additional lifespan of SLC here because a cache requires writing many many times more frequently than a storage drive.
2. Re:Smart Response Technology by dc29A · 2011-09-23 05:22 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly! Everyone already has a Z68 board! No one needs this Synapse crap!
  Oh wait ...
3. Re:Smart Response Technology by blackicye · 2011-09-23 06:41 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly! Everyone already has a Z68 board! No one needs this Synapse crap!
  Oh wait ...
  At $300 - $500, do yourself a favor, go buy a Z68 board and a normal SSD, and throw in a CPU if you need it too :P
Reliability by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:09 · Score: 1

Ah, so OCZ finally worked out how to make a reliable drive... they just keep the entire content elsewhere.
Not a novelty by c0l0 · 2011-09-23 05:10 · Score: 2

Intel is doing the very same thing on their most recent "enthusiast" desktop chipsets.
For systems using the Linux kernel, there are software implementations of the very same block-level-caching-concept available - one I stumbled over is http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/

--
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g

YTARY!
1. Re:Not a novelty by ToasterMonkey · 2011-09-23 05:30 · Score: 1
  
  Intel is doing the very same thing on their most recent "enthusiast" desktop chipsets.
  For systems using the Linux kernel, there are software implementations of the very same block-level-caching-concept available - one I stumbled over is http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/
  
  ... Make no mistake, this should be the job of the operating system. Solaris has zfs l2arc, and Windows has ReadyBoost that is similar. Windows and Mac systems both ship with the big disk little SSD pattern. MS and Apple need to get off their asses and ship 'SSD as cache' software like Sun did. Only reason I can think of for not doing this is patent disputes, some angle that makes this not feasible for desktop use, or an intentional long term strategy to drive SSD costs down by poising them as spinning disk replacements rather than complements. Ok, for Apple that last one actually makes sense.. but Microsoft? They already have ReadyBoost.. I don't get it.
2. Re:Not a novelty by heson · 2011-09-23 08:04 · Score: 1
  
  I like that project, I am waiting for bcache in mainline, sadly Im not skilled to help Kent.
3. Re:Not a novelty by BrentH · 2011-09-23 08:11 · Score: 1
  
  I agree it makes for sense for an operating system (filesystem perhaps) to do this job. Unfortunately, Windows does not do it. Readyboost is merely an extra space for Superfetch to cache files, but this isnt persistent over reboots. So every time I boot, I have to retrain the cache, which is about as undesirable as a filesystem cache could be. If not sure if software like eBoostr solves this, but if anyone has a Windows alternative, much obliged.
4. Re:Not a novelty by Tomato42 · 2011-09-23 08:18 · Score: 1
  
  there's also flashcache: https://github.com/facebook/flashcache/ currently under development
5. Re:Not a novelty by ToasterMonkey · 2011-09-23 08:47 · Score: 1
  
  "but this isnt persistent over reboots"
  Agreed, the current implementation sucks, and it has to be coaxed into using a SSD as opposed to a thumb drive too. My point is it is so danged close... I don't understand why MS stopped with it where they did.
  Short term solution I'd propose is.. why do people avoid low power / sleep states so much in Windows? They need to fix that..
6. Re:Not a novelty by BrentH · 2011-09-23 10:07 · Score: 1
  
  So what do you think of eBoostr? I've been thinking of expanding my (5400rpm) system with a 16/32GB SSD as some sort of cache. Readyboost has its downsides, but I understand that eBoostr makes the cache persistent. Apart from a few forum posts, I cant find any proper benchmarks of it from the big hardware sites.
7. Re:Not a novelty by drsmithy · 2011-09-24 01:12 · Score: 1
  
  I agree it makes for sense for an operating system (filesystem perhaps) to do this job. Unfortunately, Windows does not do it. Readyboost is merely an extra space for Superfetch to cache files, but this isnt persistent over reboots. So every time I boot, I have to retrain the cache, which is about as undesirable as a filesystem cache could be.
  I'm not aware of any caches - filesystem or otherwise - that will remain persistent across reboots.
8. Re:Not a novelty by BitZtream · 2011-09-24 04:34 · Score: 1
  
  Then you should learn about ZFS.
  
