AMD Halts StoreMI Technology distribution, Will be Replaced

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[H]ard|Gawd
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https://www.guru3d.com/news_story/amd_halts_storemi_technologywill_be_replaced.html

AMD's Storage (HDD) caching technology has goner EOL. AMD has decided to end-of-life the current version of the StoreMI technology, and effective March 31, 2020, AMD will no longer make this technology available for download on AMD.com

End users who download the current version of the StoreMI technology prior to March 31, 2020 may continue to use it thereafter (i.e. it will not be deactivated) but AMD will no longer provide any technical or end user support.

Instead, AMD will focus its internal development resources on a replacement solution with a rearchitected feature set and a planned release window of 2Q20. Those seeking a storage acceleration solution after March 31, 2020 may wait for the new AMD solution or may seek an alternative solution such as Enmotus FuzeDrive.

AMD does not advise or encourage users to download the current version of the StoreMI technology from mirror or Internet download sites. StoreMI lets you mingle multiple SSDs and conventional hard drives into a single virtual volume. This volume will automatically assign files based on their storage speed necessities. A combination of an HDD and say NVMe SSD apps can load up to three times as faster compared to HDD loading. AMD StoreMI will by design pair your most frequently used files and assign it towards the faster storage unit for peak performance. On top of that, you can also assign an up to 2GB of RAM cache, for mega-fast data. A user-end example could be games, many of you guys have an SSD for the OS and frequently accessed applications. Games often due to install-size end up at an HDD. Here's where StoreMI comes into play, you can leave your game installed on your HDD, but combine it with an SSD into a single, faster, virtual disk. This way, the most frequently accessed data will be loaded over the fused storage, and this significantly enhances load time.
 
If I had to wager a guess, it's because of reliability issues and difficulty recovering data when things go wrong.

I set up my stepsons rig with StoreMI, and while both the SSD and the hard drive used both test just fine to this day, the StoreMi volume decided to corrupt itself, and none of my regular partition management tools helped at all. StoreMi volumes don't even show up as partitions on drives when viewed from recovery tools, just empty space, making it easy for something to overwrite and corrupt the volumes without even knowing...

It will be interesting to see what they replace it with. Storage pooling and prioritizing frequently accessed data on faster drives is a cool tech, but this particular implementation left some details to be desired.
 
I know you can set up a storage space "pool" in Windows 10, and storage spaces supports tiering with SSDs and HDDs. Does the basic Win10 Home and Pro support setting that up? Or does it have to be WIn 10 Pro for Workstation or a server edition? If the basic one can make a tiered storage pool then there is really no need anymore for 3rd party software like this.
 
^ I wouldn't trust a windows storage space even with 20 backups. Too many gotchas, and doesn't even seem taken seriously by MS themselves.

For home use you're better off just buying a bigger SSD and forgetting about tiering altogether.
 
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Zarathustra[H] said:
If I had to wager a guess, it's because of reliability issues and difficulty recovering data when things go wrong.

I set up my stepsons rig with StoreMI, and while both the SSD and the hard drive used both test just fine to this day, the StoreMi volume decided to corrupt itself, and none of my regular partition management tools helped at all. StoreMi volumes don't even show up as partitions on drives when viewed from recovery tools, just empty space, making it easy for something to overwrite and corrupt the volumes without even knowing...
Click to expand...

I had the same thing happen on my son's PC. All he had was an old 80GB SSD so we paired it with a 1TB HDD that I had lying around. It worked fine for a while and then all of a sudden it wouldn't boot one day and we couldn't even get into the volume to save anything. After that I had him just use the standard 'Windows on SSD and everything else on the HDD' until he was able to upgrade to a larger SSD.
 
I would figure that the point of a setup like this is to have all the contents of the combined drive on the spinning drive, and files temporarily moved back and forth on the NVME/SSD for faster access of most commonly used files or currently being used files.
If that's the case then there shouldn't be issues with recovery, well anymore than a single drive that has an issue anyway.

macOS has a similar function: Fusion Drive, which has existed since 2012. No real major issues have cropped up in that time.
 
I thought AMD just licensed the StoreMi tech from another company. I remember having to activate a serial key of some kind when I tried to use it awhile back. It had extra hoops you had to jump through that Intel's RST in my old x99 builds never had.

I'm guessing AMD is parting ways with whoever owns the IP for the StoreMI tech. Can't wait to see what AMD comes up with next though.
 
dvsman said:
I thought AMD just licensed the StoreMi tech from another company. I remember having to activate a serial key of some kind when I tried to use it awhile back. It had extra hoops you had to jump through that Intel's RST in my old x99 builds never had.

I'm guessing AMD is parting ways with whoever owns the IP for the StoreMI tech. Can't wait to see what AMD comes up with next though.
Click to expand...

storeMI was developed in partnership with enmotus who also has their own version called fuzedrive. enmotus will continue support storeMI for AMD until May. they're planning on replacing storeMI with something else though so maybe the new one is all in house developed.
 
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