The Crucial Adrenaline package is intended to be used jointly with an HDD

Mar 8, 2012 14:36 GMT  ·  By

Since SSD caching seems to be so well looked upon, Crucial decided to release a product for this specific purpose, so out came the Crucial Adrenaline.

SSD caching is a technology which, through a combination of hardware and software features, lets the OS consider an HDD and an SSD as being part of the same partition.

As such, the OS and frequently used files are stored on the SSD part, for quick access and boot, while the rest of the data (as well as backups of the SSD content) is held on the HDD.

This effectively combines the speed of SSDs with the capacity of HDDs, without costing people too much money. Crucial Adrenaline involves an m4 SSD (intended for precisely this type of setup), as well as 3.5-inch adapter bracket, a SATA cable and the NVELO Dataplex caching program to “fool” the OS.

The capacity of the m4 drive is 50 GB (the maximum supported storage space of SSDs used in caching is 64 GB).

“Delivering high-quality software to our customers is a priority at NVELO. Partnering with Crucial was a natural fit. By combining our intelligent Dataplex caching software with award-winning Crucial SSDs, we’re able to provide a forward-thinking, high-performance storage solution to a broad range of users,” said Kevin Silver, vice president of business development, NVELO.

There should already be listings of the Crucial Adrenaline caching product online, for a price of £88.88 including VAT. That means $140.33 and 105.97 Euro, according to exchange rates.

“While consumers understand that SSDs provide enhanced PC performance, many still want to maintain their existing high-capacity hard drives,” said Robert Wheadon, worldwide senior product manager, Crucial.

“We designed Crucial Adrenaline to be affordable and straightforward, so customers can easily upgrade their PCs to gain the increased speed of an SSD, yet still utilize the higher capacities they’ve come to expect from traditional hard drives.”