  --
  Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
9. Re:Not a novelty by drsmithy · 2011-09-24 10:44 · Score: 1
  
  Then you should learn about ZFS.
  I know about ZFS. As far as I know the L2ARC does not persist across reboots, and a quick Google suggests that is still true.
rewrite ? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:10 · Score: 0

my wife asks ...What kind of wonder ssd can handle so much rewrites? what kind of wonder ssd is faster than ram?
1. Re:rewrite ? by thsths · 2011-09-25 08:15 · Score: 1
  
  > What kind of wonder ssd can handle so much rewrites?
  That is exactly the question. A cache is rewritten much more often than a hard disk. In fact the small the cache is, the more writes you get, because the content changes more frequently. But a smaller cache has fewer writes - so I think this is a non-starter.
  The general idea is sound, but they probably need to integrate battery buffered RAM to make it work, or software support in the file system. Neither sounds like a particularly viable option.
Reports to be in the 300-500$ range by Osgeld · 2011-09-23 05:17 · Score: 1

Good god why, cause they added the word cache to the label. That has to be wrong
1. Re:Reports to be in the 300-500$ range by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 09:41 · Score: 0
  
  Agreed. This sounds like great technology, but should be more like $150 or so. Until then ...
SSD Cache and corruption by DigiShaman · 2011-09-23 05:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

Not sure I'm feeling the love for this concept. On the reads, sure. Nice idea. Writes however, not feeling the love. For whatever the reasons, PC hardware can lock up (CPU, video, motherboard, RAM etc) or because of buggy device drivers on the OS. In any event, how well can this device recover from a dirty-cache shutdown? What happens if the device just dies? Will I still be able to mount the HDD and recover data? It would be interesting to see how a journaling file system handles the abstraction of one volume read/written between two different drives. Were not talking about RAID5 here where you at least have parity data to recover from.

--
Life is not for the lazy.
1. Re:SSD Cache and corruption by fdawg · 2011-09-23 05:47 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Obv I have no idea how OCZ plans on doing this, but I can tell you what a standard journaling fs does.
  
  In any event, how well can this device recover from a dirty-cache shutdown?
  
  Chances are this cache is transparent. The blocks translate to vblocks which map to physical blocks on the rotational media. A "dirty" block is a vblock which hasn't been committed to the physical block. However, this is transparent to the filesystem. When the system comes back up and the journal is replayed at say, some operation 10, and we find the relevant blocks for op 10 which happen to be vblocks in the SSD, the write is stable. It's a NOOP from the filesystem perspective.
  
  What happens if the device just dies? Will I still be able to mount the HDD and recover data?
  This is the same as a single, non-tiered, drive dying. Same semantics- cache is dead is equivalent to the drive being dead. That is to say unless the journal and superblock live somewhere else. IIRC ext2/3 keeps the initial copy of the superblock in a few places on the drive. Depending on which you can recover, you'll get a version of the filesystem (likely the one when you first created the fs, i.e. an empty fs). In short, pay attention to your SMART data, and always (ALWAYS!) backup.
  
  It would be interesting to see how a journaling file system handles the abstraction of one volume read/written between two different drives. Were not talking about RAID5 here where you at least have parity data to recover from.
  Most journals arent like NVRAM and don't follow the copy on write semantic. Journal replay is usually a data-loss event if all writes weren't stable before the replay. With that in mind, most volume managers (the original "VM"!) allow your fs to write to as many drives as the vm allows. This seems no different. But yeah, maybe they're doing something smarter here.
2. Re:SSD Cache and corruption by Twillerror · 2011-09-23 06:30 · Score: 1
  
  Since the SSD is non volatile I'm not really sure what a system lockup would do. If the byte(s) writes to the SSD and the system fails it is still on the SSD. When the system boots up the thing would be considered dirty and would write it out to the hard drive. I'm sure they will have to reserve blocks of data for dirty bits... a byte can store 8 bits each bit representing a much large ...like 64k block in the cache. A 1 means dirty a 0 clean or vice versa.
  The same basic thing has been around for SCSI RAIDs for a while. The PCI card has high speed memory with a battery. If you enable write ahead cache it writes into this memory and then returns to the OS. Then it write out to the hard drive. If the system fails upon boot up the card would still have the cache because of the battery and could recover.
  For db servers I would probably turn off write ahead cache, but for a normal computer even if there is corruption it probably would be easily recoverable.
3. Re:SSD Cache and corruption by ToasterMonkey · 2011-09-23 08:33 · Score: 1
  
  Not sure I'm feeling the love for this concept. On the reads, sure. Nice idea. Writes however, not feeling the love.
  You wouldn't do that, you would cache writes to RAM like you do now. If you NEED multiple gigs of write cache, stop running that application on a desktop...
4. Re:SSD Cache and corruption by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 09:50 · Score: 0
  
  At some point you have to trust that the hardware will do the right thing. There is already a rather large cache on the magnetic drive itself, and it's possible for the drive hardware/firmware to have some issue and go to lunch while critical data is still sitting in that cache. Yet we trust these things because they rarely if ever fail. I could argue for the solidity of any particular part of the system and you could just point to something else and say "What if THAT goes out?" Well, if that goes out we could have some problems. We just rely on it not happening.
  Besides, on my desktop system what do I have that's so critical that last night's backup won't get me back up on my feet?
5. Re:SSD Cache and corruption by drsmithy · 2011-09-24 01:15 · Score: 1
  
