Crucial Adrenaline 50GB Caching SSD Announced

Combining the attributes of spacious, low-cost mechanical storage with the raw speed of SSDs is becoming a popular pastime for the purveyors of solid state storage.

Intel’s Z68 HDD + SSD caching was followed by OCZ’s RevoDrive Hybrid and Synapse solutions. Now it looks as though Crucial is making ready it’s own caching product in a new press release.

Dubbed “Adrenaline”, the Idaho company is planning on releasing a specialized M4 variant with HDD caching software.

The SSD weighs in at 50GB, though other aspects remain a mystery. Intel created a 20GB SLC drive to use with it’s Z68 caching, but OCZ decided on over-provisioned MLC drives to help mitigate NAND wear in a caching scenario.

Most likely, the 50GB Adrenaline is merely an over-provisioned 64GB M4, possibly with some further caching-specific firmware tweaks. Additionally, the Adrenaline bundle will include a 3.5″ bracket and come with a standard three year warranty when it launches sometime in 1Q 2012.

Crucial’s Adrenaline press release states that installation is as easy as connecting the SSD to a SATA port and installing the included software — provided you already have the HDD installed.

At the moment, caching software does have some downsides, but the need for SSD speed and HDD capacity is not going away anytime soon, virtually guaranteeing that more manufacturers will jump on the caching bandwagon.

You can read the Crucial Adrenaline press release here.