Win 7 and NVMe

[Bud Weiser]

Hi !
I need some help and put into off-topic because I´m not sure if it fits better into tech talk or not.
It´s also not directly related to SCOPE,- just only to the machine and Win 7.

Everything is set up correctly and I already use 2 500GB Samsung SATA SSDs (860 Pro & 850 EVO) as well as a 1TB Samsung Evo Plus M.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe x4.
Mobo is AsRock Z97 Extreme6 and there´s Win7 Pro SP 1.
For the Samsung M.2 NVMe, I had to install the Samsung driver,- otherwise it was not recognized in Windows even it was in (UEFI) BIOS.
All normal, but ...

The 2nd M.2 slot on that mobo is PCIe 2.0 x2 only, but fast enough for storing/loading all the drum samples I use.
So, I bought a 500GB Patriot Scorch M.2 PCIe 3.0 x2 NVMe,- but NOW since Win 7 is discontinued, Patriot doesn´t offer a Win7 driver anymore,- possibly not any, just because Win10 doesn´t require NVMe drivers.
The Patriot M.2 appears in device manager w/ the message "driver not loaded", so no chance to format and use the drive.

There must have been a solution for Win 7,- downloading and installing NVMe hotfix kb2990941-v3-x64 from MS website,- which itself might cause the "0x0000007E" Stop error, which then requests a 2nd hotfix 3087873 ...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... s-7-and-wi
But,- also these aren´t for download anymore ...

In addition and by searching the web for solutions, I´ve read these MS hotfixes won´t work well side-by-side w/ Samsung NVMe driver(s).
Now,- it´s the web/forums and not everything written is true.

Does anyone here have experience w/ Win7, NVMe support, these hotfixes and possible has the files archived somewhere ?

Ice on the cake would be knowledge about using these hotfixes together w/ Samsung NVMe drivers.
I wonder if it were possible temporary de-activating or uninstalling the Samsung NVMe driver,- installing the hotfixes (when I´d get ´em at all) and re-install the Samsung driver to get both, Samsung and Patriot NVMe, running w/ Win7 Pro SP1.

everything help welcome.
Thx in advance ...



Bud

[dawman]

I’d do a hot fix w/ the M.2 in PCI 2x slot.
Get that working first.

But I had issues with 2 x NVMe on the Extreme 6.
It shows up in device manager, but won’t work until the SATA Drives are in certain ports.
IIRC it ate up so much bandwidth with 2 x Samsung M.2’s it caused problems getting stable juice to the Scope 1X card.

Might be better using one, the 4x PCI EVO.

[valis]

Yes, PCIe lanes are limited and it will depend on which CPU you're using as well. So when NVMe slots are used then SATA or USB etc are affected on many motherboards. This is finally going away now that AMD is kicking up their game again, Intel is forced to improve the consumer side and not just try to push heavy users of i/o to the HEDT solutions.

[dawman]

Les is my go to ASRock + NVMe guy.
Check out these old articles, he was the very first guy to use an XP941.
The very first NVMe, wouldn’t even boot the OS back then....

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews ... sata-ssds/

[valis]

Bud, sending the Patriot Scorch M.2 PCIe 3.0 x2 NVMe back & using another Samsung may be another option?

[Bud Weiser]

Thankyou Valis and Dawman !

I got the hotfix kb2990941-v3-x64 file, but unfortunately not the other (3087873) for the case of "0x0000007E" Stop error,- so it´s still a bit risky,- and still leaves the question if hotfix and Samsung NVMe driver will work in harmony or make things worst when installed both.

I was also aware of bandwidth limitations mentioned above, incl. defeated SATA3 ports #4 & #5 when using M.2.2 slot,- so my config is the SATA drives on SATA3 #0 - #3 (optical drive included) and Samsung NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 in M.2.1 (Ultra M2) slot.
Using iGPU makes it possible and the Samsung NVMe is lightning fast w/ Samsung NVMe driver.

For XITE-1 PCIe card and instead of PCIe x1,- I had PCI-E #5 in mind, which is the 3rd of the PCI-E x16, at least using 2 lanes and being connected directly to CPU like the other 2.

Original package was destroyed when opening the Patriot M.2 box and the drive is built in since days now.
I doubt the shop will accept a return that way.
So, I might use it in my upcoming office machine build for storage and expect it not to be more lame than any SATA SSD.
This will be Win10 and I expect it to work "out of the box" there.

