Optane SSD as Boot drive - SQ Nirvana?

[tboooe]

9 minutes ago, rickca said:

From page 17 of the manual, the M.2 connector uses PCIe lanes from the chipset.

Due to the limited number of lanes provided by the Chipset, the availability of the SATA connectors may be affected by the type of device installed in the M2A_32G connector. The M2A_32G connector shares bandwidth with the SATA3 0 connector.

Thank you...so I wont have any conflict with my dual fiber NIC installed on the PCIEx8 slot?

[rickca]

3 hours ago, Johnseye said:

Yes, this is what I was referring to in my post to Ted as one of the options.  It will be one of the things I try.  Currently the Optane stick is being used as a hard drive.  I also have a SATA SSD.  I will install the OS onto it and use the Optane stick as an ancillary memory/cache. 

I was pointing out that you can now use Optane as a cache for a non-OS data drive.

[rickca]

Just now, tboooe said:

Thank you...so I wont have any conflict with my dual fiber NIC installed on the PCIEx8 slot?

No conflict, but I'm pretty sure @lmitche is advocating putting Optane in a slot directly connected to the CPU rather than the chipset.  I'll let Larry advise you further on that.

[tboooe]

4 minutes ago, rickca said:

No conflict, but I'm pretty sure @lmitche is advocating putting Optane in a slot directly connected to the CPU rather than the chipset.  I'll let Larry advise you further on that.

ahhh..so in this case I would use the Asus card then instead of using the m.2 connector?

[rickca]

1 minute ago, tboooe said:

ahhh..so in this case I would use the Asus card then instead of using the m.2 connector?

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.

[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.

[tboooe]

1 minute ago, lmitche said:

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

Ok, I am going to have to compare the Asus card with connecting the Optane directly to the m.2 connector.

 

As for deciding which PCIE slot to use, how do I decide?  What exactly should I be looking for in the mobo manual?

[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.

[rickca]

16 minutes ago, tboooe said:

As for deciding which PCIE slot to use, how do I decide?  What exactly should I be looking for in the mobo manual?

The CPU has 16 PCIe lanes.  The first two x16 slots share those lanes in an x8/x8 configuration.  So the M.2 PCIe adapter can go in either one.  The 3rd x16 slot (which is only x4 electrically) uses PCIe lanes from the chipset, as do the x1 slots.

 

From page 6 of the manual

The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.

[jabbr]

16 minutes ago, rickca said:

The CPU has 16 PCIe lanes.  The first two x16 slots share those lanes in an x8/x8 configuration.  So the M.2 PCIe adapter can go in either one.  The 3rd x16 slot (which is only x4 electrically) uses PCIe lanes from the chipset, as do the x1 slots.

 

 

This is of course CPU, motherboard/chipset specific. Xeons and particularly the new AMD EPYC chips have 32 -> 128 PCIe lanes/cpu: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7281

[rickca]

42 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

This is of course CPU, motherboard/chipset specific. Xeons and particularly the new AMD EPYC chips have 32 -> 128 PCIe lanes/cpu: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7281

Quite.

[tboooe]

Curious if anyone has done a  comparison between uisng the Asus Hyper card and connecting the Optane module directly to the m.2 slot?  

[Johnseye]

15 hours ago, rickca said:

I was pointing out that you can now use Optane as a cache for a non-OS data drive.

 

My misunderstanding.  I thought you were referring to the OS drive.  I didn't realize it could be used as cache for non OS as well.  I assume that drive needs to be local and not mapped?

[rickca]

25 minutes ago, Johnseye said:

I assume that drive needs to be local and not mapped?

I really don't know but I expect you are right.

[rando]

20 hours ago, lmitche said:

Yep, no drivers.

 

This sounded a bit odd to me as so much as been made of W10 choosing (controlling ) drivers including overwriting user installed ones.  So I punched up Intel and came away with the driver you should be using for your Optane drives.  I would expect since this Intel driver package includes a user interface it would be worth investigating.  Let me know if this has any beneficial results in your system.

[tboooe]

5 minutes ago, rando said:

 

This sounded a bit odd to me as so much as been made of W10 choosing (controlling ) drivers including overwriting user installed ones.  So I punched up Intel and came away with the driver you should be using for your Optane drives.  I would expect since this Intel driver package includes a user interface it would be worth investigating.  Let me know if this has any beneficial results in your system.

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.

[rando]

Thought something seemed a bit off.  Guess I should have read through the entire thread before commenting.  

[tboooe]

Optane 800p 56gb stick ordered and arriving tomorrow via Prime...will report findings shortly.

[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.

[tboooe]

It seems people are using Paragon Migrate to clone their hard drive to the Optane stick.  Is there a free version or do I have to pay the $30 for a license.  Just want to make sure before I buy it.

[tboooe]

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?

[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?

[tboooe]

24 minutes ago, lmitche said:

What does disk manager say?  Is it formatted?

Thank you for the reply.  

 

I cant access Disk Manager since I am using Server 2016 Core.  Based on your reply I did more searching.  I found a youtube video that seems to explain that I need to manually partition this drive and give it a drive letter via Powershell. Stupid me thought this NVME would be like using a USB memory stick.

 

Here is the video if anyone is interested for the Powershell commands.

 

[tboooe]

New 64gb Optane model introduced.  Seems it is the same as the 800p 58gb version I just bought but rebranded as M10.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12748/the-intel-optane-memory-m10-64gb-review-optane-caching-refreshed