Monstieur

ZoranC
I _am_ using bifurcation. Do I interpret your words correctly as when using bifurcation 'CPU Storage Configuration -> CPU attached storage' option should be disabled? If yes that means I am using it correctly but I am little confused by you saying enabling it would hide the drives from Windows as when I had it enabled Windows still saw drives in bifurcated PE4.

The drives would disappear only when you configure RAID in Intel RST. If CPU Attached Storage is disabled, Intel RST will not allow you to configure RAID on those drives if the slot uses CPU lanes. There may be a slight bootup delay due to the unnecessary remapping if you leave the setting enabled.

Thank you for clarifying that!
 

MonstieurCPU Attached RAID does not work on PE4 anyway, so it will have no effect in your case.

I wasn't aware of how this exactly works until you posted details above, now that you did and are pointing out PE4 is not in equation I understand why exactly I didn't see any difference, thank you again :)

MonstieurYou have to use software RAID in Windows such as Storage Spaces.

BTW, do you have any advanced knowledge of working with Storage Spaces?
 

ZoranC

MonstieurYou have to use software RAID in Windows such as Storage Spaces.

BTW, do you have any advanced knowledge of working with Storage Spaces?
 

I have a 4-column striped space with 4x NVMe drives in PE4. I also had a 3-column striped two-way mirror tiered space with 2x SSDs and 6x HDDs.

Monstieur

ZoranC

MonstieurYou have to use software RAID in Windows such as Storage Spaces.

BTW, do you have any advanced knowledge of working with Storage Spaces?

I have a 4-column striped space with 4x NVMe drives in PE4. I also had a 3-column striped two-way mirror tiered space with 2x SSDs and 6x HDDs.

I currently have 2x NVMe and 2x HDD in two tier (NVMe + NVMe write cache in front of HDD) mirrored setup. I am trying to figure out:
 
1. Is there a way to change size of write cache without tearing whole storage pool apart.
2. How to add more drives to certain tier and how to remove drives from that tier (I'm considering going from 2x 2TB I have in NVMe tier to 4x 4TB, and also going from 2x HDD to 4x HDD)
3. Is there a way to change size of NTFS cluster for volume that sits on that storage pool without tearing apart volume, doing huge backup/restore
4. Once new drives are added how to expand size of current volume

ZoranC
I currently have 2x NVMe and 2x HDD in two tier (NVMe + NVMe write cache in front of HDD) mirrored setup. I am trying to figure out:
 
1. Is there a way to change size of write cache without tearing whole storage pool apart.
2. How to add more drives to certain tier and how to remove drives from that tier (I'm considering going from 2x 2TB I have in NVMe tier to 4x 4TB, and also going from 2x HDD to 4x HDD)
3. Is there a way to change size of NTFS cluster for volume that sits on that storage pool without tearing apart volume, doing huge backup/restore
4. Once new drives are added how to expand size of current volume

1. No
2. Add them to the pool and set the media type to SSD or HDD. You can then expand the pool. This won't add more columns and rebalance data so you won't benefit from increased speeds. You should recreate the whole pool.
3. No
4. Windows Disk Management can expand the volume once new drives are added to the pool.
 
The SSD caching is useless as large sequential writes bypass the cache anyway and write at HDD speed. It's good only for random writes. I would just get a single large HDD and Optane 905p and use Optane Memory Acceleration. This will accelerate all writes. Just backup your data incrementally with the Veeam agent for Windows (free) or Macrium Reflect to a second HDD.

Monstieur

ZoranC
I currently have 2x NVMe and 2x HDD in two tier (NVMe + NVMe write cache in front of HDD) mirrored setup. I am trying to figure out:
 
1. Is there a way to change size of write cache without tearing whole storage pool apart.
2. How to add more drives to certain tier and how to remove drives from that tier (I'm considering going from 2x 2TB I have in NVMe tier to 4x 4TB, and also going from 2x HDD to 4x HDD)
3. Is there a way to change size of NTFS cluster for volume that sits on that storage pool without tearing apart volume, doing huge backup/restore
4. Once new drives are added how to expand size of current volume

1. No
2. Add them to the pool and set the media type to SSD or HDD. You can then expand the pool. This won't add more columns and rebalance data so you won't benefit from increased speeds. You should recreate the whole pool.
3. No
4. Windows Disk Management can expand the volume once new drives are added to the pool.
 
