Windows 11 - Intel Optane 905p SSD 9 2.5"

Hello,

Good evening. I recently bought this SSD second hand - a 940gb Intel Optane 905p SSD 2.5". One connector goes into the M2 slot on the motherboard (please forgive me if I get any terminology wrong, and that feeds the actual drive, There is a second cable coming from the SSD which connects to what I think looks like a SATA connector. But that confuses me, because I thought these things were beyond SATA!

Anyway, how can I make sure that Windows 11 is correctly set up for this device? I would be grateful if you could please let me know what drivers I need to download, what programs or management tools, what BIOS settings do I need to enable, if any? I have a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Elite.

Thank you and regards

M

The only things I know about optane is its requirements. Though my mobo supports it, I've steered clear of it as I see it as opening a can of worms.
1. Your chipset has to support it
2. It requires Intel Rapid Storage Controller driver to work. (IRST)
3. A supported backend (slow media system disk) storage device (hard drive, SATA SSD, or SSHD) connected to the Intel AHCI controller off the chipset with Windows 10 64-bit or later installed, formatted for the GUID partition table (GPT), and at least 5 MB of continuous, unallocated space at the end of the boot volume.
4. A bios that supports optane and optane configured correctly in bios
5. Optane correctly configured within the IRST software

See your mobo manual pgs 41-45 Z390 AORUS ELITE (rev. 1.0) Support | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global

Intel references to that drive here Intel® Optane™ SSD 905P Series (960GB, 2.5in PCIe x4, 3D XPoint™) Support | Intel

I would be interested in knowing what benefit you expect from using optane in your particular computing scenario.

zaarin_2003 said:

.............. I recently bought this SSD second hand - a 940gb Intel Optane 905p SSD 2.5". O

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Absolute disaster. You are falling into a deep abyss that will take you nowhere.

"Intel® Optane™ memory is a system acceleration solution installed between the processor and slower storage devices (SATA HDD, SSHD, SSD), which enables the computer to store commonly used data and programs closer to the processor." - INTEL

Optane Memory Module + HDD ( in some sort quasi Raid mode using Intel IRST driver)= SSD - agreed
Optane Memory module + SSD = No better than just the SSD. The acceleration provided by the Intel Optane in reality is very insignificant.

Have a look at my post here Is my HDD failing? - Windows 10 Help Forums

I have a system with Intel Optane. The Optane was coupled with a 1 TB Toshiba HDD. Since my HDD was failing, I replaced the HDD with a 1TB Crucial SSD. The screenshot therein shows the boottime of 6.3 seconds with Optane enabled and a boottime of 6.4 seconds with Optane disabled. That 0.1 second is totally insignificant so much so I have decided to keep the Optane disabled. My system is now booting from SSD straightaway. Optane in fact is a PITA as glasskuter said in the previous post.

Now let us get into in some facts.

1. Intel has discontinued Optane as well as the Optane 905p Series SSDs - failed technology that couldn't be sold. ( What you have got is infact an Optane memory module and an SSD both packed inside a single box, the Optane connecting into an M.2 slot and the SSD connecting into the SATA slot in the motherboard.)

2. I call it a disaster . Why? In an Optane + HDD/SSD system, if the Optane fails or the HDD fails the system will not boot till you change the Optane module or HDD/SSD as the case may be. Now think for a while. Why did the first owner of the Optane SSD take it out of his system and offered it for sale? Hmm..... either the Optane module or the SSD might have failed. Are you sure that it isn't it? Even assuming it is in working condition would you still go with that failed technology - discontinued product? Just an NVMe PCIe SSD or even a SATA SSD will be as good as the Optane SSD, Why are you inviting headaches unnecessarily?

I would recommend that you throw away the second hand Optane SSD of doubtful integrity and go with the best SSD available that fits your motherboard specifications for the storage device ( slots available).

I've only owned one computer that came with Optane memory and I never used it. The very first thing I did was remove the HDD and replaced it with the SSD from my old desktop. I didn't see a need for the Optane memory so I never installed the needed driver. I don't remember why but I decided to see if it was possible to remove the Optane memory and replace it with a 1TB NVMe drive. I found out that I could so I installed the 1TB NVMe drive and used Macrium to restore my system image to it. I formatted the SSD and it became my D drive. I posted this to let you know that if the motherboard will allow it, the Optane memory slot can be put to better use.

