BIBM vs. Crucial SSD Momentum Cache

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jknauth
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:24 pm

BIBM vs. Crucial SSD Momentum Cache

Post by jknauth »

Has anyone had any experience with how BIBM or later BootIt products
work with some Micron Crucial SSD software? In particular I have
questions about the Momentum Cache software, which is supposed to
significantly speed up the SSD. From the product description it sounds
like some sort of "hibernation" might be involved. Since Fast Startup
(requires hibernation) is a strict no-no for BIBM, I did not try using
Momentum Cache. Actually I'm very happy with my SSD speed without
Momentum Cache and am currently running with many bootable partitions
under BIBM (a fairly old version). I'm just curious if I am reading
things right.

Although I don't use Hibernate, I have read elsewhere that it is OK to
use Hibernate with BIBM as long as you be sure never to boot another
partition before the first one has fully shutdown, i.e., the first one
is not just in a hibernate state. (If used, BootNow enforces this).
Maybe this also applies to Momentum Cache. Jeff
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: BIBM vs. Crucial SSD Momentum Cache

Post by TeraByte Support »

Not familiar with it myself, you'd want to ensure it's not something that
lives across reboots and it's abstracted by the firmware so it looks and
acts like a regular drive.

"jknauth" wrote in message news:17331@public.bootitbm...

Has anyone had any experience with how BIBM or later BootIt products
work with some Micron Crucial SSD software? In particular I have
questions about the Momentum Cache software, which is supposed to
significantly speed up the SSD. From the product description it sounds
like some sort of "hibernation" might be involved. Since Fast Startup
(requires hibernation) is a strict no-no for BIBM, I did not try using
Momentum Cache. Actually I'm very happy with my SSD speed without
Momentum Cache and am currently running with many bootable partitions
under BIBM (a fairly old version). I'm just curious if I am reading
things right.

Although I don't use Hibernate, I have read elsewhere that it is OK to
use Hibernate with BIBM as long as you be sure never to boot another
partition before the first one has fully shutdown, i.e., the first one
is not just in a hibernate state. (If used, BootNow enforces this).
Maybe this also applies to Momentum Cache. Jeff

jknauth
Posts: 5
Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2015 8:24 pm

Re: BIBM vs. Crucial SSD Momentum Cache

Post by jknauth »

Thanks. I have now found a 2015 Micron document on Momentum Cache,
"TN-FD-32: Enhancing SSDs With Momentum Cache - Crucial" (you can
Google for it). From this I gather the Momentum Cache (MC) driver uses
part of available system memory to cache writes to the SSD. SSD writes
are usually slower than SSD reads. It helps to gather the writes,
eliminate duplicates, consolidate operations, find a more convenient
time to do the actual SSD operations, etc. The PDF lists some benefits
for SSD health. All this can pretty dramatically improve SSD
performance, at least for some tests Crucial and others have run. The
description makes me think MC would be less likely to be a BIBM problem
than I had previously felt.

However it's not explicit if there is a final "flush" by MC when a
shutdown (maybe using Hibernate) is started. The intent would be to
avoid having such to-be-written data possibly "hibernated" with other
system information in memory instead of being written to the SSD. Maybe
(probably) the driver DOES detect a shutdown is underway and does the
final flush. But maybe not. However if you did a real (no Hibernate)
shutdown, it seems clear that the data would have to be written to the
SSD before shutdown completed. In that sense it would be like data
cached to go to a USB flash drive or normal HD -- shutdown forces it to
be written.

Given this, if you did a real (no Hibernate) shutdown, MC would cause no
future BIBM multiboot problems because all the data would have been
written to the SSD. Even if you used Hibernate and MC did not do the
final flush, it appears MC would not add to the considerations and
workarounds that already exist for BIBM used with Hibernate.

The above is just speculation. So far I haven't tested Momentum Cache
at all. If time comes available, I may. Jeff
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: BIBM vs. Crucial SSD Momentum Cache

Post by TeraByte Support »

if it just uses a write-back cache then that's fine provided you do clean
shutdown. write-through caches are a bit more reliable if power cut or lock
out. Typically you'd use a UPS if using write-back caches.


"jknauth" wrote in message news:17340@public.bootitbm...



The above is just speculation. So far I haven't tested Momentum Cache
at all. If time comes available, I may. Jeff

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