  Not sure I'm feeling the love for this concept. On the reads, sure. Nice idea. Writes however, not feeling the love. For whatever the reasons, PC hardware can lock up (CPU, video, motherboard, RAM etc) or because of buggy device drivers on the OS. In any event, how well can this device recover from a dirty-cache shutdown? What happens if the device just dies? Will I still be able to mount the HDD and recover data?
  How are any of these possibilities changed by the presence, or lack, of an SSD caching layer ?
Do SSDs benefit from process shrinking too by G3ckoG33k · 2011-09-23 05:25 · Score: 1

While good it is not all there is to it. SSDs benefit from the same process shrinking as CPUs and GPUs do.
For fun I created a this table which predicts what processes will be available in the future based on numbers from Wikipedia. They are all in nanometer, and should not be trusted for anything beyond 2011 :)
1971: 9095.3066, 1972: 7865.412, 1973: 6801.8275, 1974: 5882.064, 1975: 5086.6737, 1976: 4398.8385, 1977: 3804.0144, 1978: 3289.6242, 1979: 2844.7913, 1980: 2460.1101, 1981: 2127.4467, 1982: 1839.767, 1983: 1590.9882, 1984: 1375.85, 1985: 1189.8034, 1986: 1028.9147, 1987: 889.7817, 1988: 769.4628, 1989: 665.4137, 1990: 575.4345, 1991: 497.6225, 1992: 430.3325, 1993: 372.1417, 1994: 321.8196, 1995: 278.3022, 1996: 240.6693, 1997: 208.1253, 1998: 179.982, 1999: 155.6443, 2000: 134.5976, 2001: 116.3969, 2002: 100.6574, 2003: 87.0462, 2004: 75.2755, 2005: 65.0965, 2006: 56.294, 2007: 48.6817, 2008: 42.0989, 2009: 36.4061, 2010: 31.4832, 2011: 27.2259, 2012: 23.5444, 2013: 20.3606, 2014: 17.6074, 2015: 15.2265, 2016: 13.1675, 2017: 11.387, 2018: 9.8472, 2019: 8.5156, 2020: 7.3641, 2021: 6.3683, 2022: 5.5072, 2023: 4.7625, 2024: 4.1185, 2025: 3.5616, 2026: 3.08, 2027: 2.6635, 2028: 2.3033, 2029: 1.9919, 2030: 1.7225, 2031: 1.4896, 2032: 1.2882, 2033: 1.114, 2034: 0.9633, 2035: 0.8331, 2036: 0.7204, 2037: 0.623, 2038: 0.5388, 2039: 0.4659, 2040: 0.4029, 2041: 0.3484, 2042: 0.3013, 2043: 0.2606, 2044: 0.2253, 2045: 0.1949, 2046: 0.1685, 2047: 0.1457, 2048: 0.126, 2049: 0.109, 2050: 0.0942, 2051: 0.0815, 2052: 0.0705, 2053: 0.0609, 2054: 0.0527, 2055: 0.0456, 2056: 0.0394, 2057: 0.0341
The point is that these numbers will help SSDs, too.
1. Re:Do SSDs benefit from process shrinking too by Nom+du+Keyboard · 2011-09-23 05:37 · Score: 1
  
  While good it is not all there is to it. SSDs benefit from the same process shrinking as CPUs and GPUs do.
  For fun I created a this table which predicts what processes will be available in the future based on numbers from Wikipedia. They are all in nanometer, and should not be trusted for anything beyond 2011 :)
  1971: 9095.3066, 1972: 7865.412, 1973: 6801.8275, 1974: 5882.064, 1975: 5086.6737, 1976: 4398.8385, 1977: 3804.0144, 1978: 3289.6242, 1979: 2844.7913, 1980: 2460.1101, 1981: 2127.4467, 1982: 1839.767, 1983: 1590.9882, 1984: 1375.85, 1985: 1189.8034, 1986: 1028.9147, 1987: 889.7817, 1988: 769.4628, 1989: 665.4137, 1990: 575.4345, 1991: 497.6225, 1992: 430.3325, 1993: 372.1417, 1994: 321.8196, 1995: 278.3022, 1996: 240.6693, 1997: 208.1253, 1998: 179.982, 1999: 155.6443, 2000: 134.5976, 2001: 116.3969, 2002: 100.6574, 2003: 87.0462, 2004: 75.2755, 2005: 65.0965, 2006: 56.294, 2007: 48.6817, 2008: 42.0989, 2009: 36.4061, 2010: 31.4832, 2011: 27.2259, 2012: 23.5444, 2013: 20.3606, 2014: 17.6074, 2015: 15.2265, 2016: 13.1675, 2017: 11.387, 2018: 9.8472, 2019: 8.5156, 2020: 7.3641, 2021: 6.3683, 2022: 5.5072, 2023: 4.7625, 2024: 4.1185, 2025: 3.5616, 2026: 3.08, 2027: 2.6635, 2028: 2.3033, 2029: 1.9919, 2030: 1.7225, 2031: 1.4896, 2032: 1.2882, 2033: 1.114, 2034: 0.9633, 2035: 0.8331, 2036: 0.7204, 2037: 0.623, 2038: 0.5388, 2039: 0.4659, 2040: 0.4029, 2041: 0.3484, 2042: 0.3013, 2043: 0.2606, 2044: 0.2253, 2045: 0.1949, 2046: 0.1685, 2047: 0.1457, 2048: 0.126, 2049: 0.109, 2050: 0.0942, 2051: 0.0815, 2052: 0.0705, 2053: 0.0609, 2054: 0.0527, 2055: 0.0456, 2056: 0.0394, 2057: 0.0341
  The point is that these numbers will help SSDs, too.
  And you reach the atomic level when...?
  
