Optane and "enable write caching "

[NSGYPA]

I typically check this option to improve my SSD performance however on my Optane Drive it says it's not compatible?

can anyone speak to this?

 

[unwind-protect]

I typically check this option to improve my SSD performance however on my Optane Drive it says it's not compatible?

can anyone speak to this?

The Optanes do not have a DRAM cache like Flash SSDs need.

 

[NSGYPA]

The Optanes do not have a DRAM cache like Flash SSDs need.

thank you!

 

[Hardcore Games]

Most Optane M.2 sticks I see are NAND with some Optane as a cache

 

[R-T-B]

Most Optane M.2 sticks I see are NAND with some Optane as a cache

Those aren't the type of Optane he is talking about here, though they certainly were once more common.

 

[Shrek]

The P1600X is pure optane.

 

[Hardcore Games]

118GB is the capacity of the PX1600X which is rather small by modern standards

Supresided that this technology cannot be stacked lie NAND or HBM

 

[AnotherReader]

118GB is the capacity of the PX1600X which is rather small by modern standards

Supresided that this technology cannot be stacked lie NAND or HBM

Optane could be stacked and second generation Optane SSDs had 4 layers.

 

[A Computer Guy]

The P1600X is pure optane.

View attachment 361948

Sadly sold out now. I missed the boat on this one for my NAS read/write cache.

 

[Shrek]

118GB is the capacity of the PX1600X which is rather small by modern standards

P1600X

But still enough for a boot drive; mine is about half full.

 

[Arco]

UGH, would love this for a server OS drive. Other options would be some enterprise u.2 or u.3 drives or high endurance m.2/sata SSDs.

 

[vvkvvkvvk]

The Optanes do not have a DRAM cache like Flash SSDs need.

Uh that has nothing to do with that option.

Enabling write cache means that writes are cached to memory first and only flushed to disk when certain criteria is filled, which helps if the disk has high latency. Optane doesn't have high latency, so enabling is fools errand (but certainly possible)

 

[unwind-protect]

Uh that has nothing to do with that option.

Enabling write cache means that writes are cached to memory first and only flushed to disk when certain criteria is filled, which helps if the disk has high latency. Optane doesn't have high latency, so enabling is fools errand (but certainly possible)

All OSes in common use do caching in RAM by default.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Uh that has nothing to do with that option.

Enabling write cache means that writes are cached to memory first and only flushed to disk when certain criteria is filled, which helps if the disk has high latency. Optane doesn't have high latency, so enabling is fools errand (but certainly possible)

905P's anyway don't seem to allow this.

 

[Shrek]

The P1600X seems to allow write caching

 

[A Computer Guy]

The P1600X seems to allow write caching

View attachment 362071

try checking the box, it may change description like mine did.

 

[Shrek]

How right you are

They may be worried about losing their "Power Loss Protection"

 

[Logic]

There is a way to enable write caching on an Optane or any fixed driveas well as any USB flash etc drive.
Only NTFS is ever cached by Windows. Any other FS ); it's a lie. (exFAT, FAT32, etc)
This method is file system agnostic.

It involves editing the registry and adding WriteCacheEnableOverride set to 1 (IIRC. I'm Linux Now: Bcash) in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\<DeviceInstanceID>\Device Parameters\Classpnp.
For USB attached storage; UserRemovalPolicy should also also be set while there.

Or you could use the very handy USB-WriteCache V0.2 app by Uwe Sieber, the writer of Dos drivers (IIRC) for USB.
https://www.uwe-sieber.de/drivetools_e.html
IIRC it may only do USB? So you may need to edit the registry but very similarly for the Optane. The MS how to link is in the writeup.

(Check out MaximumTransferLength just below it, for your old BOT protocol USB attached storage. +30%.
Match to average file size, but TRY your NAND's erase block size too. Normally 512kb.)

 

[steamrick]

There is a way to enable write caching on an Optane and any USB flash etc drive that is File System agnostic.

That answers the question if you could.

The other question is if you should. As far as I'm concerned, the answer to that is 'no'.
Enabling write caching on optane seems like a wonderful way to risk data integrity for basically zero performance gains because Optane already has the best latency of any high-capacity nonvolatile storage I'm aware of.

 

[Logic]

That answers the question if you could.

The other question is if you should. As far as I'm concerned, the answer to that is 'no'.
Enabling write caching on optane seems like a wonderful way to risk data integrity for basically zero performance gains because Optane already has the best latency of any high-capacity nonvolatile storage I'm aware of.

On an Optane or any drive, whats faster? Q1T1 Random4K or large sequential..?
Same question for pure reads or pure writes vs mixed, simultaneous reads-writes.

So now a bunch of small writes is coalesced in RAM before being sent as one large sequential page/s or erase block filling sized write.
So now you have one big fast/er write, with a longuninterrupted read time in between.
Plus writes are timed to otherwise idle times.
Also; any ever changing files remain in and are updated in RAM, saving a huge amount of writes (lifespan) from ever being written.

