Thought I would post a short guide on setting caching as it can be sort of confusing the first time.
First a few notes:
1) Your caching SSD should be 64GB or less as this is the max that can be allocated. You can also use a larger SSD if partitioned.
2) You can cache 1 HD or RAID array only so ensure you have an OS partition and games/storage partition on the HD you want to accelerate. You can cache any type of RAID array except matrix.
3) RST takes a bit of time for the cache to get populated with your OS and utils you use most. It might not seem fast at first but it will get faster over time.
4) Ensure chipset drivers are installed before attempting any of this
5) If you have a Gigabyte board, use the SRT utility. It will do all this for you including the registry tweak if you didnt install Windows in RAID mode.
Enhanced mode vs Maximized mode:
Enhanced mode is more secure because if your SSD dies you wont lose any data. With maximized mode if your SSD dies you could lose data. Basically it works like this:
With enhanced mode read perf is improved but write perf is bottlenecked by the write perf of the HD so it will be a bit slower. With maximized mode the data is written to the SSD first and then synced to the hard disk later. Thus if the drive dies before it writes to HD you lose data.
There is only a minor difference between enhanced and maximized so you have to decide if you want to risk any data of the accelerated drive for that extra 2 seconds in boot time. The difference in performance between the two is shown here.
Procedure:
1) Plug your caching SSD and storage HD (the one to accelerate) into the Intel SATA ports. Do not use 3rd party like Marvel, it will not work.
2) Enter BIOS, change HD mode to RAID
3) Install OS
4) DL the latest RST driver from Intel. Dont bother installing from mb disk, it will be outdated. Grab it here.
5) Open RST utility, go to accelerate tab
6) Enable acceleration, select your OS/storage drive as the accelerated drive, select enhanced or maximized mode. Enhanced is the most secure, maximized is the fastest.
7) Reboot. If you get a message about boot options being changed or something and are unable to boot into windows go to the BIOS and check your HD priority. It often gets changed when caching is implemented so you just have to put your OS HD back at the top.
If you already have W7 installed and do not want to reinstall do this:
1) Do not connect the caching SSD yet. First apply the following registry tweak:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Iastorv
In the details pane, right-click "Start", and then click modify.
In the Value data box, type 0
This registry change enables the RAID driver in Windows.
2) Next install the raid driver.
3) Connect your caching SSD
4) Set up caching with RST util.
Any questions just ask. :thumb:
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