I don't know if it would give you the speed boost you're looking for. That being said, if you're using something like Steam, you can move files between drives on command. So if there's a particular game you're playing for a while, you could move that to your SSD and then move it back to your HDD when you move on to something else.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
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This. Just put your OS and the game you're currently playing on the SSD, it's much easier and less likely to go wrong.
yep this is a thing in zfs
10-15 years ago, Apple had a product built around this concept, the Fusion Drive. It was one physical device containing both types of storage that appeared to the user as a single drive. The OS would decide what files when on which storage medium based on usage. Unfortunately, it’s been long enough that they went to all SSDs all of the time that Apple is removing support for it in this year’s OS release.
You used to be able to DIY those yourself. Any ssd and hdd combo worked.
Here’s the guide I followed all those years ago: https://jolly.jinx.de/teclog/2012.10.20.fusion-drive-on-older-macs-yes.html
2012? Wow. Life really creeps up on you
Not just an apple thing. The general term is hybrid drive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive
Haven't heard about anybody doing it for a long time. Nowadays flash drivers are big, so people just use them for the fast parts and disks for what can be slow.
I'd use flash for storing the main system, and mount the disk in a directory where you will keep the large media, probably as a subdir of your home.
It’s how any unraid system works. Your cache drive for uploads and then they get moved with the mover later. Not the same situation as OP though.
Yes absolutely!
You can set it up with LVM. It's not exactly hard, but you do need to be able to follow a guide and have an understanding of drives. See https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/logical_volume_manager_administration/lvm_cache_volume_creation for example.
Yep, I'm running this setup. Honestly, I haven't measured how much better it is than a plain HDD, tho.
I think it is still a thing, but I dont know if this is the right application for it. IIRC the benefit comes when storing lots of data as the SSD acts like a buffer to quickly store data while it slowly transfers to the HDD. For gaming, you'll still need to be reading from the HDD in real time meaning the SSD isn't going to be helping much. Furthermore, your 8TB drive might already have a decently large cache on it which does the same thing.
most consumer-grade hdd that size are smr, and that's why they have a larger on-board cache.
if op's drive is shingled, it'd be shit for running games off of that get updates frequently.
I do this with my ZFS pools
new ssds (the nvme ones) can only be overwritten between 100 and 600 or so times. if u use it as a cache ur gonna burn through the drive very soon
look for the tbw rating (terabits written )
While that basic idea is is true, your numbers are off by several orders of magnitude. Modern drive's physical blocks can be overwritten from about 3000 to 100000 times, with some drives going as high as 200000 rewrites.
Kind of true. The cheapest nvme drives can be that low. Quality drives are in the low thousands. They do wear leveling to maximize the life of the sectors. I'm reading that it would take roughly 600 times the drives capacity of writes before a sector reaching the limit on a quality drive. It's still not the best choice for a cache drive, but enterprise grade nvme drives have significantly more cycles before failure. Unless there's really heavy traffic, an nvme cache would last years before possible issues.
In OPs case, I'd just install the games on the SSD rather than cache them. Ideally, get a larger drive even if it's used.
I have a 4tb microcenter nvme as my nvr drive. It's wearing about 10% a year. I don't think I'll care in 6 years that it's at 70% wearout. What's the oldest component in your rig? Will it ever be your nvme?
I have 2 x 250GB Samsung 840 SSDs as cache drives in my unraid server. That's been their job for about 5 years. Before that, they were in a RAID 0 on my main desktop for many years. I just looked at their attributes in Unraid and they've been online for 15y 7d for one of them and 15y 11m and their remaining wear level is 65% and 69% respectively. One of those drives may fill and clear 3+ times a day where other days it could be 25-50%, so I'd consider at least that one as heavy use. They other is mostly just app data and lower transfer volume.
Those are old tech drives that are small capacity and have a lot of transfers on them in my arr setup and manual process before that. To still have more than 50% life is a testament to how good the wear leveling is and how the write count isn't all that important for 99% of applications.
There are even tools that will cache your most used steam games on the SSD, essentially achieving what OP wants
My Synology has 2x nvme drive specific for cache. You can't even use it as part of your pool unless you ssh in and do it manually.
I use one for cache and the other as part of my pool so my Immich thumbnails load and database fast.
I believe windows 11 is kinda meant to do this automatically now, which is partly why it uses so much ram when you haven't even launched anything yet...
It seems quite bad at it however.
This tool is meant to help diagnose issues with it, but I've not been able to try it, as the windows 11 machine I use is pwnd by my IT department and their antivirus blocks it from running 😅:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/rammap
Thats a ram cache, not a disk cache (linux automatically uses ram caches - much cleaner than windows too)
I think it saves and loads the ram cache on the disk too, or maybe I'm thinking of a different feature...
I'm not too familiar with with windows' internals, so you youre probably right, but swapping a ramdisk would be an... interesting way to solve the problem. (Which is entirely like windows devs lmao)
I think it just swaps it on shutdown and boot.
That makes sense, so its hibernation not a disk cache (kinda a workaround to the same concept, but won't have any impact gaming)
I think it's called fast boot. Hibernation is slightly different.
i have small ssd and larger hdd on debian and play a few games on it. the games are 30-50+gb ea. they stay on the hdd with the wine files (prefixes/runners). i'm not gonna move that crap around constantly just to play, and i can then use btrfs on ssd more easily. no need to worry about disabling cow on certain game directories, or making different subvols so snapshots aren't massive.
Not for gaming so much after ssds got big and cheap, but on NAS Operating Systems like Unraid and TrueNAS, (and likely others) you have a pool of hard drives that do big data storage. Like you pointed out IO is slow. So to speed things up you have an ssd setup as cache. Typically you have the programs you have running are running off that ssd cache. It does IO to the ssd and you setup a slow scheduled replication to the hdd pool.
Sure if your bios supports it.
Disk caches are usually implimented at the OS level, not bios
It’s a raid controller setting in the bios. Software raid driver may be needed.
Yeah I'd consider that an unusual setup, most users probably aren't using that combo of hardware (and possibly outdated software with its windows 7 screenshots in the link).
Also notably it only supports up to 64GB cache drives, so the OS/filesystem implimentation case would include OPs situation - regardless of the CPU/manufacturer theyre using.
It’s not that unusual and there are AMD options. That was just the Dell link. I used it on an asus board. I think any intel chip with a bios that supports raid will work. There’s an amd version but I’ve never used it.
It might make a resurgence but with smaller nvme+sata ssd if costs remain high. Stranger things are happening right now.