  --
  "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
2. Re:Do SSDs benefit from process shrinking too by Rockoon · 2011-09-23 06:09 · Score: 2
  
  The current trend in flash process size reduction is to trade off erase endurance for the additional area shrinkage in pretty much a linear fashion.
  
  So while the smaller tech allows for larger capacity drives in the same form factor, for two drives of equal capacity, equal over-provisioning, but different process sizes, you are much better off (in terms of erase endurance) with the larger process size.
  
  I believe the latest shrink cut the erase endurance by approximately half, while approximately doubling density. At some limit you end up with exactly 1 erase cycle (and if doubling/halving is a trend, this wont take all that many process reductions) and you have to provision the vast majority of the drive (reserving all but fractions of a percentage!) for "wear leveling" in order to pretend that you have something other than a WORM drive.
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
3. Re:Do SSDs benefit from process shrinking too by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 07:41 · Score: 0
  
  The atoms themselves range from 0.062 to 0.520 nanometers.
  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_radii_of_the_elements_%28data_page%29
  Other chemical compounds may be larger.
4. Re:Do SSDs benefit from process shrinking too by afidel · 2011-09-23 08:58 · Score: 1
  
  Uh, one big problem with NAND flash is that as you shrink the wall thickness you decrease the write endurance. MLC flash already has pretty poor write endurance at 1,000-10,000 cycles so managing the tradeoff between write endurance and capacity is going to be a major problem over the next 2-3 process shrinks, forget all that garbage that goes below the size of a silicon atom....
  
  --
  There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Is there or will there be Mac OS X support? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:29 · Score: 0

OCZ should know better than to throw their weight behind the most rapidly declining platform in the market.
1. Re:Is there or will there be Mac OS X support? by amicusNYCL · 2011-09-23 05:52 · Score: 1
  
  OCZ should know better than to throw their weight behind the most rapidly declining platform in the market.
  Yeah, just look at the numbers plummet. Over the last 2 years, from September '09 until now, Windows went from 93.85% to 92.90%, so it dropped just under 1%. So in another 2 years, it will be, what, around 91% - 92%? Yeah, why would OCZ want to pin their hopes on a prospect as miserable as that? They should probably go for that 6% - 7% that OSX commands instead.
  There are plenty of arguments to be had between Windows and OSX, but market share isn't one of them.
  
  --
  "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add-on? by wisebabo · 2011-09-23 05:30 · Score: 3, Interesting

I mean did you know many people have laptops that can take a 12.5mm tall HDD? But most people only buy a 9mm drive?
So it would be nice if OCZ (or another manufacturer) could make a very thin (3mm) card that would piggyback on top of the HDD. It would also have to a SATA drive connector to attach it to the motherboard and then a loop through cable to attach to the drive. In this way the end user could add a SSD cache to their existing laptop!
Is this feasible or am I missing something?
Unexpected Events by Nom+du+Keyboard · 2011-09-23 05:36 · Score: 1

And just how well does this extra level of complication recover from every kind of unexpected system shut down/BSOD/you name it in the consumer PC world?

--
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
1. Re:Unexpected Events by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-25 09:59 · Score: 0
  
  The extra level of complication is at the drive level and is transparent to the OS, so to answer your question, just as good as a regular hard drive. In fact probably better because the writes can be written to the SSD much quicker than a regular hard drive, so the filesystem is less likely to end up in a bad state. And when the system comes back up it will still be able to to copy any writes it needs to to the HDD.
Uh... by Syberz · 2011-09-23 05:38 · Score: 1

It's called Smart Response Technology (SRT) and it was introduced by Intel as part of their Z68 chips.
Granted, OCZ's version has a few more bells and whistles, but it's basically the same thing.

