Intel Optane boosting HDD performance

[@chrisblumarten]

i love your videos, thanks so much for making them. really really useful.

[@handmedowntech]

Thanks. You made my day!

[@pauldunecat]

Quite the adventure! 😎

[@handmedowntech]

It started out simple and then when I tried to reproduce things and make it easy it went south. I figured though that if it was something available as an option I should report on it.

[@jb31842]

Slight tangent: Those blue dampeners are available online on the usual sites (Amazon, eBay etc. or your local e-waste recycler). You might be aware already but they were used in many non-laptop HP systems for who knows how many years, so they ought to still be plentiful. I bought some for an HP mini-tower I had years ago.

[@handmedowntech]

I've been thinking of grabbing a few off of eBay but since I just use the SATA SSDs I mostly need them for the G2s

[@tronalddump8776]

Slap it in a pcie adapter and use it as a cache drive for something like primocache

[@tek_soup]

i have been using since the beginning, i have 64gb versions, i use with WD Black drive, but i use as secondary storage, i have all my games or files on it, now i use some, with Primo Cache Pro, as the L2 drive. they work great to speed up a 22tb red pro also. they are still useful.

[@handmedowntech]

What type of computer are you using it on?

[@tek_soup]

@@handmedowntech pc of course, X299, Z590

[@downundergarage6968]

It was a good tech in the days of trying to make mechanical drives faster.. but these days you can get a brand new 500gb nvme with 5 year warranty for 25 usd.. 39Aud here in australia.

[@handmedowntech]

They tried...

[@perhansen3959]

Optane is GOLD, but what you show in video only supported up to Z590 M2 16/32/64gb. Buy 900/905/4800/5800 disk and use them as cache on all new platforms with Primocache and you will have same results !.

[@handmedowntech]

@@perhansen3959 I'll have to look into primocache

[@RobertFixit]

Interesting. I received one of these for free and always wondered how it worked. I do not have a system that would take advantage of it though. So at this point it will have to be turned into a keychain LOL.

[@handmedowntech]

You could use it as a tiny 16GB M.2 drive, fairly useless.

[@slacker1]

I have a Dell Inspiron 3891 with Intel Quad and video. I got it without a HDD or SSD, etc. I installed a 480gb SSD via a USB adapter and have a 500gb NVMe installed (It's a new project). Am I assuming correctly that I do not need Intel Optane.

[@handmedowntech]

Correct, Optane was a way to help get performance from mechanical drives when SSDs were much more expensive.

[@slacker1]

@@handmedowntech Thank you for the fast response.

[@terrabyteonetb1628]

Just put i some teamextreme, 4000 ddr4 64gin system, (max 3466) Lots of ram for ebooster (n ram drive) prefetch, and primocache, still leaving 16g free

[@handmedowntech]

That's the second mention of primocache. I'll have to look into it. Can't be out of the loop 😉

[@darthbubba866]

Optane is/was a crutch, not an answer. I've found that it helped with some day-to-day computer operations, but extensive HD writes were not among them. Boot times improved because Optane stored the relevant files in what amounted to a fast but small SSD. Save yourselves the time and trouble our content provider expended getting the Optane system to work - get an SSD. Better yet, get some NVMe drives and build some wind chimes using the platters from your HDDs.

[@handmedowntech]

You kinda feel sorry for the engineers that put in all that time for a tech that had such a limited lifetime.

[@perhansen3959]

@@handmedowntech they also speed up normal ssd`s to 16000mb/s !. So its kinda sad they stopped making these drives. Currently im on a z690 platform and i have some 900p optane ssd`s 280gb, and with the little optane m2 in front of optane 900p i can get insane speeds like 30000mb/s with primocache. So its not only HDD drives !.

[@handmedowntech]

So you're saying the optane helps with SATA SSDs?

[@Cabinlab]

​@@handmedowntechIt definitely can. Intel's drivers only support Optane-SATA pairs, but with PrimoCache you could also use it to accelerate USB SSDs and HDDs. That can be a big advantage, especially on mini systems without a ton of slots/ports.

[@Cabinlab]

You're just asking/answering a different question. Optane is still an answer - and probably the best answer - for a lot of builds. Servers running lots of docker containers and/or NAS builds will benefit from Optane caching far beyond what can be accomplished once your NVME slots are full. And NVME is still slower than Optane on random read-write. The only way to get all the advantages is with both NVME and Optane.

[@terrabyteonetb1628]

Primo cache...faster, on a z68 2700k, and 6700k z270

[@walterlegere1403]

Wow, just get an SSD...end of problem. Too much nonsense to try and wade through to get it working. This is probably why Optane is dead! Just like SLI and CrossFire

[@handmedowntech]

It was not a pleasant experience but I wanted to try it out. Some viewers appear to like the Optane. Well now I have a tiny SATA m.2 drive to play with.

[@carnivorebear6582]

SLI and Crossfire died because deferred rendering became the norm in game development, which is inherently incompatible with the tech.

[@MHawkeye]

i was looking at the price of an 8T ssd and erm...$600, maybe in 20 years it will be better. i had a question on what size of optane to use for a Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB(refurb) which is $120 on amazon im seeing a lot of 16G optane drives for $8 but the 32G versions are $50+ so is the 32G largely better than the 16G?

[@Cabinlab]

Optane is faster than NVME SSDs for some operations, so a SATA SSD still isn't approaching the performance of Optane. "The problem" is that Intel didn't support more interesting configurations. Things get a lot more interesting with higher Optane capacities. Then you can use PrimoCache (or Linux) to put a crazy fast cache in front of multiple SATA HDDs and/or SSDs.