May 2, 2011 13:00 GMT  ·  By

Some may have heard of a certain technology known as SSD caching, and how only enterprise server applications usually use it, but it looks like HighPoint wants all personal computers to be capable of the same thing.

SSD caching is a very convenient feature which uses solid state drives to boost performance beyond what would be possible if only hard disk drives were present.

With all the more or less low-capacity SSDs now roaming the consumer market, it makes sense that this sort of functionality would make it to PCs.

Sure enough, HighPoint technologies decided to take matters into its own hands, so it created two HBA add-on cards that enable SSD caching on any motherboard with PCI Express slots.

More specifically, the two newcomers are 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 HBA cards that enable the OS to boot off SSDs and host frequently used applications on it.

Basically, the products combine HDDs and SSDs into a single storage drive (as far as the OS is concerned anyway) and can work in Safe Mode (when all permanent data is stored on the HDD) and Capacity Mode (when most/all the space on the SSD is used, to optimize performance as well as possible).

Users worried about possibly having to input commands or whatnot can rest easy knowing that the caching mode provided by the SSD Caching HBA is fully automatic.

Additionally, the newcomers are fully compatible with the Windows operating system and are AHCI plug and play-ready.

They will work on any PCI Express 2.0 slot, even PCI Express 1.0 (via backwards compatibility).

What's more, while they are designed for SATA 6.0 Gbps devices, they will also handle SATA 3.0 Gbps units with no problem whatsoever.

Of course, seeing as how the former sort of HDD and SSD are still rather hard to come by (and expensive), it would not have made sense for the latter to not be supported.

HighPoint's worldwide network of reseller and distribution channels should already have the SSD Caching HBAs on sale for $59.99.