AMD's StoreMI Technology @ [H]

I'm still using Primocache, i haven't attempted StoreMi since my first disastrous attempt.
I'm up to 1.5TB of NVME cache drives and 20GB of RamCache. Aside from some weirdness involving the way Xbox Game Pass stores its games, its still working fantastic.
 
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noko said:
Been using StoreMI and it works great. Not sure what features it is lacking - it speeds up the spinners, what else is it suppose to do? Plus the 4gb of cache makes even the fastest SSDs look slow.
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The tech is bad. You can lose your data very easily. It doesn't cache Raid 1/5 systems. It is incompatible with Optane...
 
Jandor said:
The tech is bad. You can lose your data very easily. It doesn't cache Raid 1/5 systems. It is incompatible with Optane...
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No problem so far. I just use it for games so if it corrupts it would be rather easy to recoup. If I spent the money on Optane, not sure why I would have spinners and not just more SSDs. I am probably on my last round for spinners, basically ones I've had from years past that still work good.
 
noko said:
No problem so far. I just use it for games so if it corrupts it would be rather easy to recoup. If I spent the money on Optane, not sure why I would have spinners and not just more SSDs. I am probably on my last round for spinners, basically ones I've had from years past that still work good.
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Problem is that if it crashes you lose all. This is not some real cache system but rather an extension of a same fusioned virtual drive made of two, where the driver puts the part accessed more frequently on the fast drive. This is rubbish acceleration.
The real thing doesn't do that. It uses the fast drive only for cache. It will write more on the fast drive but this is expected. If it's Optane or some SLC (even MLC like the Samsung Pro) drive it's completely okay because they have (much for SLC and Optane) bigger endurance. If you want to avoid anything related to a surprising shutdown, just turn off the cache write, and it will only duplicate data and read on the fast drive. Even more, it will cache on memory the same way (taking off some free memory for applications though) but the latter seems to be done by StoreMi and Fuzedrive too. Now another good thing for the "real" cache systems is that it will cache also any kind of virtual drive, like a Raid drive, and it will be well advised in this case to be a Raid 1 or raid 5 drive. With write cache off, this will be the safest for the fastest way to run your computer on your data.
But of course on gaming only plateform where you may save your saves online and playing on steam with everything bought on steam or equivalent, it's kind of overkill to run safe. Better look into how to reinstall everything fast.
 
Jandor said:
Problem is that if it crashes you lose all. This is not some real cache system but rather an extension of a same fusioned virtual drive made of two, where the driver puts the part accessed more frequently on the fast drive. This is rubbish acceleration.
The real thing doesn't do that. It uses the fast drive only for cache. It will write more on the fast drive but this is expected. If it's Optane or some SLC (even MLC like the Samsung Pro) drive it's completely okay because they have (much for SLC and Optane) bigger endurance. If you want to avoid anything related to a surprising shutdown, just turn off the cache write, and it will only duplicate data and read on the fast drive. Even more, it will cache on memory the same way (taking off some free memory for applications though) but the latter seems to be done by StoreMi and Fuzedrive too. Now another good thing for the "real" cache systems is that it will cache also any kind of virtual drive, like a Raid drive, and it will be well advised in this case to be a Raid 1 or raid 5 drive. With write cache off, this will be the safest for the fastest way to run your computer on your data.
But of course on gaming only plateform where you may save your saves online and playing on steam with everything bought on steam or equivalent, it's kind of overkill to run safe. Better look into how to reinstall everything fast.
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Honestly with NVME drives and such this is overkill. If you're running a real DB server then your drives are in raid and plenty fast, plus SQL and other DB software does it's own management.
 
