ReadyCache with SSD system disk?

Internal SSD All Other Internal SSD
1

Hi can anyone help with my problem? I’m running Win 7 64bit with i7 3820 cpu and Asus P9x79 motherboard, which has 2 x sata III and a bunch of sata IIs on it. I recently installed a (OCZ vertex 4 512GB) SSD as my system drive (C: drive) on a sata III, and demoted my old Samsung 1.5TB HDD to store pictures and music (E: drive, sata II). The big SSD on system drive works very well.

Next, I bought the sandisk readycache 32GB to link to the HDD to speed that up too. I attached it to the other sata III. However, when i run expresscache it repeatedly fails to detect the readycache. I did some checking:

(1) cables look good

(2) BIOS menus show that the sandisk device is detected but not listed in boot order.

(3) In windows device manager the sandisk is detected and shown as working normally.

(4) Windows explorer does not detect the sandisk device.

(5) Sandisk expresscache does not detect the device.

Can anyone help with this? I called the helpdesk and they suggested I unplug the hdd and see what happens and hopefully it will detect ok and allow me to download the expresscache, and after that to reconnect the hdd and link the readycache to the hdd. I am not able to try this until later, but i wanted to see if anyone on the forum has come across this. Thanks.

2

First thing is from what I understand the way expresscache is designed it will not work if the system drive is an ssd so you probably will not be able to use it in the way that you intend. 

Second, windows explorer will not list a drive if it is not partitioned and formatted. This is why it is not showing in explorer. Keep in mind the drive needs to be unpartitioned in order for expresscache to install. The expresscache software will partition and format the readycache ssd during installation. 

Third, there is an issue with the latest Intel RST SATA driver. You can see if this is the issue by looking in device manager. If the drive shows us as SDSSDRC you have the latest Intel driver which is not compatible with expresscache. Intel changed the way the drive name is reported. Expresscache is looking for SDSSDRC-032G and since the new driver reports it differently it is not seen as a readycache device. The only work around for this is to roll back the sata driver to Intel RST 11.2. This will be fixed in the next software update.