StoreMI - Any Long Time Users?

[Random Guy Esq.]

I remember this got a bit of coverage a year or so ago. Basically a tiered storage solution from Enmotus, licensed by AMD. And it seemed to work very well, combining fast and slow volumes of storage into one, with the benefits of both. I just haven't seen anyone mention it recently at all... Are people still using it? Has it been supplanted by better options? I'm just curious as to why an apparently very useful utility seems to have been forgotten about!

 

[IT Troll]

I think the problem with technology like this is that the average consumer doesn’t know about or understand it. Whilst a more technical/enthusiast user will want to ensure they have consistent, maximum perforformance and so will opt for higher tier storage anyway. With SSDs now dipping below £100 per TB and continuing to drop in price, it is hard to see many use cases for this kind of caching system.

 

[Vexr]

I can see myself using it soon. 100 GB game installations aren't doing my drive capacities any favours, especially where my SSD is getting clogged up with installs where parts could be on a HDD without too much of a performance hit.

I'll have to read up more about StoreMI, but I suppose the most concerning issue I have is if I can really trust it to assign files to drives effectively. I.e. if I might not use something often, but I'd want it to load quickly from my SSD on the occasions when I do want to open it, but it crawls because its been put on a HDD.

 

[tamzzy]

With SSD prices getting cheaper by the day; like optane, storemi is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist for a large majority of users.

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

SSD prices are definitely coming down, and I guess streaming becoming ubiquitous has played a role in people not needing as much storage as well. But I still think I'd benefit from this tech.

 

[Vexr]

Looking in to this, StoreMI only supports SSDs up to 250 GB in size. Useless tech in my case with a 500 GB SSD.

 

[Random Guy Esq.]

From what I can see, the free version does only allow use of 250GB of the faster storage in your system, but you'd still get to use the remaining 250GB as a separate volume. There's also a paid for version which allows use of up to 1TB of "fast" storage.

 

[Vexr]

From what I can see, the free version does only allow use of 250GB of the faster storage in your system, but you'd still get to use the remaining 250GB as a separate volume. There's also a paid for version which allows use of up to 1TB of "fast" storage.

Looks like the paid for version is FuzeDrive Plus for Ryzen, costing £46.75 and as you say still only supports up to a 1 TB SSD rather than being unlimited. At that price I could almost get another 500 GB SSD.

I suppose I'm probably maxed out enough on my drives that more storage is the only real option anyway:

 

[erill1971]

you can do drive tiering in windows 10 via the powershell.
tested and it works just as welll as StorMI and is free.

 

[EsaT]

I remember this got a bit of coverage a year or so ago. Basically a tiered storage solution from Enmotus, licensed by AMD. And it seemed to work very well, combining fast and slow volumes of storage into one, with the benefits of both. I just haven't seen anyone mention it recently at all... Are people still using it? Has it been supplanted by better options? I'm just curious as to why an apparently very useful utility seems to have been forgotten about!

Not really that much benefits.
Only real benefit is no capacity loss.
Otherwise it basically adds just drawbacks/pitfalls compared to other solutions.

AMD should have licensed PrimoCache for SSD caching like Intel does with their own Smart Response Technology.
https://www.romexsoftware.com/en-us/primo-cache/

If caching drive fails all data is there in storage drive.
Whose content could be also accessed in any other PC just by attaching drive to it.
Also that caching is simple, safe and easy to remove without any risk for data, if you want to change your drives etc.
And because it works by caching drives/volumes shown by Windows Explorer, you could use it for caching redundant mirrored array.

Again tiered storage is like RAID0:
If either drive fails, good luck for getting data back.
And because data structure is no doubt lot weirder than normal striping, even without drive failure accessing data would be no doubt hard in other PC.
So for home use lot worser than SSD caching.

 

[erill1971]

you can tier drives in raid , ie: 2xssd tiered with 2x hard drive via powershell. done it , cant say i ever had any problems with my setup , just wish it could be done via the windows gui - but alas no.

also caching will wear out a ssd really quickly compared to a tiered system.
i ran a test with primocache , it took 30% of the ssd's life in 3 months