Intel implies that secondary data drive can be managed by Intel Optane

[omenrip]

I found this page over at the Intel Optane installation site. It seems to imply that secondary/data drives can also be managed by Intel Optane.

Secondary/Data SATA Drive Acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory

Has anyone done this? Or has everyone given up on intel Optane?

Mike

 

[jay.wooster]

Yep, using it now and works a charm !!! But took me a solid 48 hours of investigating to get it working Where are you at ?

Steps i took to get it up and running as follows;

1. Make sure that the Optane module is in the correct M.2 slot and that the hard drive you want to link is in the correct SATA slot per your motherboard manual. (For my ASUS Z370-H Gaming board this was M.2_1 which linked with SATA_1 or SATA_2)
2. Convert your boot drive (yes, even though your not accelerating your boot drive) to GPT partition from MBR (Master Boot Record). You can double check that you are currently in MBR by going to "Disk Management", right clicking on the boot drive, selecting properties and then going to volumes and if the Partition style is listed as MBR you will need to change it, the good news is that it isnt that hard;
3. Via cmd administrator prompt you need to run a System32 program called MBR2GPT.exe, you can find instructions on this in the following video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfJep4hmg9o
If you have an issue where is does not allow you you can retype the command and follow it with the /allow command as instructed
4. Restart your PC into BIOS (or UEFI now) and change your CMS to ensure UEFI first is selected for your Storage devices
5. Save and restart into windows and install "Intel Optane Memory" program to enable the Optane module and link it with your secondary drive
6. If you get prompted for a Firmware update you will need to "disable" acceleration of the Optane module first in the Intel Optane Memory program, restart your PC first
7. The download Intel SSD Toolbox and click on Firmware to guide you through the update. Restart, enable the acceleration in the Intel Optane Memory program again and do a restart then your all set. Finally

 

[jay.wooster]

If the above doesnt work can you list your PC specs mate and i should be able to help you get it up and running on a secondary data drive....

 

[omenrip]

I can verify that jay.wooster's method works successfully.

In my case, my WD Black 2TB was not being managed by Intel RST. Only my Samsung Pro 860 256 GB SSD was (Windows 10 boot drive). The WD Black was defined as MBR. I tried using the command line and DISKPART to change it to GPT, but I got an error.

So I decided to us AMOEI Partition Assistant Pro which booted into WinPE and took about 1 minute to convert the MBR to GPT. Booting back into Windows showed no data loss on the WD Black and Intel RST was managing the WD Black and dropped the Samaung 860 Pro SSD from the RAID.

Once there was a workable procedure established, it was easy to set Intel RST to manage my WD Black spinner.

Mike