Since it would be cruel to leave you only with the leaked SSD family from Intel and a few hints from ASRock about the performance increase from even a 20GB SSD, here is some more information from VR-Zone. Bear in mind we are still in the territory of leaked info and informed guessing but the topic is one worth keeping up with.
"Intel plans to officially launch Z68 Express chipset on May 18th but you will be able to see reviews online from 12th onwards. Of course, those who can’t wait for the official launch can already purchase the Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 board from the retail market, first available in Taiwan and then the rest of the world in the coming weeks. Other brands like ASUS and ASRock are set to hit the retail next. Those enthusiasts hoping they can overclock their Sandy Bridge better on Z68 than the P67 will probably be disappointed but there is one important feature of Z68 that matters, and that is the SSD caching."
Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:
- The Kingston SSDNow V+100 96GB SSD Upgrade Bundle @Hi Tech Legion
- Kingston SSDNow V+ 100 @ Hardwarebistro
- Kingston Technology DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive @ Mod Synergy
- Mach Extreme MX-GX 16GB USB 3.0 @ Overclockers Online
- Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB Portable (USB 3.0) Hard Disk Drive @ TechARP
- Crucial Unleashes the M4 SATA 3 SSD To The Public @ The SSD Review
- Cubitek Magic Cube 8HDD Review @ OCC
- Synology DiskStation DS411+ @ Legion Hardware
- OCZ Vertex 2 (E) 120 GB Solid State Drive @ TechARP
- Crucial m4 Solid State Drive Tests @ Benchmark Reviews
- Zalman N128 128 GB SSD @ techPowerUp
- ineo NA316N1 All-in-One NAS Server Review @ BayReviews
- SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC UHS –I Card 8GB @ t-break
- LaCie XtremKey Thumb Drive @ Metku.net
SSD caching
This is def
SSD caching
This is def something I will be interested in, the reasons are;
I like to keep things simple and with this setup I will still only need to clone my main Platter drive for backup purposes.
If I had a separate SSD I would have to be messing about having two drives, windows on one and date etc on the other,which makes it more complicated to use and backup.
The extra speed a separate SSD gives me over this caching SSD is not that important, esp as the cost for the smaller one will be more acceptable to my budget
Would be nice if you have a bit of control over whats cached – like if you want to make sure a rarely used program is always in the cache.
Anyway if you have the opposite view and think getting a separate SS Drive is the best option, list you reasons
You remember the hybrid
You remember the hybrid drives that Seagate was working on, with a controller that handled assigning frequently used bits to a tiny onboard SSD on a platter based drive? That is more what they are talking about … though until we can test them it’s hard to say that what you want to do can’t be done.
The hybrid drives are ok for
The hybrid drives are ok for what they are, but personally for me their capacity is still way too low for a home user.
If I remember they have like 500GB for the platter and a tiny bit of onboard SSD. Now if they had a 2-3TB drive and >10GB SSD part then they would be as useful as this SSD caching on the Z68 is promising to be.
Interesting times await, we all want fast cheap storage, If we move into organic storage using some sort of biomass I think I’ll be happy 🙂