Hybrid Storage Solutions Compared 61
Vigile writes "While few would argue with the performance advantages of solid state drives, the relative cost compared to spindle-based disks still make them a luxury item. The promise of hybrid storage solutions is to combine the benefits of both — large capacities with standard drive technology and performance advantages of solid state. PC Perspective published an article comparing several different solutions that vary in their approach to hybrid storage. The OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid combines a standard 2.5-in drive with a PCI Express-based SSD that offers the best overall performance and largest cache size. Seagate's new Momentus XT 2.5-in solution embeds the cache on the PCB of the drive, allowing notebook users to install this solution easily. Finally, the Intel chipset-based caching option combines either a 2.5-in or mSATA SSD with a standard hard drive on either desktop or mobile platforms, allowing the most flexibility of any other hybrid solution. All three have advantages for specific consumers, though, and varying performance levels to go along with them."
Flashcache (Score:2, Interesting)
Facebook released, some time ago, their Flashcache solution. It works similar to ReadyBoost, et al, except it works on Linux, and "pairs" an SSD with a hard drive. Very useful.
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=388112370932
Filesystem (Score:3, Interesting)
What I want is a filesystem that can use a partition of an SSD and a partition of a rotating magnetic disk. Metadata, directories and small files on the SSD, big files on the rotating disk.
This ought to be fairly simple - anyone fancy hacking ext4?