Crucial Adrenaline Solid State Cache Review

Looking back through the results that we saw with the Adrenaline kit, I’m astonished to see that the lesser speed of the mechanical drive barely held things back and this is proof towards the caching concept. Right back at the start of the review I mentioned how people are stuck in the void where they want a large capacity drive but with the super fast speeds of a solid state drive and for the most part this wasn’t possible. What we have in effect here to the untrained eye is a combination that to some would seem like a 2TB SSD.

When we looked at the RevoDrive Hybrid from OCZ, the caching effect on the Windows boot time and the results that we found within HD Tach were gradual, i.e. as we repeated the boot cycle more and more times, the speed got faster bit by bit. With the Adrenaline kit the difference was instant. From our initial boot to the second, the difference in sequential read speeds was around seven times what we had before and the burst speed rose by around 100MB/s at the same time. Further testing showed this to be pretty much the optimum level straight away, although any further boots after this did see ever so slight improvements again.

One thing that surrounds the whole idea of caching and its viability is the cost and when we look at the other limited options available, the relative costs don’t quite justify their purchase, although if money is not a problem, then fine go ahead and get them as they really do work. Priced at £75.98 the Adrenaline kit is far more bite size in cost and when looked at as a cost with a drive, say a Seagate Barracuda 2TB at £99.98, the overall cost of £175.96 for this particular duo is far more easier to justify and take in – in comparison to the other limited offerings.

As I’ve mentioned before, I do expect that there will be growth in the number of solid state cache options on the market in the following months and years, and if a couple of other manufacturers adopt the idea then the typical cost of the technology will gradually come down for the end user making it even more affordable.

Getting the Adrenaline kit is not something that I would personally do as I’d rather have a super fast boot drive with the vast majority of my content on and then a separate high capacity drive for all my data storage needs, but if I knew of someone that was on a flexible budget and wanted that balance between speed and capacity in one drive then the Adrenaline kit from Crucial is something that I may just consider recommending.