Precision 7710 Owner's Thread

Can't seem to access the ^I RAID Setup menu. In F2 BIOS Setup, SATA Configuration is definitely configured to "RAID ON", but repeated ^I's in the POST process never bring up the RAID Option ROM. Any ideas on what may be causing this?

 

[deleted post]

 

Control-I doesn't do anything for me either in bootup POST process. But press F12 at bootup I get a menu and then I can select Device Configuration:




You can also open Intel Rapid Storage Technology program inside of windows and do some RAID management:



My BIOS is set to RAID although I don't actually have a drive array setup, so I've not actually used the above screens to try any RAID management.

 

That issue was driving me nuts. For me it was the hybrid setting that I had to disable.



But I also updated all of my drivers from the link below as a desperate measure:
http://downloads.dell.com/published/Pages/index.html

I really think, on my system, it was disabling of Hybrid sleep that fixed my sleep problems. That was before the latest fall creators update, which I now have updated to and sleep is still working. I hope you can get it resolved.

 

Thanks, @ygohome. The F12 menu solved my problem as you predicted. Much appreciated.

 

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WHY A RAID0 ARRAY OF HIGH-END M.2 SSDs IS A BAD IDEA AND A TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY!
===============================================================================

I'm going to answer my own question from much earlier in this thread, in hopes of saving others from repeating my own expensive mistakes. Paraphrased, here's the question I asked several weeks ago in this thread:

QUESTION: If I want best possible storage performance on my new 7710, does it make sense to install (2) top-end M.2 SSDs such as 960 PRO's and RAID0 them together for "double speed", or is it more likely the case that the 7710 doesn't have the bus bandwidth to run two M.2's at full throttle, meaning it would make much more sense to just buy a single larger M.2 SSD, forget the RAID, and still have an open slot for future expansion?

ANSWER: The 7710 derives NO BENEFIT WHATSOEVER from two M.2 SSDs in RAID0. You are much better off buying a single M.2 device with enough capacity to meet your needs, because this leaves an open slot for future expansion and improves reliability because you are no longer at risk if EITHER of two devices fails.

BACKGROUND:

I was pretty sure I knew the answer before the expensive parts arrived, because after ordering them I did some research elsewhere on the web and learned that none of the hardware RAID chipset drivers have the ability to deliver more than the bandwidth of 4 PCIe lanes (32Gbps theoretical). Since the high-end SSDs can consume most of that bandwidth, there is basically zero speed improvement using 2 M.2s in hardware RAID0.

I bought two 960 PRO 1TB M.2 SSDs. Here is the CrystalDiskmark performance of a SINGLE 1TB NVME SSD with no RAID:

READ / WRITE
SEQ Q32T1: 3416/2796
4K Q32T1: 598/200
SEQ 2381/1813
4K 40/121

Now use hardware RAID0 in hopes of "doubling the performance", and here's what you get on the RAID0 volume:

READ / WRITE
SEQ Q32T1: 3473/2796
4K Q32T1: 532/161
SEQ 3280/2302
4K 26/39

Yes, some figures are better in RAID0, but only marginally, and others are worse. I attribute the difference to variance because I only ran CrystalDiskMark once on each configuration. My sense was the performance is the same with or without RAID0 because the bus is the gating factor.

CURIOUSLY, WINDOWS STRIPE SET DIDN'T HELP EITHER:

The reading I've done on other desktop-focused sites reveals an emerging "conventional wisdom" that the way to get best performance is to set your M.2's up without HARDWARE RAID, and instead use Windows "Stripe Sets", which is basically software RAID. The rationale is that non-RAID (in hardware) NVME SSDs can run in parallel at full speed using different PCIe lanes. While there is a little CPU overhead do doing the RAID0 in Windows rather than using hardware RAID support, the benefit of being able to use 8 different PCIe lanes to run your two NVME SSDs far outweighs the slight performance loss to doing the RAID in Windows. Quite a few reports I read showed two 960 PRO's in Windows Stripe sets producing 5,000+ sequential I/O speeds.

BUT NO SUCH LUCK ON THE 7710. My guess is that the same 4 PCIe lanes run both of the M.2 slots, and there is never a way to run faster than 32gbps on the entire system. Here's the diskmark performance for the two 960 PROs in a Windows Stripe Set on the 7710:

READ / WRITE
SEQ Q32T1: 3416/2779
4K Q32T1: 576/238
SEQ 2972/2391
4K 52/141

Again, I write off the small differences to natural variance in running CrystalDiskMark in different boot sessions. My strong sense is that the 7710 does all its IO on 4 PCIe lanes and that's just the end of the story.

CONCLUSION: I should have bought a SINGLE 2TB 960 PRO, had better reliability/fault tolerance, and kept an open M.2 slot for future expansion.

Hope this saves someone else from buying the wrong expensive parts. The bottom line is you can't go any faster than one top end NVME SSD is going to deliver on its own.

xPat

 

Good conclusion @xPat, thanks. Those 960 m.2 are FAST! Don't forget you still have room in the 2.5" bay or did you put a boot drive in the 2.5"? That makes me wonder, is it possible to RAID 0 two NVMe as a boot drive?

 

@ygohome, I read enough about bootable RAID0 arrays of M.2s to scare me away forever. To be honest, I've forgotten the details, but the gist of it was this is possible but there are lots of caveats, limitations and issues. SOrry, can't remember the details of what they were.

 

While I'm waiting for a vboxmanage.exe to convert a BIG virtualbox vmdk to vhd (uploading it later to Azure blob container will be fun too), I'm watching the external drive write at 120-180MBps. I used to think those speeds were amazing. Imagine writing at 3+GBps! I think I want one of those Samsung 960 2TB nvme ssd right now. Or a 4TB 2.5" 850 SSD would be awesome (for about same price as 2TB m.2), I still have a 2.5" bay open, hmmm.

So as I'm waiting for the conversion to finish I was looking at task manager in latest Fall Windows Creators and thought this was pretty cool. it shows igpu and dgpu info. neat. Maybe it always showed that info but first I've seen it.

 

I remember spending almost an hour in the spring of 1978 staring in awe at the brand new [9-track, reel-to-reel] Magtape drive we just had installed in my school's computer center. When the Operator (in those days, computers had Operators) told me it was capable of this new mode called "streaming", in which it could theoretically write 80MB in "only" 14 hours, I was sure he was pulling my leg. I was CERTAIN that (a) Nobody would ever have 80MB of data in one place at one time, and (b) even if they did, there would never be any sane need to copy all of it in such a short amount of time! He explained the "new thing" was going to be computers that only needed to shut down for backup for a few hours, as opposed to a full weekend, which was the norm in those days. I still didn't believe him.

I recently read an article about Intel VROC, and supposedly they are writing to VROC SSD arrays at 25 GB/sec now. Amazing how the world has changed.

xPat