Posted on 06/08/2011 2:00:19 PM PDT by Red Badger
Diskeeper Corp developed "ExpressCache," software that enhances operating speed of personal computers (PCs) by using a small-capacity SSD as a cache for HDD, and demonstrated it at Computex Taipei 2011.
In the demonstration, operations such as booting Windows 7 and launching applications were compared between a PC equipped with a 500-Gbyte HDD (5,400rpm) and a PC using the same hardware in addition to an 8-Gbyte SSD for a cache (made by SanDisk Corp, connected via mSATA). As a result, the software and the SDD halved the time it takes to perform those operations.
ExpressCache is software that monitors the read/write operations of applications software and duplicates frequently-used data in an SSD. It operates as one of the components of Windows 7. Though an SSD with any capacity can be used as a cache, 4-Gbyte or higher capacity will be more effective than capacities lower than that.
"Considering the balance between the prices and effects of current SSDs, 8-Gbyte capacity might be the best," said Modesto Rodriguez, vice president, OEM Business Development of Diskeeper, which will sell ExpressCache to PC makers. "It's not that the operating speeds increase in proportion to the capacity of SSD. So, we expect that PC makers decide the capacity in consideration of the prices of SSDs."
At Computex Taipei 2011, Intel Corp announced a similar technology called "Smart Response Technology." Commenting on this technology, Rodriguez said, "ExpressCache has an advantage that it can be used with any types of SSDs and HDDs with any capacities and does not require any specific hardware configurations."
Intel said that Smart Response Technology can be used only with the Z68 chipset and is best used with a 20-Gbyte SSD.
"In addition, Intel uses SLC-based SSDs, which are expensive," Rodriguez said. "When ExpressCache is combined with an 8-Gbyte MLC-based SSD, the price of the SSD can be reduced to about 1/4."
In the demonstration, by installing ExpressCache in a PC equipped with an 8-Gbyte SSD used as a cache, the time it takes to launch Windows 7 and applications software were reduced by half. The numbers shown on the displays are the time it takes to launch them. Only the right PC is equipped with the SSD.
Ping!................
No special software required. If you boot from an SSD, you will be amazed at the boot time. At work I have a Windows 2000 system that cold boots to the windows desktop in under 5 seconds.
Well THAT'S part of the problem. I use a 10K RPM disk for my system partition, and my boot time is under 20 seconds.
Granted, I'm using Ubuntu with a high-end system, but I'm assuming by the picture that this test was done on laptops where 7200 RPM disks are a little pricier.
My m11x with SSD smokes on boot-up....fast.
ssds are still too rich for my blood. I’ll probably go with a hybrid drive for my next box.
What’s an SSD for us dummies?
I suspect it stands for Solid State Drive but I have no idea what “SLD” means.
I have an 8 GB thumb drive. Can I set up my PC to use that at bootup time?
SSD = Solid State Disk or Drive. Fast like RAM in your computer and no moving parts. Also, rather pricey per gigabyte. At this point, they are not a reliable as the standard disk drive, but they are getting better.
Imagine how fast Linux or OSX would boot on SSD. Yikes.
I just bought a new SandyBridge laptop (4x i7 cores with hyper threading). We replaces the 2x 340gig hard-drives with 2x 256gig SSD’s. — It’s amazingly fast.
I use it for on-location video work. It can render multi-cam projects faster than real time. (a lot of that has to do with read/write times.
I sure would like to see more of those hybrids, I could certainly use cheaper/larger internal drives.
Agreed! SATA 6G with a 10K RPM disk will provide way faster access speed than most have seen in recent years. Since 7200 RPM is the standard, folks are used to the 20-30 second boot time, but with SSD still running way too high compared to rotational disk with higher disk space, I’ll stick with the old platters.
Besides, if you’re using a 64-bit OS and have at least a dual-core proc and over 6 GB of RAM, the disk is only an issue on boot. After that, most everything is cached and accessed from physical memory. I turned off swap files after going 64-bit, and my disk doesn’t get accessed much anymore.
Well, look at the MacBook Air.
Have a 500 megabyte drive, W7, Quadcore, 8 gigs of RAM....15 seconds from off to fully functional.
What’s an SSD for us dummies?
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“solid state device” ,, electronic memory ... faster than magnetic memory as there is no wait for rotation or seek.. I had SSD back in 1982 ,, StorageTEK SSD “drum” units attached to a IBM 3081 as paging devices.
Have a 500 gigabyte drive, W7, Quadcore, 8 gigs of RAM....15 seconds from off to fully functional.
Probably, assuming your BIOS supports it (which it does unless you've got some pretty old kit). It's going to be very slow, however.
Solid State Drive or SSD is kinda like a USB flash drive but faster, much faster with no moving parts hence the solid state (no noise, less heat, small) versus you regular hard drive that spins a metal disk to store information on.
I bought 30gig SSD made by OCZ (vertex series SATA II 2.5” 80mb sustained write, I updated the firmware, etc...) just to try it out for about $70 on sale at newegg at the time.
I went to load Windows 7 Ultimate on it and walked away for about 10 minutes and came back to check on it and it was already done.
Then I loaded only my basic programs ex. FireFox on the new SSD and they loaded lightning fast, I mean fast. All other programs were loaded/linked onto the old regular Western Digital (black) 1.5TB hard drive for more or less a storage unit now but necessary to compliment the smaller 30gig SSD. I fly around the web and everything loads quicker. Boot up is less then 15 seconds with no special software.
The larger SSD drives are expensive still but is helping to drive down the price of the older technology. So, a small capacity SSD drive with a large storage regular drive is probably the way to go for now, I have about 10gigs of free space left on the SSD 30gig and Windows 7 needs about 20gigs just to install itself so it’s a minimal size with a decent cushion and I just move stuff over to the large drive for storage to keep the SSD from filling up. No trouble at all.
Overall a very nice upgrade without having to buy a new system and it would work well for a laptop upgrade as the SSD units are small.
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