CES 2015: OWC's Transwarp Software Combines Traditional Hard Drive With SSD Cache

[johnnyturbouk]

Can you default to booting from an external TB drive by the way? As in no alt-key, everytime and reliably?

i used this for an old mac running a ocz 128gb vertex 3, no issues,was set as default start-up disk. Now is this reliable, it has been so far, however, i can not attest this as a rigorous, robust, and representative for everyone. Too many variable, ie type of TB adapter used, ssd used etc.

Also, does Windows work from TB? Preferably through TB then eSATA

<no smugness or sarcasm intended>
not sure, not used windows at home for eons (ok 6-7yrs)
i did hear (please correct me if i am wrong) that you can (possibly could) boot windows seven from usb.
i also heard from others you can run linux(ubuntu) from TB (i have not confirmed this)

I'm in the market for some upgrades coming summer.

With current prices, this is now a very affordable option.
what kind of set up were you thinking?

 

[haravikk]

SSD prices are dropping enough that this won't really be of much benefit for long.

Content sizes such as 4k video are increasing enough that this remains a benefit, especially if you work with the raw footage

Sure it won't benefit everyone, but for those who know what they need it could be pretty sweet.

with the fusion drive in place and working well, I am not sure what problem this solves for the Mac space. What use case would justify not purchasing the fusion drive with the Mac? Just wondering.

Anyone that can't purchase a Fusion Drive? For example laptop users and Mac Pro users could potentially benefit too, except in their case the internal drive is the "removable" part, but they ought to be able to set a partition within it to speed up access to any HDDs they connect.

It's a shame this isn't out yet, as I actually am about to setup a system which will have a 1tb internal SSD but my main storage is a multi-terabyte RAID array. While the RAID array isn't slow, the SSD is still noticeable faster, especially for my smaller, more commonly used files, so using some of the SSD as a cache would be ideal, but I don't want to use a Fusion Drive (as the system being setup had a failed SSD where I did just that, so now I have to pay the price in time rebuilding the volume as penance).

I don't suppose anyone knows when this is actually released though? The articles just say previewed and there don't seem to be any release date or pricing details that I could find. I guess I can just move key folders manually for now while leaving some of my SSD as free space, just in case I can take advantage of an extra partition later.

 

[Glassed Silver]

i used this for an old mac running a ocz 128gb vertex 3, no issues,was set as default start-up disk. Now is this reliable, it has been so far, however, i can not attest this as a rigorous, robust, and representative for everyone. Too many variable, ie type of TB adapter used, ssd used etc.


<no smugness or sarcasm intended>
not sure, not used windows at home for eons (ok 6-7yrs)
i did hear (please correct me if i am wrong) that you can (possibly could) boot windows seven from usb.
i also heard from others you can run linux(ubuntu) from TB (i have not confirmed this)



With current prices, this is now a very affordable option.
what kind of set up were you thinking?

I know Windows 7 itself will boot from almost anything, even if you have to do some tricks in the case of USB, however I wonder as to how Mac with its proprietary aspects, BIOS emulation, etc might present some problems.

The setup I plan to run is as follows:
Main OS: OS X
For gaming and some special software: Windows 7, maybe Windows 10 at some point, possibly as third OS.

Then have two drives, one SSD for OS X, because I want my main OS to be speedy, that's where all the applications are, my home folder, etc.
I will NOT symlink my home folder to external drives as some people suggest allowing for a smaller system SSD. So SSD should be a 512GB one, if I get a good deal more, but since I'm looking at Samsung's PRO line, not the EVO line I doubt I'll really go with more. Not sure.
Then a big HDD, 5TB or more, for Windows, since it's my gaming OS and my library really eats storage like crazy.

For data and backups I already have drives, some of them will be replaced fairly soon, too, but that's not something I'm pondering about.

Super drive will stay in this Mac, so it's all about using the SATA channel used by the built-in HDD and the third one that's unused.

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[johnnyturbouk]

The setup I plan to run is as follows:
Main OS: OS X
For gaming and some special software: Windows 7, maybe Windows 10 at some point, possibly as third OS.

Then have two drives, one SSD for OS X, because I want my main OS to be speedy, that's where all the applications are, my home folder, etc.
I will NOT symlink my home folder to external drives as some people suggest allowing for a smaller system SSD. So SSD should be a 512GB one, if I get a good deal more, but since I'm looking at Samsung's PRO line, not the EVO line I doubt I'll really go with more. Not sure.
Then a big HDD, 5TB or more, for Windows, since it's my gaming OS and my library really eats storage like crazy.

For data and backups I already have drives, some of them will be replaced fairly soon, too, but that's not something I'm pondering about.

Super drive will stay in this Mac, so it's all about using the SATA channel used by the built-in HDD and the third one that's unused.

Glassed Silver:mac

Sounds very reasonable. I agree with keeping you home folder on the SATA SSD, most people i know who had issues with custom SSD/HDD setups were due to divergence of the home files. 512gb samsung pro also sounds like an excellent option. I mean my vertex 3 max iops still runs fine, and i have always been quite cautious of ocz.

Secondly, could you consider running windows on a secondary, external, ssd, over TB (even usb-3) as i guess, the 5TB storage drive, presumedly will be a spinning platter drive, and may really slow things down. Game data and large files could then be stored on your 5TB storage drive.

Finally, will your storage drive be a RAID set-up?

 

[Glassed Silver]

Sounds very reasonable. I agree with keeping you home folder on the SATA SSD, most people i know who had issues with custom SSD/HDD setups were due to divergence of the home files. 512gb samsung pro also sounds like an excellent option. I mean my vertex 3 max iops still runs fine, and i have always been quite cautious of ocz.

Secondly, could you consider running windows on a secondary, external, ssd, over TB (even usb-3) as i guess, the 5TB storage drive, presumedly will be a spinning platter drive, and may really slow things down. Game data and large files could then be stored on your 5TB storage drive.

Finally, will your storage drive be a RAID set-up?

Yeah, I'm very considerate which SSD to pick, not just for reliability, but also because I want a good performer.
This Mac's bottleneck really is just the HDD, otherwise it's still going very strong and has lots of life left in it, Apple's decisions to make some OS X features exclusive to Macs younger than 3 years or well less aside.

I'd prefer to run Windows on the built-in SATA channel, whilst in my Mac to replace the HDD for an SSD, I might as well do the HDD part, too.

My storage drives are currently USB 2.0 (well, 3.0 on 2.0 ports, since Apple didn't deem it necessary to equip this Mac with future-proof ports)
Haven't yet decided on a precise storage strategy to switch to, mostly thinking about eSATA through TB, since it allows for more speed and I'm not using up USB ports. USB also being a CPU hog, I'd love to have a leaner optimization.
RAID on eSATA might be something I could like, maybe JBOD though. Not sure.

Glassed Silver:mac