--
~Syberz
1. Re:Uh... by Tomato42 · 2011-09-23 08:21 · Score: 1
  
  Linux had it in form of bcache and flashcache for few years. Just like Solaris with ZFS.
2. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 10:19 · Score: 0
  
  Uh...Intel also introduced Robson, Turbo Memory, and Braidwood which does/did the same thing. This is definitely not new technology. What happened to those products? LOL.
  Not saying OCZ will fare much better, but c'mon this caching thing is not Intel's forte. OCZ's Dataplex seems to remove the proprietary system hardware restrictions and seems to work right out of the box.
Re:Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add- by hahn · 2011-09-23 05:44 · Score: 1

I mean did you know many people have laptops that can take a 12.5mm tall HDD? But most people only buy a 9mm drive?
So it would be nice if OCZ (or another manufacturer) could make a very thin (3mm) card that would piggyback on top of the HDD. It would also have to a SATA drive connector to attach it to the motherboard and then a loop through cable to attach to the drive. In this way the end user could add a SSD cache to their existing laptop!
Is this feasible or am I missing something?
Heat? Battery life?

--
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Windows only by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 05:46 · Score: 0

I presume?
i.e. useless.
Cache Your HDD With an SSD by Siggy200 · 2011-09-23 05:54 · Score: 1

A few months ago purchased a Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB Internal drive. The drive offers hybrid storage with Adaptive Memory technology, enabling the drive to deliver higher capacity and SSD-like performance. I am very satisfied with increased performance from the drive especially running Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX, very little pausing effect while 'flying' with the same settings used in a ATA serial drive I had before.
1. Re:Cache Your HDD With an SSD by nabsltd · 2011-09-23 06:41 · Score: 2
  
  I am very satisfied with increased performance from the drive
  It's just your imagination. Check out these benchmarks, or compare it to even more recent standard hard drives.
  It's hard to imagine how bad Seagate must have been with the design of a 3-1/2" drive that includes flash memory cache when it is regularly beaten in benchmarks by standard 2-1/2" drives (e.g., WD Scorpio Black) and trounced by other 3-1/2" drives. Since it costs a lot more (5x as expensive per GB as the WD Caviar Green), it's about the biggest loser ever made.
2. Re:Cache Your HDD With an SSD by sciencewhiz · 2011-09-23 12:21 · Score: 1
  
  The Momentus XT is a 2.5" laptop drive. It beat The WD Black in 75% of tests, and is only 40% more expensive.
3. Re:Cache Your HDD With an SSD by MikeBabcock · 2011-09-23 14:27 · Score: 1
  
  As another poster said, you've got your facts wrong.
  Also, using a good old fashioned watch, I timed loading a save game in various games on my PS3 after switching to the Momentus XT 500GB drive. First time loading a specific save: 35s. Second time: 18s. Third time: 15s. It was then consistently 14-15s thereafter (Fallout 3 has fairly disk-heavy loads, so it seemed a good test).
  I'm sure I imagined that just like you imagined the test you saw was pertinent and your argument valid.
  
  --
  - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
4. Re:Cache Your HDD With an SSD by nabsltd · 2011-09-26 14:46 · Score: 1
  
  The Momentus XT is a 2.5" laptop drive. It beat The WD Black in 75% of tests, and is only 40% more expensive.
  I was mistaken about the size of the Momentus XT, but...
  The Scorpio Black wins (sometimes crushing) every HD Tune benchmark except for random read access time, loses the file copy tests by less than 10%, wins all the WorldBench tests, wins 1 of 3 load time tests, and wins the 6 of 7 TR DriveBench tests. I don't see how you can say the Momentus XT won 75% of the tests.
  Also, the only reason the Momentus XT is only $30 more than the $70 Scorpio Black is because there are still older drives in inventory. The new SKU Momentus XT is selling for $130...nearly twice as much for less performance.
5. Re:Cache Your HDD With an SSD by nabsltd · 2011-09-26 14:59 · Score: 1
  
  All you are benchmarking is the XT versus it's own cache and your memory of the much slower, cheaper drive that used to be in your PS3. It doesn't say a thing about whether the XT would be faster than the Scorpio Black.
  You'd need to buy the Scorpio Black and test it in your PS3 to know for sure.
  Also, you need to look more closely at the second link, which shows that with newer, faster hardware around it, the Momentus XT can't keep up with the Scorpio Black. The first link does make it less one-sided, but as times have changed, the Momentus XT hasn't kept up. It's a pity, because if it offered even half the perfomance of an SSD for 1/3 the price per GB, it would be an all-time best seller.
Why use flash eeprom for an SSD that caches? by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 06:01 · Score: 0

What I don't get is why they're pushing SSDs that use flash memory for caching. Flash has a finite number of writes so eventually you hit the limit. There are other existing technologies like FeRAM, MRAM, and PRAM which although they have a lower density at present are more suited to the caching process due to unlimited rewrites. The lower densitys arent such a big deal when caching when for most 40gb would be enough, but the current prices of these technologies may be prohibitive.
DM-Cache by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 06:02 · Score: 1

Build your own on Linux using DM-Cache
Re:Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add- by Caratted · 2011-09-23 06:10 · Score: 1

