SSD / HDD Caching ?

PhoenixUK

PhoenixUK

PhoenixUK

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Haven't actually tried this, I can see AMD StoreMI is up for x570 boards but are there any alternatives?

I have a spare small SSD and NVME that I would like to use as cache for the 6tb storage drive to make it bit more responsive.

Is there any free software or one included with maybe samsung, crucial or adata drives that does it?
 
Depends on your system. If you have Intel you can probably use the Intel version of StoreMI, which would be Intel RST, though you'll have to check what they've been doing with regards to removing SSD acceleration in favour of Optane.

There are other versions of this kind of thing that are not hardware specific, such as Cacheman and Primo Ramcache Ultimate.
 
StoreMi/FuzeDrive isn't caching.
It's tiered storage, which works kinda like RAID0.
Except instead of striping it moves data, either at file or lower block level, between different speed storage devices combined into that one array.
Meaning if any storage device in array fails, you're going to loose possibly lots of data.
Also if your PC goes kaputt you can't access data by just connecting HDD to another PC.

True caching doesn't remove data from HDD at any point, but only puts copy of accessed data to SSD.
Hence all data is always accessible from HDD by connecting to other PC.
(unless using also write caching and there's "unflushed" data on SSD)
PrimoCache is such program.
Because it works at file/Windows drive level you could even have drive fault tolerant RAID1 or RAID5 as drive which is cached.

https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/did-some-benchmarking-of-an-ssd-caching-solution.2533859/
 
Fair play that makes sense.
I might give primo a go, I'm not really bothered about game loads etc as I load all up from nvme/ssd - it was more in thought of making the storage hdd a bit more snappy as right now copying files to or from it is horrendously slow and I copy a lot of big stuff often (4k video footage).
 
EsaT said:
Meaning if any storage device in array fails, you're going to loose possibly lots of data.
Also if your PC goes kaputt you can't access data by just connecting HDD to another PC.

True caching doesn't remove data from HDD at any point, but only puts copy of accessed data to SSD.
Hence all data is always accessible from HDD by connecting to other PC.
(unless using also write caching and there's "unflushed" data on SSD)
Click to expand...

From what I understand, the version of StoreMI released a couple of years ago was liable to data loss, but StoreMI 2.0 now works as you described: write-through caching, where all data is saved first to the HDD, then copied over to the SSD. If the two are separated, no data is lost. See the following (under 'Application'):

I5SFgr5.jpg
 
Malamo999 said:
From what I understand, the version of StoreMI released a couple of years ago was liable to data loss, but StoreMI 2.0 now works as you described: write-through caching, where all data is saved first to the HDD, then copied over to the SSD. If the two are separated, no data is lost. See the following (under 'Application'):

I5SFgr5.jpg
Click to expand...
Yeah, looks like AMD has just released new version and it works as cache.
Also it operates on Windows drive designation level.
Though instead of using partition as cache device it seems to reserve whole SSD.
https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/store-mi
 
You might want to try Windows Storage Spaces. Excluding your boot device, you can throw all your SSD's and HDD's into one storage pool which makes it much easier to manage. Then its simply a case of dividing up the pool of drives to meet your needs.

I have Tiered Storage Space for programs and games. Effectively its a single SSD sitting in front of 2 HDD's in RAID0. Windows automatically promotes the most frequently used programs and games to the SSD. I have set aside a small Write Cache on the SSD of a few GB's that speeds up the process of updating and patching.

If you are only using 1 HDD and can't take advantage of striping across HDD's. You will probably want to bump the Write Cache size. Although I'm uncertain if this would boost performance for massive 4K media files as I've not played around with the Write Cache settings much.

I had to setup the Tiered Storage Space via the PowerShell. I believe there were plans for a GUI being added in the latest version of Windows. I've not upgraded yet to check. Just search for "Manage Storage Spaces" and see what options your version of Windows displays.
 
Does anyone know the number of configurations StoreMI 2 can support.

For example, could I have 2 sperate NVME drives, with each NVME drive caching it's own HDD?
 
JasonM said:
Does anyone know the number of configurations StoreMI 2 can support.

For example, could I have 2 sperate NVME drives, with each NVME drive caching it's own HDD?
Click to expand...
Hard to find anything concretic, but there's that only one active configuration at a time line in end of this FAQ:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/amd-storemi-faq

PrimoCache is far more flexible with ability to create multiple "cache tasks" with each cache volume capable to caching up to 16 drive partitions.
https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/instructions-graphical-user-interface-overview.html
https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/instructions-manage-l2storage.html
 
EsaT said:
Hard to find anything concretic, but there's that only one active configuration at a time line in end of this FAQ:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/amd-storemi-faq
Click to expand...

That confused me also, however think I have it worked out.

You can have up to 4 separate cache drives working at once. Also a cache drive can be split to support separate HDD's.

I have been playing around with the technology and it's pretty good, I tested CrystalDiskMark on a HDD and was getting close to the pcie SSD speeds. It only supports read caching, however that's not a bad thing as it should keep data integrity. Windows 11 boot times are also very quick, again it needs a few boots to learn what to cache.

I'm aware of Primo Cache, however i'm going to give StoreMI a try for now.
 
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