Crucial Adrenaline 50GB SSD Review (Cache Drive)

One of the manufacturers which has impressed us most in recent times with their SSDs is Crucial. Both the C300 and the m4, based on Marvell controllers, have offered class leading performance and competitive pricing with some great after sales support, including an active user forum.

That said many consumers look at the pricing and capacity of SSDs and feel that they don't offer the same value as high capacity mechanical drives. This can result in trying to pair a low capacity SSD for Windows and key applications with a larger mechanical model for storage. This can often mean some significant compromises and so Crucial (and Nvelo) are looking to solve this problem with the Adrenaline range of SSDs.

The idea behind the Crucial Adrenaline and Nvelo's Dataplex software is that we drop in the SSD and use it as a high speed cache which allows our system to perform faster while using an existing mechanical drive for storage. Today we take a look at this solution to find out if it is the ideal solution for those who might not have the budget for a high end/capacity SSD.