Intel® Optane™ Memory
Support for Issues Related to Intel® Optane™ Memory
Announcements
Want to learn how Intel® Optane™ Memory can help your business? Talk to our Expert!

Looking for our RealSense Community? Click HERE

The Intel® SSD Toolbox and Intel® Data Center Tool are now End-Of-Life, see for more information and replacements tools here
1343 Discussions

Can Optane accelerate Secondary HDD?

BSu4
Novice
11,648 Views

Hello,

I already have a Samsung 960 Pro NVMe Primary HDD so there's no point accelerating my boot drive.

 

My secondary HDD is a mechanical WD Black 4TB that is currently being accelerated by a SATA SSD using Intel RST. I would like to change this so it is accelerated with the Optane module rather than the SATA SSD. My question is, can Optane be used to accelerate any drive or just the primary one? All the product info seems to suggest using it to speed up the primary boot drive only and I want to be sure before purchasing a module.

Thanks in advance.

1 Solution
idata
Employee
4,879 Views

Hello everyone,

 

 

There has been an update, secondary data drive acceleration is now possible with the latest Intel® Optane™ memory and Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) applications (Version 16.0.2.1086 or later).

 

 

Make sure to review the requirements here as they differ from main drive acceleration:

 

 

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000027987/memory-and-storage.html Secondary/Data SATA Drive Acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory

 

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000026040/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-memory.html Software and Platform Support for Intel® Optane™ Memory

 

 

Best regards,

 

Eugenio F.

View solution in original post

24 Replies
idata
Employee
4,570 Views

Hello happyguy82,

 

 

You're correct, Intel® Optane™ can only be used to accelerate one Windows® 10 SATA boot drive.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.
BSu4
Novice
4,570 Views

Thanks Carlos.

Can 2 Optane memory sticks be used to accelerate 1 Primary Windows 10 SATA boot drive? For avoidance of doubt I'm referring to purchasing 2 x 32GB Optane accelerators and using both of them instead of just 1, to accelerate a single HDD.

Thank you.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
4,570 Views

 

Hello happyguy82,

 

 

Only one module is supported per system. A second may be installed, but will only serve as a small storage device (using Intel® Optane™ Memory as an SSD is possible but not supported).

 

 

It may not sound like much, but thanks to the way that our caching algorithm works, one 16 GB module is usually plenty for most users. The 32 GB sticks are actually intended for "power users who often use a variety of data-intensive applications such as prosumers and gamers."

 

 

We hope this helps. If you have any additional questions or concerns, feel free to let us know.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Carlos A.

 

0 Kudos
Sde_K
Beginner
4,570 Views

Really in 2017 there is absolutely no place for a 70 euro boot drive enhancer because every enthusiast will already have a 500 GB SSD installed. However currently my 2 TB gaming disk would significantly benefit from Optane. I would purchase Optane just to speed up that gaming disk, as a 2 TB SSD is at least 700 dollars. Now you are telling us we can't use Optane on a drive of our choosing. Missed opportunity! This is a terrible oversight on the part of Intel.

JHagl1
Beginner
4,570 Views

@sdekooter: It's hard to not feel like any software for Windows could had brought that functionality as "a hack" to Windows letting you mix any two drives you want any way you want. Or maybe it's harder with Windows because maybe one don't get as much control but at-least in say Linux or BSD instead.

0 Kudos
PTrou
Beginner
4,570 Views

I have to say I feel mislead by your marketing material.

I am currently building a new workstation for work. I have already spent a great deal of money by purchasing an Intel i9-7940 CPU, Intel 480GB Optane 900p for my Boot/Apps drive and in addition an Intel Optane 32GB Module in order to speed up the three 10TB Western Digital Gold disks that are used to handle the data that I process. Now I find out that it will only work with the boot/os drive and no other drive.

Nowhere in your original FAQ document does it mention that this is the case. In no review that I read when making my decisions did it mention this either.

I have to say that I feel cheated. Is there any way that my Optane module can be made to work with other hard disks other than the BOOT? If there is not then I have to agree with the other posts, this is a very stupid oversight and a missed opportunity. It basically means that there is no market for the module at all. ALL potential customers will already have an SSD as their boot.

I hope there is some way you can change this, if not then I have a useless 32GB Optane M.2 for sale if anyone wants one.

0 Kudos
PTrou
Beginner
4,570 Views

p.s. I would appreciate someone from Intel contact me privately regarding this. My company builds high end workstations and if Optane could be used to cache mechanical hard disks it would be a very popular product for my customers.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
4,570 Views

Hello PaulT72,

 

 

Thanks for your reply. Please check your private messages.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Eugenio F.
0 Kudos
LRami2
Beginner
4,570 Views

I just went through the ver y same scenario... I bought a M.2 ssd for boot drive with a secondary storage. I expected that optane would speed up the games and apps installed on the secondary drive. Will there be an option to do this?

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
4,570 Views

Hello RamboNTanga,

We don't know if Intel® Optane™ Memory will support secondary drives. However, the idea has been submitted to our business unit, so there's a possibility this will be added in the future.

Best regards,

 

Eugenio F.
0 Kudos
LRami2
Beginner
4,570 Views

Thanks for the response. I hope this happens... I actually think accelerating secondary drives would give a lot of flexibility to an already great product.

0 Kudos
ATudu
Beginner
4,570 Views

Ok, I'm going to pop the question..

First, I have to say that just as some people mentioned already, I too feel very mislead by the product's presentation. This kind of deal-breaker information should be shouted loud and clear, so that buyers know this is a strong limitation and would not fit some of their imagined use-cases.

