Optane memory - Is this stuff absolute garbage?

[phaZed]

So, I'm wondering if others have experienced the same type of issues as I have.

I am increasingly seeing bad Optane drives in where Windows constantly corrupts itself - sometimes to the point of not booting, but also to the point where strange issues occur, but still boots. My latest customer that has a 2 year old AIO with an Optane drive... the thing corrupts something new almost every time it boots... it does boot. browser.dll... gone, and can't replace it, it just *disappears*. Windows updates fails with "windows update error 0x800703f1".

Running ckdsk c: /f will *fix* the drive, only to have it seemingly reverted immediately, I can run chkdsk 10 times and it will always seemingly fix the same problem but never resolve.

I can't install drivers via Windows update or SDIO - the install fails when letting the Windows update process manage it. I can go into Dev manager and manually search online, then it will install, but it won't install everything.. ie. The mouse fails to install, the keyboard fails to install.. have to manually install the driver via dev manager. Another example.. My Zalman drive, I have to manually install the HDD driver, then the volume driver, then the VCD driver... after rebooting... it's all gone again, like I never did anything.

If I edit the registry, on next boot, it's back to where it was.

So, it's not an isolated incident for me.. this is the second or third time for this exact type of wonky behavior. Other behaviors include totally borked hard drives - it's gone RAW but the hard drive passes SMART and tests. Sometimes there is inconsistencies between the Optane drive and the HDD.. as in, the Optane drive has the file.. but it NEVER goes/updates to the HDD. Boot issues, no-boot issues, etc.

Remove the Optane, reinstall, everything works fine. With Optane.. everything falls apart. Is this stuff absolute garbage or what?? I've got like 10 of these 16GB drives piled up in which removing them fixed the issue. Thoughts?

 

[Porthos]

I always replace the optane with a sufficient size ssd and use the regular drive backups.

 

[phaZed]

@Porthos Same, new SSD and remove the Optane. I had high hopes for this stuff when it was only on paper... now that it's here, I wish it would go away, lol.

 

[Porthos]

I use the optane slot as the primary drive. Need to change settings in the bios though.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Optane is the future, but it's not today.

You need an OS that merges the concepts of short and long term memory to use it properly.

I don't recommend using it unless it's in a server platform because the controllers and the drivers attached to them just aren't ready for consumer use. High end stuff works, but it's emulating a SAS RAID controller, that emulates the memory to the OS as a drive so things don't get mangled.

But even that's a hack... we need fundamentally different OS's to use this technology correctly.

 

[phaZed]

With current NVME 4.0 drives and the likes of Smart Access Memory... I am sincerely doubting Optane is the future.... more like a blip.

 

[Markverhyden]

With current NVME 4.0 drives and the likes of Smart Access Memory... I am sincerely doubting Optane is the future.... more like a blip.

You mean like Big Foot drives and Laser Disks?

 

[Sky-Knight]

With current NVME 4.0 drives and the likes of Smart Access Memory... I am sincerely doubting Optane is the future.... more like a blip.

Optane isn't what you think it is

Intel's Optane is a strange perversion of the real product, which is non-volatile DDR4. That's the goal.... no more hard disks of any kind. Just nonvolatile RAM with everything in it. This process is an order of magnitude faster than anything you'll ever get on an PCIe bus.

So yeah, Optane is a bit of a speed bump... a product thrown out before its time to generate some revenue. But the real goal is simply nonvolatile storage with the performance of RAM. Which is why I don't recommend it or sell it either. It's simply not ready for the market.

Issue with Intel® Optane™ Memory-Enabled Systems with...

Details issue related to Intel Optane™ memory-enabled systems with Intel® RST 16.0.x, 16.5.x, 16.7.x ; publicly disclosed on 12/12/2018.

www.intel.com

 

[MDD1963]

The next big gen of Optane should have like 16 GB of RAM and 128 GB of persistent storage per hybrid RAM stick, slower than if it were in RAM, but, much faster than NVME.

If prices can be reasonable, and *IF* and when it comes to mainstream mainboards/CPUs, just imagine a power up, and, at desktop 1-2 seconds later...!

Can't wait!

I can only imagine prices similar to early SSDs, i.e., quite high....likely $400-$500 per hybrid 16 GB/128 GB stick, etc... (if lucky!)

 

[SAFCasper]

Optane has it's place in the enterprise world. There's literally nothing else comes close to offering the same level of latency, IOPS and consistent performance under load. The endurance is also insane with latest models rated for 100DWPD. It's like a match made in heaven for databases and caches.

Emphasis again on enterprise. When you come down to small/medium business it's not really a game changer. As for consumer devices it's absolutely pointless in 99.9% of cases.

 

[phaZed]

Another day, another dead Optane drive - no recovery. Everything that mattered was in the Optane. Who thought this was a good idea to merge the SSD and optane together? LOL.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We just ran into our first Optane nightmare. We haven't sold any. A cold call client rang us, their "server" was failing to boot up. Went onsite, not a true server, but an HP Omen gaming computer...a kids gaming rig. Used as the "server" for this auto repair shop.

Fails to boot up with the NVME drive in there, it's 16 gigs.
Basically tells us to insert a bootable drive.
The 3TB SATA spinner drive, we can slave it to a good rig and browse it. She won't boot by herself.

Can't help thinking that the NVME drive in there is just being used as a...sorta, ram-drive, or...wicked fast cache or pagefile. That the SATA drive should be able to boot by itself, but...guessing the NVME card gets sys'd somehow, like it's an active, bootable partition?

 

[Markverhyden]

The way these things, solid state and spindle, are configured vary by OEM. I think Apple creates some kind of FrankenRAID, so loosing the solid state looses everything. I know some of the Wintel land has BIOS pointing to the solid state, the solid state has the initial boot records which then points back to the spindle where the rest of everything is.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

As I dug into it some more Mark....yeah I see what you're saying. The little NVME plus the spinner seem to present themselves as "one" to the OS, almost like a virtual...fake-RAID. Some weird way the boot files get loaded to the NVME....like if you did a "sys C:" back in the days of DOS.

Nightmare of a potential client. HP Omen gaming computer with this weird Optane drive setup on it. Screaming at us to get him fixed ASAP, he's losing 4 thousand dollars a day. //rolls eyes

We asked who the heck set this up, he said some part time IT guy that works at the casino. //rolls eyes again

I didn't answer the phone when this guy initially called, should have been vetted before one of our guys went onsite, guess they were thinking potential new client. We'll see if we can turn this around and get all biz machines there. This one his wife ran the Mitchell and other accounting stuff. Not sure when they had for backup yet.

 

[Porthos]

This one his wife ran the Mitchell

Last time (it has been a few years) Mitchell was a bootleg.