Using a portable SSD to divert or reduce writes to system storage on a low-memory Windows 10 laptop

A major update to Romex PrimoCache (version 3.0.1) adds support for using the L2 cache (persistent storage) layer for write caching, including with the "Defer-Write" feature which buffers writes in the cache and delays committing them to the backing storage until after a set period of time (e.g. a few seconds). It can be configured to flush the buffer when idle as well. Note that this kind of write buffering carries the risk of data loss or corruption in the event of a system crash so it's not suited for mission-critical applications.

I'm currently using the software with a USB 3.1 enclosure containing an older mSATA SSD (which I consider to be sacrificial) and have found it to be effective in coalescing random writes and in reducing the total amount of data written to the disk. After finding that the the software managed to prevent more than 2 GB of writes from reaching the eMMC during a Windows update, I went ahead and purchased a license.

I would personally prefer that OEMs use more RAM in these laptops to reduce endurance-killing paging (even if it drives up cost) and that Microsoft made further optimizations to reduce the amount of I/O that the system performs to increase endurance. Third-party commercial software should not be necessary to get reasonable endurance out of the storage.