[SOLVED] When you are installing a NVMe SSD, does the SATA mode you use matter/affect performance whatsoever?

[ShangWang]

What about RST Optane? I heard that you should generally never use it, but in what scenario would it be good to enable it during installation of a drive?

What if you were going to install another SSD that uses the SATA cable? Does it matter what SATA boot mode you chose when installing the NVMe SSD?

 

[mdd1963]

The assorted Optane solutions had flash of popularity when the 32-64 GB SSDs were used as cache drives in conjunction with a much larger spinning drive.

I would abandon all references to it for home users considering it as cache drives, and, opt for a decent NVME drive as the OS drive alone if your mainboard supports it. (SATA drives, available in standard 2.5" SSD and in M.2 packaging, generally a waste of an NVME slot) operates at much slower speed spec (about 550 MB/sec reads/writes, max), you can add one after the OS install as a secondary storage drive for games and apps (if you don't have a lot of games, and have plenty of NVME space, then install whatever to the NVME drive for best of all worlds. (Use the SATA SSD where you don't want to fill up the NVME drive, don't mind waiting 1-2 seconds longer for apps/games to launch/open/load, vice the 'watching paint dry' torture that occurs using spinning drives for same.

 

[ShangWang]

The assorted Optane solutions had flash of popularity when the 32-64 GB SSDs were used as cache drives in conjunction with a much larger spinning drive.

I would abandon all references to it for home users considering it as cache drives, and, opt for a decent NVME drive as the OS drive alone if your mainboard supports it. (SATA drives, available in standard 2.5" SSD and in M.2 packaging, generally a waste of an NVME slot) operates at much slower speed spec (about 550 MB/sec reads/writes, max), you can add one after the OS install as a secondary storage drive for games and apps (if you don't have a lot of games, and have plenty of NVME space, then install whatever to the NVME drive for best of all worlds. (Use the SATA SSD where you don't want to fill up the NVME drive, don't mind waiting 1-2 seconds longer for apps/games to launch/open/load, vice the 'watching paint dry' torture that occurs using spinning drives for same.

Thank you for that info on optane, but I was more so wondering about whether or not AHCI or optane being enabled makes a difference when installing NVMe drives/if it even affects it or when installed in conjunction with a SATA drive.

Say for example if you installed the SATA drive with AHCI and the NVMe with optane, will it mess things up?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Say for example if you installed the SATA drive with AHCI and the NVMe with optane, will it mess things up?

Do you have Optane drive?
No?
Then forget about Intel RST with Optane. It is not for your hardware.

Set sata controller to AHCI mode and forget about it.

 

[ShangWang]

Do you have Optane drive?
No?
Then forget about Intel RST with Optane. It is not for your hardware.

Set sata controller to AHCI mode and forget about it.

Makes sense thank you, though I was more so just curious of SATA controller mode actually affects m.2 drives or not.

Though something weird that I noticed is that if I set my BIOS settings to default, it sets the SATA controller to RST. If I were to install any drive accidently not knowing it set RST as default, would it negatively affect performance that badly and I should reinstall the drive or is it not a big deal?

 

[SkyNetRising]

though I was more so just curious of SATA controller mode actually affects m.2 drives or not.

Yes it does affect it.
You can expect problems, when using inappropriate configuration for your hardware.

But sata controller mode can be changed only before windows installation (if windows is on sata drive).
If you change it after windows is already set up, your system will not boot anymore.

If windows is on nvme drive, then ... haven't tried changing sata controller mode in such config.
Probably should expect some problems also.

 

[ShangWang]

Yes it does affect it.
You can expect problems, when using inappropriate configuration for your hardware.

But sata controller mode can be changed only before windows installation (if windows is on sata drive).
If you change it after windows is already set up, your system will not boot anymore.

If windows is on nvme drive, then ... haven't tried changing sata controller mode in such config.
Probably should expect some problems also.

I see, thank you.
My bad, I should've specified further whether or not the controller mode affects NVMe drive windows installation and it's performance even though it doesn't use SATA.

I installed windows with AHCI mode on with my NVMe drive install and like you said if I set it to RST, it does not boot.