Optane SSD as Boot drive - SQ Nirvana?

[lmitche]

On 9/23/2017 at 8:58 AM, sig8 said:

I removed fiber NIC (used for iPXE boot and network access including NAS) from x16 and moved Optane/ASUS there, it works fine. I have Adnaco S3B in x8 with a USB HDD and a network adapter connected to the USB ports. For some reason Optane/ASUS does not work in x8 port.

 

I do not know if Optane boot is better than iPXE remote boot (technically speaking), if someone can shed some light on that. Earlier iPXE certainly sounded better than SATA connected SSD. 

 

Still experimenting with combinations to see what sounds better in my system.

Sig8,

 

Strange that Asus m.2 won't work in the x8 slot.

 

How are you powering the Adnaco USB box? What cabling are you using?

 

Remember to disable the unused devices in the BIOS, including data ports, USB ports and onboard nics. Disabling in Windows is not enough.

 

Set your nic to 100 gbps.

 

Having run ipxe boot for years, I am thrilled with the sound of optane boot.

[lmitche]

11 hours ago, sig8 said:

Larry: I am using an LC-LC Multi-mode from Adnaco PCIe board to the USB hub. Which other cable you are asking about?

 

So far Adnaco and HDD box on supplied SMPS, I will change that soon, but not yet.

 

How you set the NIC to 100 gbps? My NIC is hanging from Adnaco USB hub like you.

I was asking about the power cable to the Adnaco USB.  I use a 5.5 x 2.5 mm DC to DC Barrell adapter between the lps-1 and usb device for this purpose.

 

You can set the ethernet speed in Windows from the config button on the property tab of the nic.

[lmitche]

9 hours ago, Johnseye said:

@lmitche do you know if the Optane SSD can be used with a board that doesn't support NVMe?  Do you know what the M.2 key is for the Optane?  It looks like B & M so it could work with either keying?

Optane is NVME only, and will not work in a SATA only m.2 slot.

[lmitche]

 

3 hours ago, Robert van Diggele said:

A few questions to those who work with the pcie cards and Optane memory.

 

- do you keep up with W10 updates? The last Fall creators update created a 20+ Windows.old folder on my desktop pc. Together with Windows, this would be larger than the 32 GB Optane memory

- will adding a pcie to sata card for connecting 3.5" HDD will give benefits as well?

 

thanks.

Over here, I disabled windows update long ago. My guess is that my OS is a 2 year old version of Windows 10.  If I were to upgrade I'd do a clean install to an SSD, run all the updates, and then shrink the result to fit in the Optane.

 

Having experimented with a pcie based SATA controller, I wasn't impressed. I am now using a USB 3 hard disk and the Optane.  No need for more.

[lmitche]

8 hours ago, Iving said:

Hi Larry,

Was led here after your input on Bob's Audio Mart thread :-)

I have a i7 6700 CPU on Asus Z270-WS so have been rehearsing possibility of o/s on 32Gb Optane in M.2 (but not for hd caching). I have Windows 10 on a 256Gb M.2 in M.2_1 presently. I have my carefully tagged flac (c. 600Gb of EAC CD rips) on a Samsung SATA SSD with LPS and (joyfully) noted remarks of @joelha in this thread re noise of M.2 in comparison to SSD with LPS.

Here's the rub: Probably you know we can get now or shortly Optane to 280Gb or 480Gb as PCIe Add-in Card e.g., https://www.scan.co.uk/products/480gb-intel-optane-900p-aic-ssd-hhhl-pcie-30-x4-nvme-3d-xpoint-2400mb-s-read-2000mb-s-write.

Now whilst this is too small for Library, I can easily use Filter in fb2k to copy selections from Library (i.e. favourites - most of the stuff I am likely to play - but always modifiable anyway) from the SATA SSD to such a larger Optane drive where o/s could already be installed. In other words a 280Gb or 480Gb Intel Optane PCIe AIC could accommodate an o/s + an abbreviated Library where such abbreviation of the Library would not inconvenience me greatly.

I could disable SATA prior to play having all drive requirements - o/s and music - on a single Optane drive on one "direct to CPU" PCIe slot. (My other "direct to CPU" PCIe slot I would use for the ethernet card I use for AOIP.)

The 280Gb Optane card is "only" £350. I could sell my current o/s 256Gb M.2 to reduce to £300 net.

This isn't a great deal more of an outlay than a 32Gb Optane M.2 card - and not at all if one considers bang for buck - for in comparison to a 32Gb M.2 Optane card I would get to short-circuit the PCH plus eliminate M.2 "noise"? (Bonus: I have a direct LPS 6-pin PCIe supply to mobo from Larry's new 400W HDPLEX as well as 24-pin and 12V to CPU + 5V to Samsung SATA.)

Any helpful remarks appreciated. Hope you don't mind me sharing pre-purchase thoughts.

Thanks for the Optane heads up!

Hi Iving,

 

Seems to me that you know exact what you are doing. 

 

I don't know much about the big Optane PCIE SSD cards, and would be pleased to learn from any experience you are willing to share.  I have all my peripheral devices, nic, HDD and DAC connected via a 4 port Startech USB 3.1 gen 2 card in a direct to cpu x16 slot. The only other devices in the case are the Optane SSD card, ram and of course the two power supplies.

 

Other people with very good ears have validated the benefits of the Optane SSD in an m.2 slot. I can think of no reason why your approach would not deliver the same results.

 

Larry

[lmitche]

5 hours ago, baconbrain said:

Just a side note: After deleting the Win 10 hibernation file and moving the swap file to a non-OS drive, I had enough space to also install the fall creator’s update on my 32 GB Optane. During the install, Windows prompted me to place the temp installation files on a USB drive and everything worked like a charm. Up and running.

