Pros and cons of Flash memory cache

I found this article from the inquirer about flash memory use in modern computers quite interesting. I especially like the scenario they gave about a user launching "notepad.exe" and then the computer searching through the various flash cache memories(Intel Turbo Memory, Ready Boost, Hybrid HDD Cache) that can now be found on the new generation notebooks. I would hope like they say at the end of the article that the scenario given could never happen!

 

It really doesnt make sense to use a USB stick with Readyboost if you already have Readydrive with Intel Turbo cache. I remember Turbo cache getting pretty good benchmarks. USB sticks are normaly slower and USB adds overhead that the PCI-express card can avoid.

I dont think Windows will search the Turbocash and then find that it is not there. It should know what it has stored in turbo cash and what not. Isnt having Turbo cache more like having a 2nd hard drive for the hypermemory and start up files?

And I thought that the hybrid disks are mostly about battery life. The disk stores files temparary in the Flash cache and doesnt have to spin the disk.
Like if i write many small files to disk like I would often do when I do office work the disk stays off and the files are saved in flash.

 

Doesn't Flash memory only have so many times that it can be written to before it fails? Or does the flash memory in these new hard drives not have that problem?

 

It is said to not have that problem. But who knows... maybe they will all start failing after a year of intensive use.

 

of course the addition of too many flash drives does have such a potential fault. i mean sure you may not need the usb drive anymore but you would still have the turbo mem and the hybrid drive (in the future).

turbo cache is supposed to be for startup and stuff but also for readyboost as one santa rosa review mentioned.

as for the benchmarks http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/blog/65 claims that those benchmarks were run in systems with 256MB or something on them. In one of the new santa rosa reviews we see that there doesnt appear to be any difference in using this feature with a modern system with 1GB or more.

in fact hasnt it been reported before that using readyboost with 2GB of system RAM is useless anyways?

 

Check out this Q&A for info on ReadyBoost, it answers a lot of questions.
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

Nope.