NB that they are read cached same as any other SSD because DRAM is still way faster...

Sure you could lose data, but you do have a backup for that and the every six months reinstall anyway you?
(I haven't and buffer flushing is also disabled for all my drives)
Too lazy to make backups and/or move or partition your personally created files; well then you must wucking fait for your sh!t to load. Your choice.
I'm not!

 

[steamrick]

Sure you could lose data, but you do have a backup for that and the every six months reinstall anyway you?

While I do have daily backups, I don't want to use them...

... and I don't remember the last time I did a clean install, but I'm fairly certain that I upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 to 11.
Speculating, the last clean install was probably when I bought a Crucial M4 as my new system drive and switched from AMD to Intel in 2012. Windows 7 still wasn't overly good about randomly swapping hardware platforms.

 

[A Computer Guy]

That answers the question if you could.

The other question is if you should. As far as I'm concerned, the answer to that is 'no'.
Enabling write caching on optane seems like a wonderful way to risk data integrity for basically zero performance gains because Optane already has the best latency of any high-capacity nonvolatile storage I'm aware of.

Also it defeats Optane's PLP advantage. If you want default system write caching use a consumer SSD.

 

[RootinTootinPootin]

On an Optane or any drive, whats faster? Q1T1 Random4K or large sequential..?

Random..

 

[A Computer Guy]

On an Optane or any drive, whats faster? Q1T1 Random4K or large sequential..?
Same question for pure reads or pure writes vs mixed, simultaneous reads-writes.

My understanding is Optane is really good at random and with sequential there isn't any performance degradation as the drive fills up however compared to todays modern SSD's "affordable" Optane peak transfer speed is much slower. This can be mitigated with striping enough drives to reach NVMe Gen4/Gen5 speeds if that fast transfer rate is what you need. Optane is quite interesting in if you have enough drives it seems you can have your cake and eat it too. (both great random and sequential speeds)

So now a bunch of small writes is coalesced in RAM before being sent as one large sequential page/s or erase block filling sized write.
So now you have one big fast/er write, with a longuninterrupted read time in between.

Optane doesn't have erase cycles like NAND. While logically combining small writes to larger ones can make sense I'm not sure it's even an issue with Optane.

Plus writes are timed to otherwise idle times.
Also; any ever changing files remain in and are updated in RAM, saving a huge amount of writes (lifespan) from ever being written.

Optane endurance over regular consumer SSD's is substantial even in less robust but "affordable" 905P models.

NB that they are read cached same as any other SSD because DRAM is still way faster...

Personally I wouldn't attempt to lean on a lot of heavy caching in RAM without ECC.

Sure you could lose data, but you do have a backup for that and the every six months reinstall anyway you?
(I haven't and buffer flushing is also disabled for all my drives)
Too lazy to make backups and/or move or partition your personally created files; well then you must wucking fait for your sh!t to load. Your choice.
I'm not!

To each their own. From past comments others have written I think one could use Primo cache with a faster SSD to speed up loading their stuff if they want.
For an Optane drive the biggest drawback I see with forcing some write caching solution is your making your nonvolatile storage volatile. Regardless if you have backups or not that can be a problem if your storage usage scenario relies on nonvolatile operation.

 

[Logic]

Random..

LOL!
Yes Q1T1 R4K is THE fastest by far vs NAND SSDs.
I get just over 300MB/s out of a Optane 800p 58GB on an AMD, using the mod signed driver on Win-Raid and a properly aligned Partition and 4K exFAT cluster size.
But fast as R4K is the Large sequential numbers are better.

So (for the above drive eg) coalescing a whole lot of small writes, that would happen at 382MB/s, in RAM,
then writing one large sequential write at 4912 MB/s is faster overall. 12.86X faster..!
Also the caching will time writes to happen during idle times.

It doesn't matter nearly as much with Optanes as it does with NAND SSDs,
but getting 1 big fast write done at an idle time and then leaving the drive free to serve a whole lot of R4K still makes sense.
Also; frequently changed files will stay in RAM and be updated there. Thats ~zero write time!

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12512/the-intel-optane-ssd-800p-review/7

I do NB that the caching software will be check the write cache 1st for any requested files: Pointless reading outdated data!
That obviously ads a tick or 2 of latency, but overall PCMark 10 and game load benchmarks etc are better.

Most enthusiasts are re-installing windows every 6 months or so anyway? I was! (now Linux, with bCache on the Optane)
With Write caching on everything, including USB, and Buffer flushing disabled I never had an issue where I had to re-install and/or restore a backup.
ie: the whole: "You'll lose data! Eek!-eek!-freek!" thing is WAY overblown IMHO. Especially for enthusiasts with their windows install/repair thumb drive just waiting...

Oh and notebooks have a built in UPS...