That's a cool approach. I usual do a clean install to a SSD, shrink things down there and then do an image copy to the Optane.  It never occurred to me that a direct install was possible. I recently did a fall creator clean install in this way.

 

How do you delete the hibernation and swap on the installation media? Or did I miss something?

 

 

[lmitche]

17 hours ago, jaynyc said:

question for the Optane experts.... in the future when 4+TB PCIe Optane cards are available, would it be optimal to have music files and OS on the same drive, or is a partition still necessary for best performance, or are music files always best via external PCIe USB?

 

 

Jay,

 

Tough to say without trying. There are many variables here.

[lmitche]

21 hours ago, jaynyc said:

so I'm curious, if I were to go the low power route X10SBA-L motherboard with

"1x PCI-E x2 (in x8) slot"

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/celeron/x10/x10sba-l.cfm

 

could I put this

"x4 PCI Express to M.2 PCIe SSD Adapter"

https://www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/pci-express-m2-pcie-ssd-adapter~PEX4M2E1

"Compatible with PCIe 3.0 motherboards, and backward compatible with PCIe 2.0 and PCIe 1.0"

 

into the PCI-E slot and run an Optane M2 as my bootOS drive?

Yes, that's the only way to get Optane support on this motherboard. It may or may not sound good.

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, tboooe said:

I have a Gigabyte z270 MX Gaming mobo that supports Optane.  However, my CPU, a i7-6700 does not so I will need to upgrade to at least an i7-7700.   Anyway, if I use the Optane as a drive cache, can I then just remove the SSD from the PC?  Or is it best to use Optane as another drive and clone my OS SSD on to it?

This thread is all about using Optane as a boot SSD.  Most of us use a i7-6700k with z170 or z270 motherboards.

 

Yes, with an Optane ready CPU you can use the Optane chip as a cache for a hard disk. I have never tried this, nor do I know anyone who has.

 

So please don't upgrade your i7-6700k CPU for Optane support, you don't need it.

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, tboooe said:

 

Oh...I clearly need to look into this more.  I thought my CPU (i7-6700) wont support Optane?  So you are saying I can buy an Optane module, install it in my Z270 mobo and the system will recognize as just another drive?

Yes

[lmitche]

18 minutes ago, tboooe said:

Thank you.  I prefer to not go through the hassle of completely reinstalling my system. Can't I just manually install the Optane  drivers onto my current SSD, clone it onto the Optane drive?

Yes, you can just clone an existing drive. There is no need for drivers.  Linux dd works well as does paragon migrate.

[lmitche]

37 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

 

Good to know. When I did a fresh install Windows needed. The drivers to see the Optane. 

Well I could be wrong, but I don't remember loading drivers.  I'll look when home later.

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

Well I could be wrong, but I don't remember loading drivers.  I'll look when home later.

Yep, no drivers.

[lmitche]

2 minutes ago, rickca said:

If you are talking about an M.2 PCIe adapter, then yes.  But it would have to go into one of the first two x16 PCIe slots.  Again, I'd double check with Larry.

Yes, that is the idea, but which PCIE slots vary by board.

[lmitche]

5 minutes ago, rickca said:

If you are talking about an M.2 PCIe adapter, then yes.  But it would have to go into one of the first two x16 PCIe slots.  Again, I'd double check with Larry.

Yes, but the optane hypercard into one of the two PCIE x 16 slots closest to the CPU.

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, tboooe said:

I believe this driver is only needed if you are using Optane as a cache.  If you are only using it as an SSD then drivers are not needed it seems.

Yes, that's right.

[lmitche]

13 minutes ago, tboooe said:

Got my 800p 58gb Optane stick today and just installed it on my mobo.  In device manager I see it listed as functioning properly.  However, I do not see it listed as a drive (D, E, etc).  I am running Server 2016.  Any ideas?

What does disk manager say?  Is it formatted?

[lmitche]

26 minutes ago, tboooe said:

I got it installed and recognized as E:.

 

I am having lots of issues trying to figure out the best way to clone my current OS.  The issue is I am using Server 2016 in core mode so there is no user interface. I tried installing Paragon but couldnt get the user interface to run.  Any suggestions would be appreciated. I am thinking about just doing a clean install on the Optane stick and saving the fuss.

Boot linix boot a USB stick and DD the drive. Works here very well.

[lmitche]

Sorry, I learned Linux, well Unix, in the 70s and forget that not everyone knows it. Here you go!  You have to boot into an elevated command prompt to do this.

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/disk_cloning#Cloning_an_entire_hard_disk

[lmitche]

Tuning the OS to play music is all about reducing non-music related activity. Your newly issued optane drive is the fastest drive in the world.  Guess what, if your computer spends less time waiting for a Windows log file to write to completion, the more time it has to make music.  You are hearing the benefits of this.

 

Enjoy! 

[lmitche]

Maybe you should try a direct USB connection to your DAC like many of us? You may be surprised.

[lmitche]

Wow CTU, nice find on the addonics card with external power supply!

 

I may have to try that. I have two Optane cards and was thinking about running in a mirror configuration, but I'm afraid the nvme signalling scheme would be lost. I am keeping an eye out for a dual nvme capable card with external power.

 

Thanks Larry

[lmitche]

I just noticed the new optanes use x2 pcie lanes not x4. Interesting. 

[lmitche]

49 minutes ago, rickca said:

That has always been the case.

Rick, do you mean all m.2 optanes released to date are x2 pcie lane devices?

[lmitche]

Thanks Rick, I missed that, not that it matters much. These things are lightening fast.