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Crucial Adrenaline SSD cache speeds up any Windows 7 PC

Crucial Adrenaline

Works with your existing hard disk to boost performance

While there’s no doubt that an SSD can dramatically improve the speed of a PC, their smaller capacity than regular hard disks puts a lot of people off the upgrade.

Intel has tried to encourage people to make the leap with its SSD caching technology, which puts commonly used files onto an SSD to boost performance automatically. It works really well, but you need chipset support in your motherboard to use it.

Crucial has a different way with its Adrenaline SSD and caching technology. All you have to do is plug the 50GB SSD into your computer and connect it to a SATA port. Install the software and link the drive to your existing hardware and the most commonly used files are cached to the SSD for speedy access.

Adrenaline will automatically cache the Windows start files, but it takes it a few boots to work out which applications and files you use the most, after which performance should be noticeably better.

Technically speaking the drive is a 64GB model, but 14GB is reserved for drive operations, such as trim and wear levelling, helping to keep performance and an optimum level and ensuring the drive lasts a long time.

Should the SSD fail, it can just be removed and the PC will boot as normal, as no files are removed from the hard disk, just cached for use on the SSD.

It seems like a good compromise to us and means that anyone can get the benefit of an SSD without having to worry about configuring Windows 7 or manually reorganising storage to make sure the drive doesn’t fill up. Pricing hadn’t been announced, although for a 64GB SSD it should be pretty reasonable. We’ll bring you a full review once samples are available.

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