That's a funky drive. It uses a U.2 interface. You don't have one, so it comes with a U.2 to M.2 adapter. The adapter also requires a SATA power connection. Intel Optane SSD - Review-in-Progress That's because the drive needs more power than a typical M.2 SSD.

If you're not using it as a cache for another drive (a typical use for smaller Optane drives), I believe that you won't need any special drivers for it. I believe that an Optane drive was used as a cache because it had faster random reads and writes than conventional SSDs. That may be ancient history, now.

You could get better specs than the 905P with a PCI-E 3.0 M.2 SSD. Your motherboard and CPU are PCI-E 3.0; I don't know how a good PCI-E 4.0 drive would compare in a PCI-E 3.0 system. I wouldn't recommend a PCI-E 5.0 drive (for cost reasons).

As others have remarked, Intel has discontinued Optane products. The industry has moved on. If you wish to mess around with obsolete tech, then by all means...

bobkn said:

That's a funky drive. It uses a U.2 interface. You don't have one, so it comes with a U.2 to M.2 adapter. The adapter also requires a SATA power connection. Intel Optane SSD - Review-in-Progress That's because the drive needs more power than a typical M.2 SSD.

If you're not using it as a cache for another drive (a typical use for smaller Optane drives), I believe that you won't need any special drivers for it. I believe that an Optane drive was used as a cache because it had faster random reads and writes than conventional SSDs. That may be ancient history, now.

You could get better specs than the 905P with a PCI-E 3.0 M.2 SSD. Your motherboard and CPU are PCI-E 3.0; I don't know how a good PCI-E 4.0 drive would compare in a PCI-E 3.0 system. I wouldn't recommend a PCI-E 5.0 drive (for cost reasons).

As others have remarked, Intel has discontinued Optane products. The industry has moved on. If you wish to mess around with obsolete tech, then by all means...

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Its hardly obsolete, in fact if you use Optane for an os drive, its hard to beat, 4k read and 4k writes speeds are far above any ssd available now, trouble is nowadays everybody is consumed by the high sequential numbers with ssd`s, which is fine if your moving large files around,

To the original poster use the Optane 905 drive as you os drive, that is where Optane still shines......

OP may look here:

Katana1074 said:

Its hardly obsolete, in fact if you use Optane for an os drive, its hard to beat, 4k read and 4k writes speeds are far above any ssd available now, trouble is nowadays everybody is consumed by the high sequential numbers with ssd`s, which is fine if your moving large files around,

To the original poster use the Optane 905 drive as you os drive, that is where Optane still shines......

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Intel doesn't list that spec for the 905P. (The "random" rates Intel lists for the 905P are surpassed by some PCI-E 3.0 SSDs.) A review at Tom's gives benchmarking results that have the 905P with better random read rates than the best PCI-E 5.0 drives. I'm curious about the testing methodology at that site. (CrystalDiskMark is what I've used in the past. Version 8.0.4c has been flaky for me for quite a while, though. It doesn't complete some tests if I try any profile other than Default.)

Regardless, I'm not going to buy one for use as an OS drive. If I wanted to, I might prefer the AIC version over the U.2. (I have an old Intel 750 400GB AIC lying about, somewhere.)

Optane 900p, CrystalDiskMark running fine for me, the results are pretty much repeatable within a few mb/s....

Katana1074 said:

View attachment 86492

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What’s that showing?

zaarin_2003 said:

What’s that showing?

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Q1T1 IOPS, that's where Optane shows its strength......

Katana1074 said:

View attachment 86485

Optane 900p, CrystalDiskMark running fine for me, the results are pretty much repeatable within a few mb/s....

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Which profile?

I get a bad run if I choose any other than "default".

bobkn said:

Which profile?

I get a bad run if I choose any other than "default".

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Default Profile, Settings tab changed to NVMe SSD....

Katana1074 said:

Default Profile, Settings tab changed to NVMe SSD....

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Do any of the other profiles work for you?

I get an incomplete run with any profiles other than Default.

bobkn said:

Do any of the other profiles work for you?

I get an incomplete run with any profiles other than Default.

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Changed to real world performance, completed, no issue....

If I use the "real world" profile, the display is fully populated, but the lower two rows are bogus.

If I save the results to a text file, only the first two tests are listed for both read and write.

The same thing occurs on both of my desktop PCs. One is an AMD system the other Intel. The AMD system had a clean install of 11.