I just submitted it to my patent office, I'll let you know.
Oh, goody, more proprietary! by macraig · 2011-09-23 06:17 · Score: 1

Anyone care to place bets on whether that DataPlex software is locked to only work with OCZ SSD hardware? Anyone care to bet on how long it will take before an open source equivalent appears on SourceForge and negates OCZ's proprietary stunt?
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2011-09-23 06:18 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why SSD? by Dcnjoe60 · 2011-09-23 06:22 · Score: 1

What is the advantage of using an SSD in this configuration? Granted, if the power went out, the SSD would retain the data versus a standard ram cache, but then again, the hard drive isn't spinning to accept the data. Also, SSDs tend to wear out in a few years, even with error correction. Now, most likely, the system would realize that and default back to the HD without the SSD, but again, a standard cache wouldn't have that problem, or at least not as soon.
The only advantage I see is that an 128GB SSD is a lot smaller than 128GB ram, but I don't know if it has to be that way. With a ram cache being volatile, a cmos style battery can mitigate that problem, too.
So, I ask, again, what is the big advantage to using an SSD for this?
1. Re:Why SSD? by Arlet · 2011-09-23 07:00 · Score: 1
  
  The only advantage I see is that an 128GB SSD is a lot smaller than 128GB ram
  Also cheaper, lower power. and non-volatile. A battery wouldn't work, because DRAM needs to be refreshed, and with the size of the RAM, the current drain on the battery would be substantial.
Z68 + msata by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 06:23 · Score: 0

My power never fails (no I'm not THOR, just a bit rough) not in 10 years. Absolutely not a concern. But excuse me, isn't this already implemented on the motherboard level with z68 and Msata ... or other software & any SSD.
Re:Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add- by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 06:57 · Score: 0

2.7W while in-use, 1.5W while idle for this drive. Not trivial, but it's not going to cause any thermal problems, and with the right kind of caching policy, it would probably be a net power savings due to spinning up the hard drive less often.
Yeah but, does it work? by RotateLeftByte · 2011-09-23 07:24 · Score: 1

A lot of people are having real issues with them, myself included.
I unzipped a .tgz file to it and a few files were present but had zero contents.
Repeating the same command to a notmal drive and it worked fine.
I really hope that this one works as advertised.

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I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Stop quoting The Register! by Relayman · 2011-09-23 07:36 · Score: 1

I thought we decided that The Register was not a good source of news. Can we stop referring to it already?

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If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Rebranding? by WhoBeDaPlaya · 2011-09-23 08:04 · Score: 1

https://www.diskeeper.com/partners/oem/technologies/expresscache/
Haven't had great luck with OCZ SSDs by obirt · 2011-09-23 08:42 · Score: 2

Too bad OCZ's Vertex 3 line does nothing but blue screen and cause system freezes as well as not being detected by the BIOS on occasion. 9 firmware revisions since we bought them, installed in multiple computers, and still no fix. They won't be getting my business. Doesn't matter how fast it is if you can't rely on it.

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I use to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure.
1. Re:Haven't had great luck with OCZ SSDs by devleopard · 2011-09-23 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  Amen to that. Burned through 2 Vertex 3's in my latest build. Even went through some firmware battles.
  I had hope because I heard about how fast they were. They were fast - and I'll tell you what, they were also really fast to reboot every single time the machine blue screened, which was pretty often. Went with Crucial instead, and no problems since.
  
  --
  The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Re:Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add- by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 08:46 · Score: 0

It wouldn't work that way. Most laptops have it designed so that the data and power connectors are flushed to the bottom of drive. The reverse would be ok though: Put the data/power connector on the top of the SSD addon, so that the end result is the addon is on the bottom of the HDD.
failed HDD or SSD - equally likely to ruin day by rsborg · 2011-09-23 09:13 · Score: 2

To me it isn't THAT they fail it is HOW they fail that has me avoiding them. With HDDs I can't remember the last time I had an HDD that failed without plenty of clear warnings something was up. Windows delayed write fails, or SMART errors, temp going nuts, there was ALWAYS a clear warning that there was trouble in HDD town. With both of the gamers there was NO WARNING with the SSDs, they just flipped the switch and....nothing. With the HDDs I was always able to get the data off before they bought the farm, minus a few bad sectors of course, but with the SSDs it was like they didn't exist, it was just...nothing.
Storage failures are nothing new... Google claims most HDD failures don't show any signs on SMART before going off. Add to this the fact that anyone not running with a bootable up-to-date backup (all OSs have cheap or free backup tools that create bootable backups) is asking for trouble. I've had HDDs fail without any warning (mostly on corporate systems). I've also had systems stolen (laptop), and the up-to-date backup was a life (and work) saver.
I own 3 SSDs now that work well and have yet to fail (surprisingly 2 of them are OCZ also). Comprising about 3 total disk-years of service. However, if they do, I just boot from my firewire backup drive, sync dropbox, git and IMAP and I would very likely have lost no work at all.