The SSD caching is useless as sequential writes bypass the cache anyway. It's good only for random writes. I would just get a single large HDD and Optane 905p and use Optane Memory Acceleration. This will accelerate all writes. Just backup your data incrementally with Veeam Backup & Restore (free) or Macrium Reflect.

Re # 2 and 4  think I might be able to figure out how to do that -BUT- 'no' is what I too felt is an answer for #1 and 3 which makes them a showstopper. So I think I will "skin this cat differently" when the time comes for it.

MonstieurThe SSD caching is useless as large sequential writes bypass the cache anyway and write at HDD speed. It's good only for random writes.

Are you positive about that? If memory serves me well I did benchmarks after doing this and sequential writes were accelerated too. Granted, I did not build my Storage Pool with Microsoft's default 1GB write back cache, my WBC is 100GB.
 

Monstieur
I would just get a single large HDD and Optane 905p and use Optane Memory Acceleration. This will accelerate all writes. Just backup your data incrementally with the Veeam agent for Windows (free) or Macrium Reflect to a second HDD.

I was considering Optane path before going Storage Spaces but then Intel handed over development of its software to Microsoft and they limited size of cache to ridiculously low value. 

ZoranC
Are you positive about that? If memory serves me well I did benchmarks after doing this and sequential writes were accelerated too. Granted, I did not build my Storage Pool with Microsoft's default 1GB write back cache, my WBC is 100GB.
 
I was considering Optane path before going Storage Spaces but then Intel handed over development of its software to Microsoft and they limited size of cache to ridiculously low value.

I believe the limit is a 128 KiB buffer for bypassing the cache. There's a white paper about it. You can monitor the Storage Space cache hits in Windows Resource Monitor. File Explorer copies seem to hit the cache most of the time. Sequential writes from other applications typically don't. Any write-through requests also bypass the cache. Optane Memory Acceleration caches everything including write-through because it's basically immune to power loss.
 
You can use any size Optane drive for acceleration with CPU Attached Storage. I'd get a 480 GB or 960 GB drive from eBay.

Monstieur

ZoranC
Are you positive about that? If memory serves me well I did benchmarks after doing this and sequential writes were accelerated too. Granted, I did not build my Storage Pool with Microsoft's default 1GB write back cache, my WBC is 100GB.
 
I was considering Optane path before going Storage Spaces but then Intel handed over development of its software to Microsoft and they limited size of cache to ridiculously low value.

I believe the limit is a 128 KiB buffer for bypassing the cache. There's a white paper about it. You can monitor the Storage Space cache hits in Windows Resource Monitor. File Explorer copies seem to hit the cache most of the time. Sequential writes from other applications typically don't. Any write-through requests also bypass the cache. Optane Memory Acceleration caches everything including write-through because it's basically immune to power loss.
 
You can use any size Optane drive for acceleration with CPU Attached Storage. I'd get a 480 GB or 960 GB drive from eBay.

I just tested copying 22GB of files using File Explorer onto my Storage Spaces volume and I got average speed of 2GB/sec. I wouldn't be able to get that speed if WBC was ignored.
 
I can use any size of Optane drive -BUT- Intel has handed over development of Optane software to Microsoft (Intel's version has been EOLd) and Microsoft store version limits cache size to 64GB which is too little cache for too much money. See this thread among others Optane 900P -AIC- as HDD cache module? | guru3D Forums
 

ZoranC
I just tested copying 22GB of files using File Explorer onto my Storage Spaces volume and I got average speed of 2GB/sec. I wouldn't be able to get that speed if WBC was ignored.
 
I can use any size of Optane drive -BUT- Intel has handed over development of Optane software to Microsoft (Intel's version has been EOLd) and Microsoft store version limits cache size to 64GB which is too little cache for too much money. See this thread among others Optane 900P -AIC- as HDD cache module? | guru3D Forums
 

Yeah, File Explorer does use the cache. Other applications were always slow for me.
 
I was able to use the full 280 GB cache on my Optane 900p just a few months ago before I got rid of my last HDD. My incremental backups are over 100 GB and they all went straight to cache at maximum speed. The apps are just hosted on the Microsoft Store. There's no indication they aren't being developed by Intel. You can download the native version directly from Intel. The 64 GB limit was for non-Optane SSDs when using Intel Smart Response Technology as a caching solution.