StoreMI Upgrade / BSOD Solution?

[SidewinderX]

Hi All -- I'm looking for some recommendations on what I should be looking at to resolve this BSOD issue I've got. Below is the background, as well as the options I'm considering.

Background: I built a 2700X-based PC a few years ago that's run like a champ until recently, when I started getting BSODs while using Adobe Lightroom. The PC itself is a 2700X on an Gigabyte Aorus B450 Pro Wifi mobo. I run Windows off of a 512GB Intel 660p NVMe SSD, and then I set up a 256 GB NVME SSD + 2TB HDD with StoreMI as my main storage location, where I keep my recent Lightroom library, as well as most of my game installs (Steam, etc.).

I didn't have any problems with that until recently, when I started getting BSODs while using Lightoom. I did all the normal troubleshoot steps (update BIOS, Memtest RAM checks, played with various GPU acceleration settings in Lightroom, etc.) -- none of that work until I found this other Reddit thread about the Microsoft Gaming Services application causing problems with StoreMI (https://old.reddit.com/r/Amd/commen...with_windows/eril1i4/?st=jxbeas6m&sh=2c8c91dc). I realized that I started having the issues at the same time I had got Xbox PC Game Pass. So I followed the advice in the thread (using Powershell to remove that application with Get-AppxPackage Microsoft.GamingServices | Remove-AppxPackage ), and that seems to have solved the BSOD problem!

However, it's only a temporary fix, since I'm now stuck in this loop where I can either work on photos (with gaming services removed), or I need to reinstall gamingservices, reboot, and play games on Game Pass. (Followed by then removing gaming services and rebooting, to use Lightroom, etc., etc.)

So, I think I've got a few options and I'm looking for some advice!

• 1) Upgrade from StoreMI 1.3 (what I have as the baseline) to the new StoreMI 2.0, and hope that solves the problem.
  • Can anyone confirm that StoreMI 2.0 is compatible with the B450 chipset? It seems like it based on AMD's website, but the FAQ has conflicting info (It still says StoreMI 2.0 is coming soon to other chipsets in part of the FAQ...)
  • Does anyone know if StoreMI 2.0 resolves that compatibility issue with Game Pass? My understanding is that it's totally different software written by AMD rather than Emotus, but I haven't seen much in my searching online to confirm that.
  • I think, if I do this upgrade, I basically have to backup all the data on that drive to another location, then uninstall StoreMI1.3 / wipe both the SSD and HDD I was using, reinstall StoreMI 2.0, and rebuild the new volume from scratch -- is that right? Or is there a way to preserve any of the data and avoid the backup/transfer churn? (again, this isn't on my boot drive, so ultimately the backup and transfer approach isn't a killer...)
  • This as the advantage of letting me manage my games and photos one the single StoreMI volume like I have been, which has been a nice carefree way to do things)
• 2) Give up on StoreMI all together, upgrade my 256GB NVMe SSD to a 1TB drive, and just deal with having two separate storage volumes
  • This seems like the more "stable" solution, since it won't rely on any potentially flaky AMD software to hold it together. 1TB NVMe drivers are also much cheaper now than they were when I built the rig, so it's not as much of a cost killer to do it this way
  • Again, to confirm, if I go this way, I'll need to backup all the data to another location anyway to uninstall StoreMI? Or is there a way to preserve the data on the HDD and uninstall StoreMI without basically reformatting those drives?
  • The downside is that I'd loose my carefree storage approach and have to make a decision every time I'm storing something (be it a game or importing new photos) about whether I'm storing it on the NVMe SSD or the mechanical HDD, which is really the thing I was trying to avoid by using StoreMI in the first place.

Any recommendations? Options that I've missed? Thanks!

 

[GotNoRice]

You should be able to separate your existing drive while retaining the data. It's been a while since I used the older version but I believe there is an option to move all data to the "slow" drive, after which you can remove the "fast" drive, and then switch storemi versions and create a cached drive. You should not have to completely wipe your drive, but I would probably backup your data just in case.

Just keep in mind that the first version of storemi combined the capacity as a tiered-storage solution. Storemi 2.0 is much more primitive, and is simply a caching solution (does not combine capacity). In addition, it's significantly handicapped compared to the first version because it ONLY does read caching. So anything that relies on good write performance will get no benefit from your SSD cache. It also has some fairly major flaws, which in my case caused me to stop using Storemi 2.0. The main thing is that it requires installation of a custom storage driver. That custom storage driver made it so that I could no longer read SMART info from any of my drives, which was a deal-breaker.

It's a shame really. I think the first version was actually better, I just wish it didn't have so many artificial limitations. The original version of Storemi really felt like you were using a castrated trial version of FuzeDrive (the Enmotus software that it was based on), but at least it worked very well. You got seamless read and write performance increase because of the nature of tiered storage vs caching. I used my storemi drive to host all of my VMs and some of my less used steam games. Other than the artificial limitations, the original version of Storemi never gave me any problems, and it did a great job making all of my VMs seem almost as fast as they would be if they were all on an SSD. That was particularly important when you are trying to boot-up several VMs at the same time. With Storemi 2.0, it was still faster than simply using the mechanical hard drive on it's own, but the VMs were considerably slower than they were when using the old version of Storemi.

I am hoping that AMD improves their software, as technically Storemi 2.0 is still in "beta". Write caching would be very nice. Fixing the gimped custom storage driver would be critical. I'm more inclined to go and buy a real version of FuzeDrive from Enmotus going forward, but I'm in no rush. I'm not sure if going to a real FuzeDrive version would fix your problems or not, but it might, since the software is actually updated.

 

[TheSlySyl]

Storemi was never stable for me and I eventually ditched it for Primocache, which is similar. There were too many corrupted drives as a result of Storemi and constant BSODs and the eventual solution was a (complicated) full format of both drives and reinstallation of windows.

Primocache has been stable for years though and I highly recommend it. Just not for write-cache.

You do lose some storage space, but as a result you never can actually lose data due to the cache data getting messed up - you just lose the cache and can easily rebuild it.