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Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
1. Re:failed HDD or SSD - equally likely to ruin day by petermgreen · 2011-09-23 12:51 · Score: 1
  
  Google say "a drive is considered to have failed if it was replaced as part of a repairs procedure". This along with some other paragraphs in the reports strongly implies that they consider a drive to be failed as soon as it drops out of a raid set* regardless of what proportion of the data on that drive is recoverable. Their report doesn't seem to distinguish between drives that are problematic but mostly readable and drives that are dead.
  My experience echos that of the GP in that most of the time drives i've seen go bad become excruciatingly slow and/or report read/write errors and/or suddenly lock up while remaining mostly readable. Even the few drives that appear completely dead can often be recovered with a controller board swap.
  I don't have any personal experience with SSD failures to comment there.
  * I am making the assumption here that google's servers use raid on the basis that most decent servers do and that the google server pics I can find show more than one drive. Seaching for google raid doesn't seem to find anything relavent either way just crap about police raids.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
2. Re:failed HDD or SSD - equally likely to ruin day by hairyfeet · 2011-09-24 03:20 · Score: 1
  
  Well I've dealt with them thanks to the gamer clients, and when they fail...wow. I mean even BIOS don't read it, its just gone, poof. We aren't talking cheap drives either, they were the biggest most expensive things they made at the time (one was Intel and I think the other OCZ, it was whatever rated #1 on the benches the week they bought them, as benches is ALL they ever cared about) and they didn't seem to last no time. One got something like 8 months, the other a little under a year. For $400+ drives mind you.
  Personally i think its just the tech is too new and they haven't gotten the bugs out. I'm old enough to remember the first generations of HDD and they were flaky as hell too, with drives that would just bite it at the drop of a hat. Nowadays though the tech is mature, been mature for ages, so we just don't see that. I have a drawer filled with drives going back to 40Gb (I ended up giving all the sub 20Gb to an engineer so he could yank the magnets, even though they worked WTF was I gonna do with a 400mb HDD?) and they ALL work just fine.
  It is like the hot/crazy scale. you want the hotness? you gotta deal with the crazy. I just don't really see the point ATM with RAM being so cheap. I mean my $300 netbook is gonna have 6Gb of RAM in it! Cost to add a 4gb stick? $23. I'd get the other 4Gb and max it out, but what's the point? with Superfetch i'll already have anything I'd want to run on a brazos dual core loaded into RAM and waiting for me, and RAM is still waaaay faster than an SSD. the only thing I can see it good for is booting, and who boots anymore?
  Give them another 3 or 4 years to work the bugs out THEN look at SSDs I say. By then the price per Gb will be crazy cheap, and you won't have to sit there wondering if today is the day your drive bites it.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
3. Re:failed HDD or SSD - equally likely to ruin day by Coren22 · 2011-09-26 08:14 · Score: 1
  
  If only someone had this thing called SLC instead of MLC...
  I have a three year old x-25 Intel, it is still going strong. So, um, when you say Intel, was it a SLC, because expecting a MLC to last any length of time isn't exactly smart.
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Already have this in ZFS by ZorkZero · 2011-09-23 09:13 · Score: 1

You can already do this with ZFS. It's called L2ARC.
Would be nice in a separate consume device though by Sycraft-fu · 2011-09-23 09:18 · Score: 1

For Intel board, you have to have a Z68 chipset. Those are quite new and only available on certain boards. If you happen to have a P67 chipset, as I do, you are out of luck. All the standalone solutions up to now have been enterprise RAID card that are extremely expensive.
So something standalone would be nice. I'd look in to this, if I hadn't already taken the plunge and simply bought enough SSD storage to meet my needs. This is a much more economical option though.
Re:Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add- by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 09:52 · Score: 0

The size of a SATA cable/connector?
Re:Would be nice in a separate consume device thou by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 09:57 · Score: 0

What's an Z68 chipset other than a P67 with integrated graphics and SSD caching anyway?? Really, no point in spending extra $$ and time setting up a new rig when you can accomplish same with some simple-to-install software.
Seagate Momentus XT - over a year ago, cheaper by devleopard · 2011-09-23 10:16 · Score: 1

While the caching approach is slightly different, the idea is not new - I've had a Seagate Momentus XT in my MacBook for over a year now. It's a bearable price premium ($100 vs. about $60-70 for a typical 2.5" 500GB 7200 RPM drive) and there's definitely a performance difference.
Best part: it's a single unit, so it'll work in a laptop. No additional software needed. You don't have to deal with OCZ's prices ($300-500 per the article)

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The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
1. Re:Seagate Momentus XT - over a year ago, cheaper by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-24 09:21 · Score: 0
  
