Is SSD Caching worth it?

F

Froger

New member
Hi, im running out of space, at the moment i have got a 1tb + 128gb (both are more than 5 years old) and a 64gb ssd. i salvaged the two hard drives (1tb and 128gb HHD) from an old rig and bought the new 64gb ssd. im going to buy a new hard drive going to be 2tb (maybe more) but i was wondering about whether ssd caching is worth the money. and if so, how many Gb's of ssd cache should i get. i will be doing gaming, but also video edit + photo editing.
when i get the new hard drive (2tb) i will move everything from the 1tb drive and an external drive to the 2tb drive.
i have the 2tb just for movies and TV shows.
also, if i do use ssd caching, would you suggest i use the 1tb drive that wont be filled with movies and media, or the NEW 2tb drive that will only have maybe 300gb's left after i move everything from the 1tb over and other hard drives. as i don't want it caching movies etc...
thanks for any help and advise.
 
In my honest opinion, I prefer to keep the SSD seperate and not bother with caching.

Keep you storage on a storage drive and your apps/swap files on the SSD.
 
well what if you dont have enough space to store all the apps on the ssd and i dont want to buy a really big ssd?
 
Yup, exactly that.

Prioritize what you use most/need to open a lot (if it's already running, and runs All the time then sticking it on the SSD won't help much, because it will be in RAM mostly anyway). Pick things that you Need to load fast and frequently, such as games, and put those on the SSD.

How much RAM do you have btw?
 
4gb at the moment, but i am soon to upgrade to 8gb, but over time i will upgrade to 16gb then 32gb.
depending on if i need the extra ram.
 
Froger said:
but i will also be doing after effects, premiere pro and photoshop and illustrator
Click to expand...

I would put those on the SSD and the rest files , games, music on the HDD.
Since i use steam all my games are on the regular HDD and only win 7 and photoshop are on my SSD.
 
It's the swap file that windows uses when it runs out of addressable space in RAM.

Personally I wouldn't put the adobe stuff on it either, once they're open, they're open, what you want to do is put the SCRATCH files for the software on the SSD that's where you would see a performance boost.

I'd put the games on it too if you like fast loading times in games ;)
 
thanks. iv got my os on my current one, and im going to pput games on it aswell, but its just if i have alot of games, then i was thinking maybe a hard drive with SSD caching could be good to make all games fast loading.
 
Last edited:
My understanding of it, is it will only cache regularly used things, so your 'first open' won't be fast, but after it's been copied over it will be. I'm not 100% sure how it works, but I'm still firmly in the "just use an SSD" camp.
 
ok i think i will go with that then, but if i ever seem to have an extra 30-40 pound laying around i may buy like a 32gb ssd and use it for caching just to see how it goes, as things like BF3 with all the expansion packs could take up a whole ssd but dont know yet. but thats for the help.
 
Instead of caching a ssd with a hdd why not just buy a Seagate MomentusXT 1tb drive? Comes with I believe 8gb of internal Flash Cache(similar to ssd) and will save software conflictions from appearing...

Do you know how to save space on a ssd? I could give a few tips that can gain you some space back.
 
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