It seems that the only market for the product is represented by customers with old systems which only have an HDD as system drive and could benefit from accelerating it. But how likely is that these customers have a new 200+ chipset and an old configuration that misses at least one SATA SSD? As a boot drive.. Obviously not much. This use-case doesn't make much sense and it's probably very rare too.

However, following a simple, common sense logic, if a customer gets a z370 motherboard, it's most likely that he / she also gets an SSD as a system boot drive, possibly even an NVMe one. Also, a larger data HDD. Since accelerating SSDs would not make sense, there's only one real useful use-case where the Optance would make sense - accelerating the big slow HDD. And its exactly this use-case that is not supported. Without one reasonable "why".

Which brings us to the next logical, pertinent question: Why does a system boot HDD can be accelerated, but a non-boot one does not? I see absolutely no reason for which it could not. As far as I can imagine, this is a caching scenario. And now I have to learn that in this scenario, only HDDs containing certain type of data can be accelerated. As if missing the system files and system specific drive sections makes your HDD un-acceleratable. It makes absolutely no sense to me and to others as well, therefore I strongly demand an answer. It can be as technical as possible, as long as it delivers reasonable explanation.

If I missed the explanation somewhere in the documentation, please provide a pointer to that.

Thank you!

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
4,570 Views

Hello AlexTuduran,

 

 

We appreciate your interest in our products.

 

 

What features and uses a product has in its release is based on marketing decisions. We can't provide technical details on that regard.

 

 

However, we'll pass your feedback to our business unit as well.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Eugenio F.
0 Kudos
ATudu
Beginner
4,570 Views

Hi Eugenio,

So I'll take it that although the "feature" is technically available on the released product, Intel deliberately hides it, although it's exactly what most of the users want and exactly what makes the most sense, if not the only that makes sense. And all of this due to marketing decisions.

This isn't nice. I get it that Intel wants to gain some marketing advantage in future releases, but deliberately blocking functionality that is already there and especially functionality that makes sense to exist and no sense at all if it doesn't, only makes your clients feel cheated. However, if you're going to cheat, cheat with things that can't be verified or can't be thought of.

And if you still decide to in-your-face-cheat and block intuitive features that have no explanation of not to exist, at least make the product's limitation clear to the customers beforehand.

I really hope you come with a solution that can fix your customers' distrust and release a software package that can fix enable this already-there-marketing-rationale-hidden feature.

All the best,

Alexandru Tuduran

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
4,569 Views

Hello AlexTuduran,

The feature to support secondary drives is not already in the product, nor is it a defect on the product that should be fixed.

However, we've informed the corresponding team about your thoughts and concerns about these features for consideration.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Best regards,

 

Eugenio F.
0 Kudos
RMANS
Novice
4,570 Views

I think it should be fixed, and that many of us who bought into the Optane technology would agree that, if not an intentional defect, it surely is a major flaw, and a major, and very peculiar limitation.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
4,880 Views

Hello everyone,

 

 

There has been an update, secondary data drive acceleration is now possible with the latest Intel® Optane™ memory and Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) applications (Version 16.0.2.1086 or later).

 

 

Make sure to review the requirements here as they differ from main drive acceleration:

 

 

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000027987/memory-and-storage.html Secondary/Data SATA Drive Acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory

 

- https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000026040/memory-and-storage/intel-optane-memory.html Software and Platform Support for Intel® Optane™ Memory

 

 

Best regards,

 

Eugenio F.
BSu4
Novice
4,570 Views

Hello,

Thank you so much for responding to the concern that I raised almost a year ago.

Thanks for now supporting accelerating secondary SATA SSD/SSHD/HDD with Optane as there is undoubtedly a large consumer base who have fast NVMe SSDs as the primary drives and a slower SATA drive as secondary.

Having read the requirements though, it seems that only 8th Gen Intel CPUs and above support accelerating secondary SATA drives. I have an i7-7700K with Z270. Could you please confirm my understanding that I can't accelerate my secondary drive with Optane?

Thank you.

0 Kudos
idata
Employee
4,570 Views

Hello happyguy82,

 

 

Thanks for your reply. As you mentioned, an 8th Generation Intel® Core™ CPU is required for Intel® Optane™ memory secondary/data drive acceleration. This feature is not available on systems with 7th Generation Intel® Core™ processors.

 

 

You can check the full requirements in the links shared in our previous post. Please let us know if there's anything else we can do for you.

 

 

Best regards,

 

Eugenio F.
0 Kudos
TJank1
Beginner
3,011 Views

Hi there,

Would you mind please to escalate this again to Intel's R&D team and ask them to make it work also on 7th generations Intel® Core™ CPUs ?

When Z270 chipset was out along with Kaby Lake (7th Gen) it was proudly advertised that most motherboards with this chipset will support Optane (Gigabyte, Asus, MSI, etc).

Now it turns that support was available for boot drive only, without any remarks though in Intel's and partner's marketing campaigns. Fixed only now (April 2018) to support other that boot drive, if I conclude correctly (?).

I don't really get this kind of Intel's marketing strategy. It seems like it was fake news, at least partially.

For boot drive SSDs (SATA or M.2 NVMe) are very common today given the falling prices. However for mass storage with lots of data platter drives are still very popular, and Optane caching/boost support for the later is more than welcome.

I have spent a fortune in 2017 on Core I7 7700K CPU and 1,5 year down the road you still tell me ... non-boot drives are not supported on Z270 with this CPU.

Yet support for Optane 800P series is more than welcome with relevant capacities 58GB and 118GB respectively. If I am not wrong even latest IRST drivers support 64GB cache max.

So, Intel please deliver your marketing promise.

Best,

/Tom

0 Kudos
Reply