Strange drives configuration, any ideas ?

[slingshot]

I'll try to explain this as best as I can, the drives are from a dead Dell laptop, fresh from Hong Kong, but with a weird drive configuration. I'm wondering if windows has been setup like OSX would be on a fusion setup, however I've never seen that before.

1 x 32GB Hynix SSD (PCI-e)
1 x 1TB WDC WD10SPCX-75KHST0 (SATA)

The SSD ID's and is full of used sectors but I can't fathom out what kind of File system it is. It can't be RAID with a tiny 32GB SSD + 1TB spindle, surely ?

Customer said he had laptop repaired in Hong Kong and it had since been set it up in a special way :shock:

The WD ID's on the 3K, shows 5 partitions, with 2 of them being NTFS user partitions.
1 x NTFS partition has system files on it.
1 x NTFS has stacks of personal data on it.
The NTFS partition (with the system files on it) seems to have some of the user account directories linked to the other NTFS partition (with personal data on it). I've seen similar setups before using 2 drives in 1 unit, where the system files are on 1 drive and the user directory is on the other drive, but not like this. What would be the purpose of the SSD in this mix ? The only thing I can think of is its some type of windows fusion setup (if theres such a thing).

Anybody any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[slingshot]

Solved it.

 

[LarrySabo]

...and?

 

[slingshot]

As I suspected, it is some sort of 'Fusion type' setup, but for windows (Intel® Smart Response Technology). Its basically the same as apples fusion turd, a 32GB SSD cache drive that caches regularly accessed files etc..... see this intel manual for more info >> View attachment intel-srt-enterprise-deployment-guide.pdf

As for the users data, it was all on the WD and the 3K imaged all of his files (with some fettling) so case completed.

Post recovery - I decided to attempt to play around with it and see what I can make happen. The only efficient way of getting files that work from it, was a RAW recovery, had pretty good success with that but as his recovery consisted of over 200GB, bothering with this 32GB SSD would be a waste of time.

I've never seen a setup like this before from a windows laptop so I guess its like the old saying goes ... "everyday is a school day"

 

[LarrySabo]

Thanks for the update, @slingshot!

 

[slingshot]

Thanks for the update, @slingshot!

Thanks Larry.

 

[Jared]

I saw this setup on a Asus laptop my wife used to own. It was using a tiny (like 8Gb) SSD cache to just accelerate bootup and not much else. Though, it wasn't an Intel setup it was using a utility from Asus to manage the caching. But, just like in your case, a full copy of all data was on the HDD. SSD just stored a second copy for fast access.

 

[slingshot]

The lengths these laptop manufacturers go too so as to be able to sell it as having an 'SSD' :lol:

 

[Jared]

That was during a time when SSDs only went up to 120Gb and cost about $800. So even just adding in the 8Gb made a difference then. I remember being quite impressed at how fast her laptop booted compared to mine when she bought it.