Samsung 950 PRO 512GB M.2 NVMe not recognised afte

memory_leak wrote: @Parsec How is Linux support for this mobo? Have you tryed to run a linux distro from nvme drive, or even better from raid 0 array, either fake or softraid?

Sorry, no idea about Linux distro support on this or any standard PC ASRock board, with an NVMe SSD. Linux is not included as a supported OS for any of the standard desktop boards. ASRock server boards support Linux, but I don't know what Linux uses for drivers like the INF/Chipset file installer, or the Intel Management Engine software, among others.

I should try that, but I don't know if the UEFI configuration option that must be set to allow booting an OS from an NVMe SSD will cause the correct Linux bootloader to be used. Frankly, I don't know if that is a concern with Linux. Are different bootloaders even needed?

In general, I can tell you that the Windows EFI bootloader is required when using an NVMe SSD as the OS drive. That is communicated to Windows by setting the CSM option to Disabled, or by setting the CSM sub-option Launch Storage OpROM policy to UEFI Only, with CSM Enabled.

The Intel standard IRST driver, version 14 is needed for RAID support of NVMe SSDs. The Intel IRST version 14 EFI compatible Option ROM is included in this and other ASRock board's UEFIs, but whether or not that can be used by Linux, I don't know.

RAID 0 with NVMe SSDs will increase the large file, sequential speeds from 2,000MB/s to ~3,000 MB/s for read speeds, and will not quite double the write speeds, when using two SSDs. As usual for RAID 0, the random 4k speeds are somewhat reduced, and the high queue depth 4k performance is increased.

Given the performance of a single NVMe SSD in all areas, unless you are constantly working with huge single files, IMO the real world performance difference using NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 is zero.

The Windows "fake RAID" benchmarks I've seen of NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 were very close to those of the Intel IRST RAID 0 results.

EDIT: Just read you reply to my post on this question in your other thread. I've used RAID 0 arrays of Samsung 950 Pros, and Samsung SM951s, both as OS drives, on my Z170 Extreme7+ board.

Sick load times? Of what, the OS? If so, then no, actually RAID 0 is slower booting than a single 950 Pro or SM951.

You can't compare the time it takes to boot an OS on two different PC platforms. So many different variables, time of POST, the time it takes for connected devices to wake up, I could go on and on. All the super fast booting PC videos I've seen are on systems configured for that purpose. Such as, one drive in the PC, wired keyboards and mouse, using integrated graphics, Windows services disabled, Fast Boot option enabled, UEFI booting enabled, among other techniques.

The fastest booting PC I have uses a single SanDisk Extreme Pro SATA III SSD in an ASRock Z87 Extreme6 board, using a slow Intel G3258 CPU, UEFI booting Windows 8.1. My Z170 board using an NVMe SSD boots slower, due to a longer POST time caused by the NVMe SSD, DDR4 memory initialization, and using Windows 10. Cold booting Windows 10 causes it to do who know what for up to 30 seconds before the desktop is displayed.

I've used RAID 0 for years, starting with Intel X25-M SATA II SSDs, followed by Samsung 830s, OCZ Vertex 4s, Intel 520s, Samsung 840s, SanDisk Extreme IIs and Extreme Pros, Samsung SM951s (AHCI version) and recently NVMe SSDs.

RAID consistently boots slower than a single drive, for multiple reasons. Mainly caused by the time it takes for the RAID software to initialize, and the reduced 4k random read performance that is a given for a RAID 0 array compared to a single OS drive of the same model.

You do know that the 2,000MB/s read speed of a 950 Pro (or any SSD) only occurs with large single files (500KB+), and booting an OS consists of reading multiple, random small files, that even with NVMe SSDs are done at best at ~50MB/s (yes fifty)? Very high sequential read speeds are not important when booting an OS, or used at all. If an OS was one giant file, then things would be different, but they aren't.

Am I currently using single 950 Pros, or Intel 750s as my OS drives? I sure do!




Edited by parsec - 15 Jun 2016 at 9:00am