SilverStone HDDBOOST lets you build your own hybrid SSD hard drive
By Donald Melanson 
posted February 4th 2010 1:33PM
posted February 4th 2010 1:33PM
We've already seen Lenovo and others pair an SDD up with a standard hard drive for maximum speed, but SilverStone now has a fairly novel solution to let you build your own hybrid storage device. Dubbed the HDDBOOST, the device itself is just a simple chassis that lets you plug in any SDD drive and any standard hard drive and connect the whole rig to your computer -- you can even apparently daisy chain multiple hard drives and have them all take advantage of the SSD boost. Of course, those drives will be recognized as one by your computer, and the initial setup appears to be minimal, with only a simple mirror backup required to copy all your priority data to the SDD -- which the company says could result in up to a 70% increase in speed. No word on an official release over here, but this one should be available in Europe later this month for €33 (or about $45).[Thanks, Alex]
Frankendrive!
Cool, but not something I would ever use or buy I don't think.
@werty1432k I'd be more interested if they (or a buyer) published the schematic.
It looks so simple, I'm sure I could whip up my own in an hour.
Would be even cooler if it actually works with the OS, then OS manages what gets copied to the flash, like in Win7 for ReadyDrive. Mere mirroring I kinda doubt it'll help that much.
This is a perfect solution for balancing the cost of upgrading to SSD for performance alone whilst maintaining the spacious value of conventional disk spinning hard drives. As the conventional drives push deeper into the TB range, and whilst the SSD prices "fall to pieces" this kind of DIY fusion technology is just exactly what many people need. Word Up Silverstone~
Cool! I'm sure this would burn through read intensive applications.
I'm missing the the daisy chaining part though... considering it mirrors the "front end" data of the drive plugged up. How would it mirror multiple drives?
Heck, I'd like to see this thing work with 2 drives striped for faster write speeds and amazingly fast reads.
I was going to say, "uh, how does this work?", but a little clicking goes a long way. From the Silverstone site:
"After the initial mirroring of data is completed, SSD and HDD will have the same front -end data. HDDBOOST’s controller chip will then set data read priority to SSD to take advantage of SSD’s much faster read speed. HDDBOOST’s priority will be determined by the following rules:
1.When data is present on both drives, read from SSD.
2.When data is not present on both drives, read from HDD.
3.Data will only be written to HDD.
Every time the system starts, HDDBOOST will initiate mirror backup automatically to ensure front-end data between the two drives are the same."
Just buy a regular SDD.
wouldn't it just be easier to have to an ssd boot drive and a hdd storage drive than you wouldn't have to buy this 45$ part and essentially its the same
@SchultzMD
Agreed. Heh.
@SchultzMD But good luck finding an SSD that gives acceptable performance at $45.
@SchultzMD
Except unless you've run out of SATA connections on your mobo like I have.
@ToniCipriani You still need an SSD for this... Get what they're sayin?
@ToniCipriani - I think you missed the point, you have to supply an SSD and hard drive to begin with - this does nothing but coordinate data streams between the drives. If you install your OS on the SSD, and use your HDD for data storage, you'll probably get better performance and be $45 richer.
@ToniCipriani
From the way it sounds, you still need to buy a SSD to make this work.
@SchultzMD
Does no one understand the concept of hybrid hard drives? It uses the flash memory to boost the performance of the standard spindle hard drive. So you can have a 1TB hard drive and have a smaller SSD hooked up to this device and get a performance boost on the things stored on the large hard drive.
@darkNiGHTS
how much of a boost are we really talking about here? installing the OS on the SSD will give you much faster speeds overall. how fast do you REALLY need to access your mp3's and h264's? Unless we're talking about serious read/write intensive apps i don't see this as being very useful.
@acme64
Thus why this is not for everyone. This will work wonders for professionals doing audio/video work on their machines.
@darkNiGHTS
I see what your saying, that does makes with editing hd and 3D for example. Although with the rw speeds these days, the bus is the bottleneck these days.
Eh, no operating system is setup for this, so I question the efficacy.
You're much better off IMO just buying a regular SSD and installing the OS and frequently used applications on it, and keep the less frequently used ones and media on your regular storage drive, thats what I do.
@Ducman69
Are you so sure about that? Both Windows Vista and 7 take advantage of hybrid drives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vista_IO_technologies#ReadyDrive
Make sure you backup your data. :)
@One Love
Say what? - I think you need to look closely at the Silverstone website. It creates a serial type connection from your mobo's SATA to this device, to your primary HD, and mirrors data from your HD. You should be able to revert your system without any problems, at any time, since you're not actually moving any data.
I think this makes sense. While the "OS and common apps on the SSD, everything else on the primary HD" approach works well, I have a 64GB SSD and a 1 TB HD, and I'm constantly butting up against the size limits of my SSD when it comes to installing programs. Games especially can consume 5 - 10 - 15 GB of space each, and when you consider how large a footprint Windows 7 has already, your SSD is filled up pretty quick, especially if you if also have the typical array of productivity and image/video editing applications installed as well. I would definitely pay the extra $50 to not have to worry about installing and uninstalling applications based on usage patterns, or having to decide what games to have on the fast drive and which ones on the slow(er) drive. I'd love it if there was a software solution available to do this though.
@AmericanKochevnik If it were only a matter of $50 difference and no downside, but I see this working similar to readyboost, with lots of harddrive activity every restart transferring data off the harddisk. And w/ a regular split SSD, not only don't you have to worry about that additional overhead and writes from time to time, but 90% of the time your spinning platter drive can be asleep.
And with large games, installing them on the "storage" platter is still higher performance since the SSD is handling all Windows tasks independently, providing 100% read time to the dedicated platter where the game is neither fragmented nor spread out on the platter.
Available in US starting 2/18/10, according to Joel in SilverStone Tech's CA office.