They are fast, but not fast enough to swallow that capacity, at that price

Agonist:

60GB is not enough really for Win 10. Its barely enough with a bare OS. Its why I removed my 60GB SSD from my server, and dropped a 160GB raptor in it since it runs 24/7. 80GB is the min I would use anymore for a Win 10 OS drive. I still have a middle finger for Intel with sizes and price. Sure they are nice and fast, but not justifiable.

im the type that has HDD, SSD and NVME for each function but i have large installed soft, so my C is 73GB full (also i have whats its called windows 'previous version' tuned on) Someone that uses machine for email, browsing and media (media/games on separate drive) like light home user, can do with 60gb system drive. of course for such light user 120GB WD Blue SATA or Samsung 850/860 SATA will cost less and will serve him better (But in custom build laptop scenario that has NVMe, personally i would of used 58gb Opatne for tight system and 4-5TB 2.5uinch HDD for the rest) But, i think that the 58GB model is better served for Beastly gaming system on a budged, 58Gb Optane used in Optane cache mode with as big 7200rpm HDD as your budged allows, that will have ultra fast windows (because the system will never be purged out of cache) and your main games like 2-3 games that you usually play will be loaded automatically from cache. This is best scenario for someone who cant afford big NVME or even SATA drive, I rather have combo of 58 optane cache +5/8TB HDD, then 250/500GB SSD with 2TB HDD

nosirrahx:

The last system I built uses a UPS and we have a backup generator that kicks on in 3 seconds so I was not afraid of setting up Primo that way, also went with 32 GB of RAM specifically to experiment with RAM cache. Currently I have the RAM cache set 12 GB on top of the 280 GB Optane 900P as Optane cache on top of a 4 TB SATA SSD. Even when cache misses it falls back to the 900P which is of course also insanely fast. Obviously the issue with all of this is the price. Between the price of 32 GB of RAM, the 900P and the Primo key this is hardly cost effective. Its too bad because this system is crazy fast. It kind of feels like Samsung moved a lot faster than Intel expected and forced the Optane drives into the market before they were ready to be competitive solutions. On the topic of RAID 0 and the 900P, check this out. Its a bench from the bootable RAID 0 a guy made from 4 900P drives attached to a Asus Hyper 16X: https://i.imgur.com/hstUl6T.jpg

Thats basically my setup minus UPS (im always putting buying one aside, im a slow/lazy person, i got new Define R6 Tempered Glass case month ago and it still packed, my 900 optane should have windows installed on 100gb partition and the rest dedicated to cache but in reality i still on my SSD and wasting time on testing/playing with primo cache) I also have 32Gb (hey, when you go 32gb you can go back, I had 32Gb on my 5820K build, it was 2600Mhz, when i moved to 870K i decided to get faster RAM but with prices initially i got 4000Mhz 16Gb pack, noticed that its not compatible with my mobo wouldn't even do 3000Mhz so i sent it back and got certified 3733Mhz 32Gb Kit, payed tad more but I sleep better knowing I have 32Gb of ram, 16Gb is not enough today) But Im kind of afraid of throwing 12Gb out to caching, 8Gb maybe, but 12Gb is kind of too much, ill be left with what 20Gb for windows? Right now system monitor says im using 17.7Gb and all of that is spent on Waterfox, i usually have more than 1000 tabs open, of course usually no more then 100 actually loaded into ram, otehr unloaded until i click them. To complete my caching system, i think i will be forced to buy a good UPS, then ill be abale to replicate your setup, say 10GB defered-wright L1 cache, out of 480Gb Optane 100Gb for windows 10 partition and whats left 340-360 actual GB for L2 deferred wright for my HDDs and NVMe. I seen good 2Tb SATA SSD go for 370$ for some reason amazon doesn't have it through them so i could order one internationally, but its a great deal 2TB SATA SSD for just 370$ is good enough for TONS of stuff 🙂

PrimoCache's L2 cache is not safe for deferred writes - it's exactly the same as the L1 RAM cache! The L2 cache is instantly lost on any OS crash (not just power loss) even though it's non-volatile. The on-disk L2 cache is simply discarded when you reboot after a crash. Storage Spaces with properly configured tiering is safe, as is Intel SRT / Optane acceleration.