Jandor said:
Problem is that if it crashes you lose all. This is not some real cache system but rather an extension of a same fusioned virtual drive made of two, where the driver puts the part accessed more frequently on the fast drive. This is rubbish acceleration.
The real thing doesn't do that. It uses the fast drive only for cache. It will write more on the fast drive but this is expected. If it's Optane or some SLC (even MLC like the Samsung Pro) drive it's completely okay because they have (much for SLC and Optane) bigger endurance. If you want to avoid anything related to a surprising shutdown, just turn off the cache write, and it will only duplicate data and read on the fast drive. Even more, it will cache on memory the same way (taking off some free memory for applications though) but the latter seems to be done by StoreMi and Fuzedrive too. Now another good thing for the "real" cache systems is that it will cache also any kind of virtual drive, like a Raid drive, and it will be well advised in this case to be a Raid 1 or raid 5 drive. With write cache off, this will be the safest for the fastest way to run your computer on your data.
But of course on gaming only plateform where you may save your saves online and playing on steam with everything bought on steam or equivalent, it's kind of overkill to run safe. Better look into how to reinstall everything fast.
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Not worried, working great for speeding up game loading - that is all it is doing and frankly doing it well.
 
NVME is fast, but still noticeably more expensive just wish we would see 5.25" bay HDD's seems a transition that would make far too much sense for spinning rust to stave off extinction awhile longer. The SATA III is defiantly a cache bottleneck concern as well that's gone too overlooked I mean the Gigabyte i-RAM was bottlenecked by SATA why wouldn't the HDD cache bottleneck in the same manner of course it would so it's limiting the cache's ability to do what it's intended to do. Another another note we need round PCIe cables similar to IDE/floppy cables that were all the rage for case airflow a decade ago it's bizarre that doesn't seem to all over the place already quite frankly which RGB lighting naturally because the tech industry doesn't know how to make anything without LED's included anymore.

Primo Cache and a HDD or even USB/microSD/SDHC device is still a very cost effective solution depending on what storage device you get. Easy means to drastically speed up read speeds with pretty zero risk so long as you don't enable write caching you're plenty safe and it's largely unneeded anyway.
 
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I setup StoreMI on my Ryzen 9 3900X / X570 rig using a 256GB Samsung 850 Pro SATA drive combined with a 2TB 7200RPM drive. I use a Samsung 960 Pro NVMe for OS, Programs, and the Games that I care most about, and then I use the StoreMI drive for my seldom played games as well as all of my Virtual Machines.

I have too many VM virtual disks to fit on the 256GB SSD by itself, but using a mechanical drive for my VMs made them agonizingly slow. Putting all of the VMs on the StoreMI drive seems to give them performance very close to running them directly on an SSD, even (especially) when I have 4+ VMs running at the same time. My more rarely played games that I keep on there seem to run great, and it gives me a nice option that doesn't involve having to clog up my main NVMe drive with these games or deal with having them on a slow mechanical drive either.

I'm still not sure that I would ever want to use StoreMI for my OS/boot drive, or really anything important, but for these secondary purposes it seems to be working great so far. It wouldn't really matter if I lost the VMs and/or games as I can always make new VMs and re-download games.
 
Been using it for about 5 months now,on a X570 +3600X using 4Gb of my 32Gb,Tiered with a 1024Gb NVMe ADATA and a 4Tb SATA SSD. Its very fast,and reliable. I've deployed it on dozens of client systems successfully all last year and this. The Version I am using is a paid for license from ENMOTUS so I could use larger SSD's and bigger Ram tiers,Huge difference to! Well worth the 29.95
 
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Jandor said:
The tech is bad. You can lose your data very easily. It doesn't cache Raid 1/5 systems. It is incompatible with Optane...
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Wendell from Level1Techs said last year it does work with Optane,as does their website. Wendell also said it can work with Optane on x470/X570 boards.
 
Manny Calavera said:
Wendell from Level1Techs said last year it does work with Optane, as does their website. Wendell also said it can work with Optane on x470/X570 boards.
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I understand you need to use a bigger Optane and then it may work, and that was why it didn't work well, but that completely shows the technology and the principle to have a merged drive instead of cache is not good. I also find that nothing is telling you this is not good and not working. You may find out depending of your use. This is again not good. I prefer safety for my data in any case.
 
I've been using the Store MI over a year now. when the 2700X came out. i use it with a 256GB Sata SSD, a 4TB 7200RPM drive and 2GB of ram. I have my OS on a 500GB NVMe. I am satisfied with the tech and have many games i bounce around and various programming projects. It feels snappy to me and i enjoy it and never had any problems with the technology.
 
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