mSATA Caching with Intel RST Acceleration - "SSD-Like Performance" with a 5400 RPM HD

[Guest]

I have reconfigured my drive arrangement and thought I would share the results using the Intel RST cache "Acceleration" feature for enhancing the HDD. I think the results are rather impressive for a 5400RPM low power HDD. I was very skeptical about how this would perform, but it has exceeded my expectations. I thought this might be interesting to others, so I am sharing the results for anyone considering mSATA caching.

I am tempted to purchase a second 1TB Seagate Momentus LP and see how it performs cached in RAID0, if that is possible.

480GB RAID0 SATA3 - OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD (2) Incompressible Data (Random Fill)	480GB RAID0 SATA3 - OCZ Agility 3 240GB SSD (2) Compressible Data (Zero Fill)
1TB Seagate Momentus LP 5400 RPM HDD SATA2 Intel Rapid Storage Technology Acceleration Enhanced	120GB Mushkin Atlas mSATA SSD SATA2 48GB partition (64GB reserved for caching)

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[svl7]

How to power up your 5.4k rpm HDD... wow, that's blazing fast.

[StamatisX]

Very nice numbers indeed!

I was always wondering what would be more efficient. A system with an SSD for OS and most used apps installed on it and an HDD for storage or an mSATA configuration? Cause right now I have an Intel X25-E 64GB with a Momentus XT and the OS with the apps installed leave practically zero free space on the SSD. So with that configuration I might benefit from the SSD's speed as cache but also take advantage of my free space on the HDD.

@Mr.Fox could probably now shed some light on this topic.

[Michael]

Very interesting indeed.

I plan on exploring that option on my M18x-R1.. Is there a way to install a msata SSD in the M18x-R1 ? Using the free wwan port for example ?

[Guest]

Quote

Very interesting indeed.

I plan on exploring that option on my M18x-R1.. Is there a way to install a msata SSD in the M18x-R1 ? Using the free wwan port for example ?

I have not been able to determine if that mini-PCI WWAN port is bootable. If it is, the challenge will be space. You might be able to chop off the little arm that drops down from the chassis that holds the screw for a half-height mini-PCI card, but the length of an mSATA will still be tight with no place for a retaining screw. What I believe you can do with the R1 is one or a combination of the following options:

• Install 1 Large SSD for OS and apps and 1 Large HDD for data - use 64GB (maximum possible) for the Intel RST Acceleration cache for the data drive - use the remainder of the SSD for the OS and apps (Intel RST sets up a partition on the SSD in the unused space automatically)
• Put the ODD in an external enclosure and add a large HDD in a ODD caddy - accelerate the HDD in the caddy (which I have currently) - install 2 SSD for the OS to have RAID0 SATA3 6GB/s in the M18x R1 HDD caddy

At the moment I have an unused M4 128GB SSD sandwiched between my OCZ SSD RAID0 and I am contemplating whether to set up Windows 7 in dual-boot again, or dual-boot Linux. When I was dual-booting Windows 7 I found myself ignoring Windows 8 and the only way I think I am going to force myself to concentrate on making Windows 8 all it can be is to sever my ties with Windows 7. That is why I wiped out the dual-boot setup and put Windows 8 on the large SSD RAID0 over the weekend. (I had Windows 8 on the M4 running at SATA2.)

I am finding the rapid development of Steam games for Linux to be intriguing. If Micro$oft continues on the path of allowing Windows to have draconian control over hardware and software installations, I am thinking about the possibility of preparing for the worst by becoming more intimately savvy with Linux. I prefer Windows, but I see Windows 8 moving in a somewhat undesirable direction for power users and performance enthusiasts. Having to frequently disable Driver Signature Enforcement to do simple maintenance and constantly wrestle with access permissions to system folders in Windows 8 is not very appealing. I have been able to circumvent this nonsense, but who knows what SP1, SP2 or Windows 9 might bring in terms of idiotic "security" measures.

Quote

Very nice numbers indeed! I was always wondering what would be more efficient. A system with an SSD for OS and most used apps installed on it and an HDD for storage or an mSATA configuration? Cause right now I have an Intel X25-E 64GB with a Momentus XT and the OS with the apps installed leave practically zero free space on the SSD. So with that configuration I might benefit from the SSD's speed as cache but also take advantage of my free space on the HDD.

@Mr.Fox could probably now shed some light on this topic.

That should definitely work. Below is a snapshot of my OS volume (480GB SSD RAID0) and data HDD (accelerated 1TB Momentus LP).

As you can see, I am using just under 50GB for the OS and applications. This drive has Windows 8, Chrome, Microsoft Office 2013 Pro, Adobe CS3 and a few additional applications. I have Steam and Origin clients and all game data installed on the data HDD. Notice only 154GB free space remains on the 1TB HDD and the SATA2 3.0GB/s transfer speed performance with the caching is still as good as what you see in the opening post. Not bad considering how little free space exists. Games with Steam and Origin are launching notably faster now that the drive is cached.

If my understanding is correct from reading the documentation, Intel RST Acceleration Technology allows the user to "un-cache" the HDD at any time without data loss. So that is pretty sweet, too.

Hope this helps.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6541[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6542[/ATTACH]

[ratinox]

Bear in mind that the results depend considerably upon your use patterns. SSDs are great for burst reads and writes; they're mediocre to terrible for everything else. Which is why they're great for fast boot times and program starts but that performance trails off for large database or game level loads. For a gaming rig (and this is Alienware) the most effective performance option is a 60-120GB SSD for OS, applications and pagefile; and hybrid disk for large data files. The most cost effective performance option is a conventional disk for everything and a 32GB flash-based SSD for cache. Anything more than 32G cache is a waste.

