iSRT with NVMe 960 EVO in PRIME Z370-A?

[Syranolic]

It's been a while since I built a system, and I just assumed I would be able to use a 64G partition on a SSD to accelerate a large mechanical SATA drive like I used to. The SSD is setup as a M.2 PCI-E device in slot 1 and the BIOS is configured to use RAID rather than AHCI. Windows 10 is booting from the SSD. Unfortunately, Intel RST doesn't seam to see the SSD, and won't let me setup SRT. Is this function reserved to Optane Memory now?

 

[toliman]

intel RST/ SRT has probably been upgraded for optane. I never had the setup for SRT when it was around, so i can't help with the setup there.

If you still want the feature, PrimoCache does have a similar feature to SRT, using L1 cache with system RAM and L2 caching using a SSD or SSD partition.

There might be a few others that support L2 cache or SSD caches.

 

[Bier667]

I played around with a 32GB optane caching M.2 device this summer and never got it run as a caching drive with a PM961 256GB M.2 ssd on a Asus b250M mainboard so i decided to use it for nearly 3 weeks as a windows only boot device.

Most UEFI's give you the option under the PCH settings to setup a optane drive and the software then tells you it needs more space or somewhat along those lines...

In the end i'am a little pissed off that i cant further comment in the CPU/GPU section at anand so...end.

 

[Campy]

I played around with a 32GB optane caching M.2 device this summer and never got it run as a caching drive with a PM961 256GB M.2 ssd on a Asus b250M mainboard so i decided to use it for nearly 3 weeks as a windows only boot device.

Which CPU were you running?

 

[Syranolic]

I was finally able to use the PCIe SSD as a cache after installing the OS on the mechanical drive and setting the "CSM" module to UEFI only. It needs to be on auto during the install. I'm going to try to preserve the cache partition on the SSD while installing the OS on the free space. After that I'll remove the OS from the mechanical drive and see if I can still cache it...

 

[Ratman6161]

I was finally able to use the PCIe SSD as a cache after installing the OS on the mechanical drive and setting the "CSM" module to UEFI only. It needs to be on auto during the install. I'm going to try to preserve the cache partition on the SSD while installing the OS on the free space. After that I'll remove the OS from the mechanical drive and see if I can still cache it...

This seems like a waste of the 960 EVO. I think you would be far better off just installing the OS on the SSD and using the dusk drive for bulk storage. Why accelerate a spinning disk when you have one of the best SSDs on the market?

 

[Syranolic]

This seems like a waste of the 960 EVO. I think you would be far better off just installing the OS on the SSD and using the dusk drive for bulk storage. Why accelerate a spinning disk when you have one of the best SSDs on the market?

My Steam library doesn't fit on the SSD. Caching the games that me and the kids actively play makes sense. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be able to have the OS and the cache on the same SSD this time.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

My Steam library doesn't fit on the SSD. Caching the games that me and the kids actively play makes sense. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be able to have the OS and the cache on the same SSD this time.

Toliman already mentioned PrimoCache. I advocate it also to break away from proprietary solutions like ISRT. And also, I believe that ISRT will only work with an Intel SATA Controller, until, as some say, the right nexus of Intel hardware dovetails with NVME M.2 PCIE.

I'm now using the Beta version 3.0 of Primocache, and haven't discovered any bugs or problems. I also tried it with a dual-boot configuration for a single 960 Pro 1TB drive, by creating a caching volume of ~ 150 GB after the system-boot volumes. That works pretty well by itself. Didn't really have any problems with it.

You can, if you wish, have a two-tiered caching solution for the HDD spinner. You would use the NVME caching partition, and set up a RAM cache of . . . whatever size you thought was practical.

I had also done things that way, but discovered that my Macrium backup would eventually show disk errors on the cached HDD, requiring a CHKDSK repair. Once I stopped caching the HDD to RAM as well as to NVME M.2, the drive errors disappeared.

Reports tell me that the two-tiered caching works fine if you don't have the complication of a problem like my backup configuration.

While you would pay maybe $30 for a lifetime license of PrimoCache, you can use it with combinations of different controllers, RAID arrays, AHCI disks and so forth. It's a Swiss Army knife of caching options.

Currently, I no longer use the boot-system NVME for caching. Instead, I put in a 250GB 960 EVO using the second x8 PCIE slot. The entire EVO is configured as a caching drive for a large spinner. I may eventually move to a PCIE x8 card that allows for 2 or more NVME drives. But there's not hurry or need.