Martin Brown wrote:
On 12/05/2021 09:01, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
I have just bought myself a new/refurbished laptop, which is supposed
to have an Intel Optane HDD system. Optane is a 16Gb SSD buffer/ 1Gb
HDD. It shows in Control Panel as an Optane + HDD.

Reading up on Optane, it needs to have drivers and utilities, but I
cannot find any mention of them on the system at all. There is an
empty Intel folder in the root of C:.

I had an Intel 32GB SSD cache on my machine and ISTR it requires a
custom RAID 1 like configuration. You should be able to find the right
drivers on the Intel site. It was the first thing to go wrong on that
computer and one day it was so stone dead that no utilities would even
recognise it as a disk - not Intel's and not even bare metal ones.

The laptop seems fast, much faster than my old one, so I have nothing
to compare with. How can I check and be sure the Optane is configured
and being used?

I think it should show up in System Devices.
Intel have utilities for their cache drives. Become much less relevant
now that large SSDs are affordable.

https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/...ne-memory.html

The cache algo uses the RST driver.
Whatever the algorithm is, it is implemented as
part of a RAID driver. Driver types are
IDE, AHCI, RAID and this thing is part of RAID-land.

https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c05591811

How do I enable or disable the Intel Optane memory with Intel RST?

To enable Intel Optane memory using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology
application, use the following instructions:

Open the Intel Rapid Storage Technology application.
Click the Intel Optane memory tab.
Click Enable.
Select a compatible fast drive, and then click Yes.

note: The compatible drive option displays only if more than
one Intel Optane memory module is installed in the computer.

After the enable process is complete, click Reboot to restart the computer.

caution: The computer must be restarted, not shut down. Shutdown might
cause incorrect display of drive volumes.


To disable Intel Optane memory using the Intel Rapid Storage Technology
application, use the instructions in this section.

Before removing the SATA storage device being accelerated by the memory
or removing the memory module from the system, you must disable Intel Optane memory.

note: Do not disable Optane memory in BIOS unless you have first disabled
the feature in the Intel RST application.

Open the Intel Rapid Storage Technology application.
Click the Intel Optane memory tab.
Click Disable.
Click Yes to confirm.
After the disable process is complete, click Reboot to restart the computer.

caution: The computer must be restarted, not shut down. Shutdown might
cause incorrect display of drive volumes.

*******

One difference is the tech of the caching device.

The Robson one, might have been MLC flash.

The Optane ones are 3D XPoint with more write cycles.
Unlike regular flash, Optane is byte addressable. You
don't have to do paged size operation or so it's claimed.

Optane is discontinued for consumer SKUs and is likely
to appear in PCI Express card form factor for a while. I
would guess the price pressure on Optane on the consumer
side, yielded no profit margin, and Intel thinks it is
IBM and every chip is worth three hundred bucks.

Pound for point, Optane draws more electricity. The
PCI Express storage cards are like 15W to 20W or something.
That might be for a dozen or more large chips on a PCB,
plus a multi-channel controller.

The speed of Optane (its controller), is up in the NVMe
region, but it's possible there are Flash products that
offer a higher sustained performance.

To dispense with Optane, there's some sort of procedure
that ensured the underlying (slow) storage device has
copies of all the sectors, so nothing is lost if Optane
is unplugged. It's possible someone might have carried out
the procedure and backed out of the accelerated configuration.
You would hope that a backup image made while the thing
is running, captures all available information, and that
would be just in case you bust something while changing
states on it. I'm not a fan of crap like this, because
it's like juggling hand grenades. I would sooner put the
Optane card in my cufflink box, where items of similar
value are placed.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us...ne-memory.html

"What happens to my data on the drive being accelerated
if I lose or damage the Intel Optane memory module?

When you create an Intel Optane memory volume
(drive being accelerated + Intel Optane memory module pair),
if one is missing from the system, the other disk goes
offline, the OS doesn't see it, and it can no longer be used.

We recommend to using third-party software === ouch!
to recover data on the associated disk.
"

And they don't even name the third party software.

https://www.reddit.com/r/datarecover.../intel_optane/

"Fairly certain these drives do not do classic caching -
data written to the Optane portion is only on the Optane,
not both drives. Non-Optane caching that i've worked with
in the past always had the full data on the main drive,
so if the cache was removed it still would fully recover -
not so with these Optane systems."

The reminder from that discussion, is the name of the device
is important, when looking up the details. As there are
a number of generations of Intel caching mania.

*******

In terms of packaging:

1) The BIOS has a RAID driver, triggered by a hot-key at start.
For example, control-I during POST.

2) The software is two pieces. The driver is one portion.
There is also a RAID Management application. Some RAIDs don't
ship those in the same ZIP file, and the user might be oblivious
to the fact the RAID Management portion is missing, Evidence of
the driver, might be in the Device Management Properties tab
giving the driver file list.

I don't know how this particular one is packaged, but there's
likely two places that need to be checked.

Only the OS on C: knows how to operate this contraption.
Your Linux USB key would ruin it. Your Macrium WinPE CD, would
require a good deal of care setting up custom drivers in the
WinPE, for it to work during a Restore from the Rescue CD boot.
It's just one big nerd trap.

Paul