  While the caching approach is slightly different, the idea is not new - I've had a Seagate Momentus XT in my MacBook for over a year now. It's a bearable price premium ($100 vs. about $60-70 for a typical 2.5" 500GB 7200 RPM drive) and there's definitely a performance difference.
  Best part: it's a single unit, so it'll work in a laptop. No additional software needed. You don't have to deal with OCZ's prices ($300-500 per the article)
  I did a pretty good investigation of Seagates Hybrid drives, they "barely" perform better than the equivelent "non-hybrid" HDDs. But more importantly, they are far far away from the performance of an SSD. I think OCZ is targeting a solution for something that is "almost" SSD performance, but still retains full HDD capacity. I think Seagate was just trying to give the HDD a little boost - either that or they are totally incompetent (likely).
Been using caching-controllers for decades by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-23 11:28 · Score: 0

This really isn't anything new when you come down to it: Currently, for example, I have a 128mb ECC RAM Caching Controller by Promise (model Ex8350) on the PCI-e x16 bus - does the job nicely (especially on writes, the slower part of the read/write equation of course).
Just using memory to "buffer delay" writes to disks in bursts IF need be during periods of lower disk heads movements activity...
HOWEVER, per my subject-line? The 1st ones I had were for the ISA bus back from as far as circa 1992-1994 by TekRAM (DC-600 4mb) & later TekRAM again in 1994-1996 for Vesa Local Bus (DC-680 16mb)...
* They DO make a difference in overall system performance, but they cost a bit... oh well: Speed = Money in computing @ the hardware level, right?
APK
P.S.=> Between this idea, on disk-drive buffers, & Operating System level kernel-mode diskcaching software systems, it's nearly a wonder we hit disk @ ALL, especially on a system that does only limited functions with limited data & programs on it that's had a LOT of "uptime" to it... but, then again, that IS "the idea" here...!/quote)... apk
Umm it already exists? by MikeBabcock · 2011-09-23 14:19 · Score: 1

First off, this already exists -- Seagate makes a series of drives that have built-in SSD storage for this very purpose. I have one of the 500GB model in my PS3 in fact.
That said, this isn't a drive technology at all; its software. Any SSD would do, including a CF card in a card reader. The only trick here is to do a dual layer disk cache, much like L1 and L2 function on CPUs.
Nothing new here really, but nice that they've done it.

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- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
1. Re:Umm it already exists? by SiliconBullet · 2011-09-24 09:39 · Score: 1
  
  Correct - caching is a well understood concept. But, comparing an HDD + a fast 64GB (or 32GB) SSD cache managed by host software, with a Seagate Hybrid is kind of like somebody comparing an old Ford Model-T new BMW with and saying "this is nothing new, cars already exist". And actually, any SSD will not work... If the goal is to improve the peformance of your HDD to nearly SSD levels, then a CF card (or SD card, or thumbdrive) will absolutely not work - they are far too slow. Give OCZ a little credit for for actually showing some innovation.
2. Re:Umm it already exists? by MikeBabcock · 2011-10-04 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  The Seagate drive has the SSD on-board, at full SATA2 speeds. There's no lack of comparison here.
  As for using "any" SSD as I said before, its still true -- buy one of OCZ's own previous flash drive models and do the same thing, or anyone else's high performance solid state drive. There's nothing special about *this* drive at all as far as I can tell, its all in the software.
  
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  - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Is the reverse available? by Erikderzweite · 2011-09-23 15:08 · Score: 1

In SSD/HDD combos there is always the SSD cache. But is there any model where you have separate SSD partition which you can use e.g. for system files or ReadyBoost for those who still use Windows?
Ordinary SSD bundled with Nvelo Dataplex by Korkman · 2011-09-24 02:42 · Score: 1

Wow this was disappointing. I was hoping for an actual hardware cache that can be put between HDD and mobo, with an integrated SATA host. This is a software only solution which can be applied to any SSD.
Yo Dawg by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-24 05:07 · Score: 0

Yo dawg, we heard you like disk I/O, so we put a hard drive in your hard drive so you can read while you read.
Re:Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add- by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-24 18:40 · Score: 0

Is this feasible or am I missing something?
Well, "details" comes to mind. Can we fit another sandwich of connectors between a 9.5 mm and 3mm piece if the only dimension altered is depth (and not also length) to allow for connector pass thru?
$500 for a $150 SSD + windows-only device driver by Ant+P. · 2011-09-25 02:36 · Score: 1

Linux will do it for free without requiring unreliable OCZ hardware.
Re:Wouldn't it be great if it could be a USER add- by Anonymous Coward · 2011-09-26 23:36 · Score: 0

Most people don't service their laptop HDD. I know I never have, and I've built all my desktops myself. Also, what if my laptop has a 9mm bay, or uses a 12,5mm drive and it doesn't fit? The returns on that product would likely be high.