OTOH, WHEN I were able to get that other hotfix 3087873 file,- I´d give the Patriot another try, just because the mainboard offers this dedicated M.2 PCIe 3.0 x2 slot.
It would be a waste putting in a Samsung M.2 PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 (x4).
Patriot itself already suffers from PCIe 3.0 > 2.0 downgrade.
I´d wish Patriot offered a driver I were able to install side by side w/ Samsung NVMe driver.

Atm,- for DAW, - replacing Patriot M.2 w/ another Samsung EVO SATA SSD seems to be the only option.

Also thx for sharing the SSD-Review article,- good read !

all the best



Bud

[valis]

4 years ago SSD's were still premium pricing. Fast forward to today and I have 3 in a box that I keep meaning to find a place where they're "needed". Oh and the only HD to fail in 8 years dated back to 2006...life is good in the digital realm

[dawman]

My first OCZ 128GB SSD was beaten unmercifully for years, now it’s back up.
But it slowed down according to diagnostic software.
It was 100k Random IOps.
It’s down to 78k @ 65% capacity.

But guess what?
No difference in real time performance.
Seems we could go as low as 60k and not see any problems.

Life is good.

[nebelfuerst]

I'd prefer Sata-SSD over NVMe. NVMe are faster - on spec paper, not in real life.
On the other hand there are lots of issues with win7, win10 and Linux.
Some issues showed up, when I tried to restore backups on them, so I had to restore on sata-ssd to get my data restored uncorrupted.

But even SSD can do funny things to your data, when they start with defects. The good ones report their problems by smart, the bad ones slowly corrupt all data, so you end up in total loss. Classic harddrives also died a lot, but never corrupted all data.
So I recommend SSD with periodic delta backups.

[Bud Weiser]

I'd prefer Sata-SSD over NVMe. NVMe are faster - on spec paper, not in real life.

PCIe 3.0/ 4.0 NVMe x4 IS much faster than SATA SSD in real life !
I only bought for NI Komplete 12 content and Kontakt sample streaming.

Loading/exchanging drumkits in TT SD3 is very fast as well,- and those drumkits are HUGE w/ all the room mics, bells & whisles.

I don´t use M.2 for OS though.
OS writes a lot to disk.
The faster, the hotter ...
M.2 runs hot faster than SATA SSDs.

Once the (sample-)drive is organized, I leave it as it is and just read most of the times.

And yes, backup to standard HDD is essential sooner or later.
I use 2TB 5.400rpm/ 32MB cache SATA300 Samsung HDDs for backup ... they last forever and I have 4.

And,- I don´t record and render tracks to SSD or M.2,- use WD 300GB / SATA600 VelocyRaptors instead and have 3.



Bud

[dawman]

NVMe M.2 are useful for sample loading like in Omnisphere.
I put the STEAM Folder on a Samsung and can switch presets so the sample loads fast and you get to hear it immediately.
On SSD the progress bar sometimes is still pulsating yellow when I switch from Rhodes to Clavinet, etc.

But for Kontakt, PLAY, etc. I don’t notice any difference because it streams after targeting RAM buffers.

[valis]

With Win10 I like NVMe because I no longer care about what drive has my swap space, temp files and so on. But I do a lot more than audio tasks, and shoot for disks that don't just hit peak speeds (the patriot etc PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives are fast but may die just as fast--only time will tell that) but can handle a mixed workload and sustained writes better than a physical HD. It's interesting to watch sustained writes fall to 1/3 of the speed of a regular spinning platter, or lower, or watch multiple (queued) reads and writes stall the whole machine. Hate that...

I do own Komplete 12 U & other heavy sample use tools, but since I fall more on the sound design side than full orchestrations with accurate replication, I rarely see my SATA HD's hit their peak read speeds when doing audio work. I'm still on a (classic) Mac Pro though, so I'd have to be using more & more workarounds to stay modern there (just like Win7 users here). Meanwhile my newest machine is 2 NVMe drives and 3 SATA SSD's, and not a spinning disk to be found outside of backing things up, where I would worry about longevity of NAND cells that are read/written to infrequently.

I am with you jimmy on instant loading of sounds and presets lets the creative juices keep flowing. Life is so good compared to the era of fiddling with Syquest & Zip drives, SCSI termination and so on with outboard samplers that might take tens of minutes to do what we can now do in a fraction of that time. And now we don't have to worry about RAID 0+1 or 5 to get decent speeds from our storage, something that has been an issue for me for YEARS in my video & 3d work.

