Store MI tested with Crystaldiskmark and loading time of benchmarks
In our tests, we used the ASUS X470 CrossHair VII HERO motherboard with 16 GB Corsair DDR4-3000 running at C16 DDR4-3200, AMD Ryzen 7 2700 processor and a Gigabyte GTX 1060 graphics card.
Our setup comprises of a Windows 10 OS on our Kingston 120GB SSD which will not be used in the test. We will begin by measuring the Crystaldiskmark speeds of the WD 2TB HDD and the Samsung 860 EVO 256GB M2 SATA
Below are the results of the Samsung 860 EVO M.2 SATA followed by the WD Blue 2 TB HDD.
After which we tested the loading times of two benchmark softwares. The two applications are Final Fantasy XV and World of Tanks Encore. We took down the timings it took (for the 1st instance when we click start benchmarking till the first frame of the benchmark. The test is done with the HDD and SSD separately connected to the motherboard with the games loaded in the Drive D and not in the boot drive.
After the numbers are taken, both Samsung 860 EVO
After that is done, the system is rebooted and the loading times of both applications are taken. The game is installed on the newly formed StoreMI drive.
Below are the results :
During the test, the first timing is taken as the actual reading as reloading the second time will be faster as it has already cache it in the memory.
Base on first the first reading after a system reboot, the reading shows that it took 43.52 seconds to load the benchmark from the time we clicked the benchmark button till the to the 20th frama of the benchmark when the first graphic appears.
The above is the CrystalDiskMarkinfo Score of the newly built StoreMI volume. The results are close to the results of the Samsung SATA M.2
Using a standalone 860 EVO, it only took 19.16 seconds to load. Once we implement StoreMI on the system with the two drives, the loading time from the StoreMI drive was down to 35.94 secs.
Similarly, we did the same for World of Tanks Encore. It took 47.91 seconds to load on the WD 2TB HDD but took 35.94 secs, a slash of almost 12 seconds. If the 960 EVO is used, it took only 30.1 seconds to load.
The results are encouraging as it can speed up access of a conventional HDD with the help of a SSD.
However, if we reload the application the second time without a reboot, we noticed that the loading time is reduced too.
In Conclusion, StoreMI is a handy tool when you need to boost the HDD speed with the help of a SSD and at the same time extending the storage capacity.
Will you get the X470 and make full use of this facility ?
The suggested setup for StoreMI is to start with all blank disk everything will be erased in the setup. Also install the OS on HDD not on the SDD. After installing the OS make a StoreMI Disk for using the HDD and the SSD. You also have the option to include a 2GB RAM space, which I think is good idea, if you have enough RAM. As for Daniel, 120GB will be good enough, the maximum ssd space StoreMI can use is 256GB, you can use a larger SSD but store will only use up to 256GB the rest will be used as a normal SSD
I have a similar setup and have already installed Windows 10 on a WD 500Gb M.2, however I have a 256Gb SSD spare and five other HDDs up to 1.5Tb, which would use for this (one of the HDDs and the SSD))
My question is, is it safer to start StoreMI with blank discs?
Does StoreMI move the applications across or should we do this manually?
If I were to buy a 2TB HDD, how large should the SSD be to fully utilize this feature?