Edit:

Intel SRT bonds a single SSD cache drive with a single storage drive. This means you can't put a SSD cache drive in front of a RAID 0 or RAID 1 set. Nor can you bond a pair of SSD + data as a RAID set using the Intel RAID controller. I don't know if you can bond the devices using Windows' software RAID driver.

Some other cache solutions, like Samsung's ReadyCache, can be put in front of all disk devices on a given system. I run one of these with a pair of 1TB Seagate drives in my K430 tower. The drawbacks to ReadyCache compared to SRT are that ReadyCache is read cache only (no write cache) and there is no mSATA version.

Edit 2:

That's Sandisk on the ReadyCache, not Samsung.

[Guest]

@ratinox - your thoughts are consistent with what I posted above.

I have found the RST cache-accelerated 1TB 5400RPM HDD is much faster than my 500GB Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid drives ever where. The cache seems to allow data to be read and written at blazing fast SSD speeds with a delayed permanent write to the platters. With 64GB of cache available, this about 16x more cache space than the Momentux XT natively supports and that may account for something.

[ratinox]

The Momentus XT drives do have very small flash caches compared to a dedicated SSD and it does make a difference in performance. But like I wrote before, how much of a difference depends on your use patterns. If you're playing movies? You won't see any practical difference. If you're loading fHuge game levels? You won't notice much difference. If the software, be it SRT or in the disk controller, is working correctly then large sequential reads won't be cached at all.

There is a tangible benefit to the XT lines, though. They work with any and every operating system you throw at them. Intel SRT only works with Windows and you MUST shut it off if/when you boot any other OS. SRT will corrupt your data next time it loads if you don't. ReadyCache, being read-only, won't corrupt your data. The cache won't be available for other operating systems (it, too, is only for Windows) but at least your data won't get ruined by a mistake. Keep this fact in mind if you have plans to dual-boot or switch to Linux.

[Guest]

I'm not using the cached HDD for an OS, only data. This won't be replacing SSD as my boot drives. I was dual-booting Windows 7/8 until this past weekend. I anticipate that the drive probably will not function with caching booting from Linux. But, I don't really have plans to access any of the data on the accelerated HDD from Linux. At least, not at this time.

[Brian]

That's pretty sweet. My desktop has an msata daughter board so I'll probably stick a small 128gb one on there and use it the same way for my 1 tb storage drive.

[Guest]

Installed Linux Mint KDE x64 on my Crucial M4 in dual-boot with Windows 8. Nice looking OS...

[Harikrl]

I was actually planning on adding a SSD in my M17x R4 which already has a 5400 rpm HDD. My system's been receiving kinda slow responses because of this HDD.

I think the correct word here is Bottleneck!

[ratinox]

I think the correct word here is Bottleneck!

I think you mean "latency".

[Harikrl]

So, what do you suggest? I already have a 1 TB HDD running at 5400 rpm in one bay and the other is empty.

I was planning to go for a 240GB SSD and use it for games. Will that improve any performance in terms of gaming? FPS?

[Xonar]

So, what do you suggest? I already have a 1 TB HDD running at 5400 rpm in one bay and the other is empty.

I was planning to go for a 240GB SSD and use it for games. Will that improve any performance in terms of gaming? FPS?

No, only load times between scenes/maps will be shorter for games. There is no FPS gain.

[Harikrl]

Will overclocking my GPU be the only option to have a little gain on FPS?

[ratinox]

No, only load times between scenes/maps will be shorter for games. There is no FPS gain.

And then only for some scenes and maps. The way SRT works, it watches for long sequential reads, such as loading large maps and defragmentation activity, and cuts out the cache. Things like applications (executables, libraries), textures and such should be cached so you'll see some improvements in load times, but massively large data files like MMO world zones won't be accelerated.

And then, SRT caps at 64GB of cache. Intel's tests showed that more cache than that has no beneficial effect on the system. Bear in mind that an entire Windows 7 installation is about 20GB on disk and the associated Program Files directories are another 2GB on disk. That leaves you with ~8GB for user data cache on a 32GB SSD and ~40GB for user data cache on a 60GB SSD. That's assuming the entire OS gets cached.

If you do want to go with a larger caching SSD than 60GB then a 120GB SSD is sufficient. The RST control panel will partition a cache disk for you so that you get any space beyond your cache allocation available for usable storage. Allocate half of a 120GB SSD as cache and install a clean OS on the rest. Then use the HDD for data. If you're looking at a larger SSD than that then a more sensible performance option is to get two SSDs: one 60GB for the OS and one 240GB SSD for data.

[Tseng]

Just setup ISRT on my M17x R4 yesterday.

SSD: Toshiba mSATA 64G SATA 2.0

HDD: Seagate 7200rpm 750G

It is quite challenging to reach the mSATA slot, took me almost 30 minutes to do it.

Once the mSATA SSD is installed, I change to RAID mode and install Win7 Ultimate from scratch.

After all the drivers are installed, I then go to IRST to enable ISRT.

My setting is to use all 64G and maximize mode.

Booting into Win7 desktop normally less than 60 seconds.

I will have to say the ISRT is quite useful even for 7200rpm HDD.

PS. I got my Toshiba mSATA SSD cheap, around USD$50, which makes this whole upgrade has high C/P ratio.

[Guest]

I just added a second 1TB Seagate Momentus LP for 2TB RAID0 cache-accelerated data storage. Not too shabby for 5400 RPM low-power HDD.

[dragonsouce]

What about stability and reliability ? I have experimented with this in the past and found a few problems. Mostly locked files and disk errors.The Problem stopped when I stopped using it. Wondering if it was just me.

[ratinox]

I've never had a problem with ISRT that was not of my own making. For example, trying to dual-boot Linux.