[Bud Weiser]

NVMe M.2 are useful for sample loading like in Omnisphere.
I put the STEAM Folder on a Samsung and can switch presets so the sample loads fast and you get to hear it immediately.
On SSD the progress bar sometimes is still pulsating yellow when I switch from Rhodes to Clavinet, etc.

But for Kontakt, PLAY, etc. I don’t notice any difference because it streams after targeting RAM buffers.

Yeah,- interesting and probably worth a try because I have STEAM on D:\ which is a Samsung 850EVO SATA SSD and several other stuff on the NVMe x4 M.2.
I recognized that progress bar going from yellow to green relatively quick but not really snappy.
SAGE (for RMX),- is on F:\ which is the x4 NVMe M.2 and is significantly faster ...

But that is, as well as some other stuff,- drums/ loops,- where I don´t need fastest load times.
Keyboard instruments are more important.
Now I hope, all these plugins allow swapping libraries until it´s perfect and don´t force new installation here and there.
B.t.w.,- since I´m investigating the native hi-end stuff more and more,- I really wonder if I really need.
Sooooo many presets,- and I just pick only a few and have to tweak anyway.
The time investment to go thru all this stuff is immense and it sucks.
Life is short ...

And back to my original post:

I really WANTED the Patrit 500GB PCIe 3.0 x2 for swapping out all the samples for drums´, perc. and the loops I don´t really need always and only for arranging/recording ...

MS NVMe Hotfix Windows6.1-KB2990941-v3 for Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 I have in stock already.

And bingo !!!

I´ve found Hotfix kb3087873 ... 32- and 64Bit for Win 7 ...

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/where-t ... in7/145629

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.co ... =KB3087873

Now it depends on Samsung drivers working together w/ these hotfixes.

I´ve found kb 3087803 also in Lenovo downloads and they say the Samsung NVMe driver issue rules for driver version v1.4.7.6 and (possibly) only when the NVMe SSD is the "start drive" (I think they mean boot-drive,- no ?)

Well,- my driver in device manager reads v3.0.0.1802 / feb. 12_2018 and the drive is NOT the boot drive.

I´ll need more info.
No interest in damaging my 970 EVO Plus 1TB M.2



Bud

[valis]

I would think data loss is more of a concern than actual drive damage, unless the drive was driven to high heat somehow. Btw one of the nice things about the PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives is the heatsinks that they have brought to market, I am using them on my Samsung 970 EVO NVMe drives:

Sabrent M.2 2280 SSD Rocket Heatsink

M.2 2280 SSD heatsink, Double-Sided Heat Sink, Matching Thermal Silicone pad for PCIE NVME M.2 SSD or SATA M.2 SSD
(Cheap but still above the units that basically come with rubber bands to keep the heatsink on)

These dropped temps about 8C on my 970 EVO and an Intel SSD when under sustained workloads, even in a case with adequate airflow.

[dante]

My 2 x M.2 run like the clappers plugged into PCIe slots

[dawman]

Check out the most recent 1U designs, where fans blow from front to back, over dual NVMe’s, through the RAM DIMM’s.

This and a new X570 which is an ITX are great 1U AMD Solutions.
3700X is fairly quick @ stock speeds and according to ScanAudio loads tons of shit with high polyphony.

1206F8D4-613B-4F87-84DC-DD27F2307C68.jpeg (232.16 KiB) Viewed 8924 times

[dante]

This is what I get on my Samsung 970's - is it good ?

Samsung 970 EVO Speed Test

M.2 SSD Speed.jpg (83.45 KiB) Viewed 8904 times

[dawman]

Good sequential but show tests with Random IOps.
100,000 IOps in random is about all we can utilize.

On sequential ASIO can’t benefit from anything over 9-1000GBps.
But you won’t notice the difference from 525MBps on SSD’s to 9-1000MBps.

Check AS-SSD Random.
IIRC it’s under tools, but it’s somewhere in the menu.

[dante]

here tis.

random-iops

ssd-random-iops.png (26.98 KiB) Viewed 8897 times

[dawman]

3 x more than is required.
I use the Samsung PRO SSD’s and NVMe’s.
Only difference is the warranty.