We just received in the Silverstone HDDBOOST, a device that is said to combine the best qualities of SSD’s and traditional hard drives with both speed and storage space. Speed increases greatly depending on how fast the SSD is that you decide to install in the HDDBOOST, so keep this in mind before buying. The HDDBOOST is also supposed to help extend the life of your SSD by only writing the front-end data to your SSD and letting your traditional hard drive take care of the rest. Let’s get to testing and see just how well it performs.

Packaging:

Specifications:

The HDDBOOST:

With the above picture, you can see where to install your SSD.  Simply slide the SSD into the connectors and it is ready to go.

Now you can see how to connect the HDDBOOST to your computer. The bottom row is the power connection and the SATA connection from the hard drive you would like to pair with the SSD. The top SATA connection will connect to the motherboard and installation will be complete.

Software:

With the HDDBOOST utility that you will need to download from Silverstone’s website, you can easily check the status of your setup. In the picture above, you will notice that it is showing the drives synchronizing. Once we first started up the computer, it took a couple of minutes to complete synchronization. Once it is finished, you will get the message on the right “normal” in pink and you are ready to experience the HDDBOOST.

Installation:

In this picture (top left), you can see what it will look like once you slide the SSD into the HDDBOOST connections. The picture (top right), shows the front once you have everything plugged in. The bottom picture shows the connections with the LED’s lighting once the HDDBOOST is running.

Tests:

With boot racer, you can see the slight gains you will get from using the HDDBOOST. It only sped up the time to desktop by about 3 seconds, and there is really nothing noticeable between the two.

The controller of the HDDBOOST has set the data read priority to the SSD, which will enhance the speed of the system. You can see that once the data progresses past the SSD data zone, the original hard drive will take back over the read/write procedures. You can see a really nice 162% boost in read speeds compared to the average speed of the original hard drive. Our drive was only 32GB, which is why the speeds dropped back to normal after it hit the 32GB mark in the test.

Conclusion:

The HDDBOOST was a very simple installation and took all of about 3-4 minutes to get everything setup and installed. This was easy to install as you really only need to connect 3 wires, and you are set to go.  It did make the computer feel more “snappy” in response times, which was the SSD working its magic.

Our main concern with the HDDBOOST is whether or not it’s worth it? You could easily install the SSD as your operating system hard drive and run everything else off the other hard drive. Our guess is that this is geared more toward the people who want a little more “snap” to the system but do not want to bother reinstalling everything on their computer. This does a great job with the front-end data when the SSD can use its speed.

For what the HDDBOOST is made to do, it does a great job. So we really have no complaints about that. We just feel that there are better options out there if your focus is on pure performance. If you are a user looking for a quick fix, and do not want to reinstall your operating system, the HDDBOOST could be for you.

The Silverstone HDDBOOST receives the TechREACTION.net Bronze Silicon Award!