How to use 16GB SSD in T550 w/ 250GB SSD?

[JohnnyCee]

I just bought a new T550 with a 250GB SSD. I'm running Win7 Pro. So far, so good.

Device Manager shows two disk drives:

- MKNSSDCR 250GB-7-OEM SCSI Disk Device
- SanDisk SSD U110 16GB SCSI Disk Device

Disk Management Tool shows two disks:

- Disk 0 with 3 partitions (EFI, C drive, and recovery drive Q)
- Disk 1 with 14.91 GB partition, no drive letter

If I understand correctly, some devices use a small SSD (like the SanDisk) to improve system performance when the main drive is a traditional hard drive. This T550 doesn't seem to need that, as its main drive is an SSD. However, the way the 16GB SSD is configured, it looks like it is not being used by Win7 [i]unless[/i] SSD Caching is still enabled somehow.

That prompts these questions.

1 - How can I tell if the device is being used as an SSD Cache?

2 - If it is being used as an SSD Cache, can I disable it and use it as a regular SSD drive? Is that a bad idea, or does an SSD Cache provide some benefit even when the main drive is an SSD? (Can't imagine how...)

Thanks for your help.

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

The 16GB drive is a cache drive alright. If the system were mine I'd just remove it altogether since it serves no useful purpose with SSD as a boot drive..

You could load a light Linux distro on it, if you have any aspirations of that nature.

[Brad]

When I removed the spinning HDD on an X240 replacing with an SSD and attempted to use the Lenovo software to configure the small 16Gb SSD the software said that since you have an SSD there is no advantage to use the caching SSD. I removed the caching SSD.

Same as what ajkula66 said.

Brad

[JohnnyCee]

Thanks for the replies Brad and ajkula66.

I found the ECCmd command and it seemed to say the cache was enabled but not being used. Perhaps the service figures out that the cache is not needed when the main HD is also an SSD. I disabled the ExpressCache service.

My plan is to delete the existing volume on the 16GB SSD and then reallocate a standard partition there. While 16GB is not much, I'll find something to put there.

[siya-u]

The small SSD can be used for housing the hibernation partition of Intel Rapid Start Technology.

If you want to use this feature, your computer will be put into a special "deep sleep" mode in order to enable minimum power consumption, thus resulting a 30 days of stand by. It requires a partition which is the same size as your RAM. There your mini SSD can come in handy.

[hyde]

The small SSD can be used for housing the hibernation partition of Intel Rapid Start Technology.

If you want to use this feature, your computer will be put into a special "deep sleep" mode in order to enable minimum power consumption, thus resulting a 30 days of stand by. It requires a partition which is the same size as your RAM. There your mini SSD can come in handy.

My T450s came with 180GB SSD on Win 8.1 and with it, "deep sleep mode"
I am about to start a new thread, how do I disable deep sleep mode and just stay with regular sleep as it was in Windows 7?
I suspect it's also messing with my sound output/drivers not to mention the delay in starting up (My X220 is perfectly fine with normal sleep mode and I don't really need 30 days of stand by, just 3 to 8 hours is fine and my x220 has always been fine with that long sleep)