On Wed, 1/1/2025 2:58 PM, Harry Bloomfield Esq wrote:
I'm in the midst of sorting out my HP laptop, which died some while ago, due to HDD failure, plus some other issue, which resolved itself..
Original HDD was a WD Blue 1Tb + a M10 MEMPEK1J016GAH 16Gb SDD stick, it was reasonably fast. I got it going with an old slow Toshiba 1Gb, but I am now going to replace the Tosh, with an SDD sata III, 6Gb/s drive. The question is, should I keep the
MEMPEK, or not, for best speed?
As a personal preference on my part, I like
computer hardware configurations that are
easy to understand and deal with. I don't
like "mystery meat" behaviors in PCs.
My research then, would start with a visit to the BIOS
setup screen. Is the hybrid mode controllable, or not ?
What modes does it have ? Can the SATA drive be run
as a SATA drive, without the hybrid caching >
If so:
1) On the day the new SSD arrives, remove the Optane
and put in one of your anti-static bags. Install the
new SSD. Now the SSD is the only storage in the machine.
2) Boot and select to enter the BIOS. You have to know which
key to press to get into the BIOS. You can practice entering
the BIOS, using your existing setup.
3) In the BIOS, the hybrid can now be disabled. The SATA could be
listed as in AHCI mode (not RAID mode because you're not using
any RAID driver, any more). The OS MSAHCI driver will be running
the SSD from now on. No special driver to download.
The SATA SSD would be 530 MB/sec or so. The Optane is
2000 MB/sec, and it only caches, say, the OS boot files.
It accelerates booting. The SATA SSD is faster than an
ordinary rotating platter hard drive, which takes forever
to boot.
While the 530 MB/sec SATA is not as fast as a 7000 MB/sec
NVMe, if it boots three seconds slower, you won't be losing
any sleep. As an older laptop, the CPU isn't running at 6GHz
in any case, and just the CPU limitation means the storage
limitation is not the limiting part. The CPU can be a bit
slow. Like my ten year old desktop with 3.4GHz processor
feels slow. And that desktop has SSDs for storage too.
It does not have NVMe slots or a BIOS that supports NVMe,
so NVMe is not an option on it. And that's a good thing.
It means the 42 PCI Express lanes are mine, all mine.
The machine that does have an NVMe, does feel faster. It
feels faster because during boot, the CPU core is running
at 5GHz. All the rowers, are rowing in the same direction.
with your new reliability model, it's like all other computers.
1) The SSD is alive or it is dead.
2) To protect against being dead, you do backups.
3) If the SSD is dead, you replace it, and restore from the last backup.
That's the kind of simple model I like in my computers.
There are no half way states, no "well, maybe if I take
the Optane and the SSD to the shop, they can do data recovery
for me". With the simplified model, you now know exactly
what your options are. The SSD is alive or dead. If
dead, you need your backup for recovery. Data recovery
on SSDs, is not necessarily an easy thing, and I don't
even want to go there. If an SSD dies here, "it's a short
toss into the trash". No reason to play with it. No
user serviceable parts. The data is sprayed randomly around
inside it, and the recovery pattern is not easy to get right.
For example, it can be using default encryption inside,
which means reading the flash chips with an instrument,
"it all looks random". No user serviceable parts. Toast.
Plan accordingly.
Paul
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