SilverStone HDDBoost Review

HDDBoost explained

When we first heard about the SilverStone HDDBoost we were tempted to write it off as nothing more than a modified RAID 1 controller with a solid state drive added into the equation to boost its appeal. In some ways this is exactly what SilverStone has done, yet in many ways misses the true nature of exactly what is going on behind the scenes. In fact, it is closer many regards to say that of Microsoft’s ReadyBoost with some RAID 1 abilities added in for flavouring, rather than to call it a RAID 1 controller. Before we get to testing whether or not the theory and execution of this interesting little piece of technology actually works in the real world, lets first take a look at exactly what the HDDBoost is (and is not) and what makes it special.


At its heart the HDDBoost is a modified two SATA port RAID 1 controller. Basically, in a standard RAID 1 array the data is read from any drive in the array and written to both drives at the same time. With the HDDBoost, if the data exists on the solid state drive the controller directs the storage retrieval command towards the solid state drive. If the data does not exist on the solid state drive, only then will data be read from the hard drive.

Using this logic means that read speeds can be greatly increased on the most important data: applications and operating system files. However, you are not limited in the size of your “C” drive like you would be with a more typically sized solid state drive. The one downside to this is that data has to be properly placed on the drive as the HDDBoost does not care what pieces are “time sensitive” which are not. Data is data to the HDDBoost.

Setting aside this potential issue we have to wonder how much latency is added into the equation by doing this as you are adding in another layer (and controller) into an already-complicated equation.


Assuming the HDDBoost works as advertised, this boost in performance is all well and fine for reads but smaller writes happen on a near constant basis in any modern operating system. While hard drives are not nearly as fast as modern solid state drives, older generation drives (such as the JMicron 602 controller based ones) had the colloquial term “stuttering” applied to them. Stuttering is exactly what can and did happen when all the “free” cells on these older SSDs were in a degraded mode and multiple read and writes commands were sent all at the same time. To alleviate our worries regarding the write performance of the HDDBoost and breathe new life into the older generation solid state drives, SilverStone has directed ALL write requests to the attached hard disk. The only time writes happen on the solid state drive is either during a manual update via the HDDBoost software or during reboot. This means that cell usage is extremely light and you would have to reboot your system an average of 10,000 times before cells in the solid state drive would wear out. This also means that write speeds with the HDDBoost will never approach those seen on SSDs but that’s not what this devices is designed for.


Unfortunately, there is a major down side to doing things this way. It may be a lot easier on the SSD’s cells and eliminates stuttering, but it means that unless you either reboot your system frequently or manually trigger (via included software) synchronization, rebooting may take an awfully long while. If the HDDBoost does incremental backups, the added time may not be all that bad while if full backups are done every time you reboot, this could significantly add time to the process. Worse still, the time required would only get worse the larger the solid state drive used.


Interestingly enough, the controller is not smart enough to just load the OS and most frequently used applications on to the solid state drive. Rather, it clones the first chunk of the hard drive to the solid state drive. This means if you use a 30GB solid state drive the first 30GB worth of data on the hard drive will be copied to the solid state drive, even if this includes less time sensitive data like songs, pictures, etc. Needless to say, you still need to keep you hard drive defragmented or HDDBoost performance will suffer as well.