Crucial pledges PC performance boost with Adrenaline
SSD caching for your HDD
Memory specialist Crucial has rolled out a small-capacity SSD for folk keen to up the speed of their system without a massive outlay.
The package, dubbed Adrenaline - you can see the kind of audience Crucial is pitching the thing at, can't you? - comprises as 50GB Crucial m4 SSD, Nvelo's Dataplex caching app and all the bits you need to clip the drive into your desktop PC.
The m4 in place, Dataplex uses it as a cache for your hard drive, automatically and, Crucial insisted, transparently making sure frequently read bits are copied to the SSD for rapid access.
The caching software is fully automated, runs in the background, and requires no user management, Crucial said.
Adrenaline costs £89 and is available now from Crucial's website. ®
COMMENTS
Worth noting
You have to dig into their documentation for this: Adrenaline only works on the hard drive where Windows 7 is installed. If you fancy a fast SSD cache for a well-used data drive, or anywhere that's not your Windows drive for that matter, forget it.
Shame really - I was about to buy one. I've already got Windows on an SSD but could do with something to speed stuff up elsewhere. Alas this isn't it.
But I can buy a 60GB Agility III for £62, why would I want this?
Install Windows on the SSD and everything else on a fast SATA3 HDD, surely?
Re: Where have I heard this idea before...
I've been using one for over a year in this 'ere laptop.
The words "ludicrously quick for the money" would be about accurate. They take a few weeks to get up to full chat as they need a bit of use history to optimise the caching. Once it's got its feet under the table, boot times and load times of regularly used applications are comparable with SSDs.
Just don't defrag 'em. It banjaxes the cache history and takes you straight back to square one on performance.
Re: Nothing New
Well it's similar in principle but it's more of a retrofit (corsair are also doing an almost identical product with the same software too).
Is more designed to add in rather than in a fresh build and is probably a bit easier to set up.
There is a very big advantage to caching over a boot ssd in that an algorithm is probably better than people at working out what should be on the ssd and what shouldn't. You won't need to move programs and files over, managing multiple disks is a nuisance. Most likely with there'l be a performance hit and probably a sort of lag, play a game for the first time in a year and the first couple times it won't speed up but then it will. Whether or not it's noticeable in real world terms or not is another matter. Also half the windows files that would be installed on to a boot drive don't need to be there.
Lastly as it's a cache if it dies like ssds do then your mechanical drive still has everything (well almost depending on it's writing policy).
SRT is probably more appealing and the SLC drive which is purpose made is extra reliable to handle being thrashed around, although it is only 20gb which is not really big enough.
