Windows 10 extremely slow startup with SSD cache drive

By Gorilambo
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Gorilambo

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I've been having a problem since early builds. My machine has a SSD drive used solely for cache purposes and I have the Intel RST driver installed so that Windows 8.1 starts within seconds.
I made a dual boot and Windows 10 has an extremely slow startup, just like my Windows 8.1 installation when Intel RST drivers are not installed.
I tried to switch the HD management inside the BIOS to AHCI but both OS's will not boot.

Maybe it's because of the dual boot settings, but if this keeps on going, an upgrade to Windows 10 would be unbereable, since the startup problems stabilizes within 3 or 4 MINUTES.

Any thoughts?

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philcruicks

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OK for a start you can't just switch AHCI on without at least a repair install of all OS's on your system. But no AHCI may well be some of the reason.

 

Have you installed the RST drives on Win10? you've only said you installed them on Win 8.1...

 

As a note you should be in AHCI mode if you can be, so when you finally come to do a proper install of win10 if you can fix this issue and no longer need 8.1 then change to AHCI before you start the win10 install.

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Gorilambo

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Sorry for taking so long to respond.

 

The drivers come preinstalled with Windows 10 (and they are newer than the ones offered through Intel's support website), but it looks like windows 10 does not play along with SSD drives as cache. I tried installing the latest drivers from Intel with the management app, but nothing happened.

I guess I shouldn't be changing that to AHCI since it WORKS PERFECTLY in Windows 8.1. Being Windows 10 an upgrade, it should also run flawlessly -- I guess.

Besides, AHCI does not use the full power of a SSD drive for cache (seriously, it takes my machine 10 seconds to boot).

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Gorilambo

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I switched for testing purposes only. The thing is that I wanted Windows 10 to use Intel RST and boot as fast as my Windows 8.1 does, since the notebook was designed to function that way.
Switching to AHCI permanently would make me lose one valuable feature of my machine.

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You'll have to wait until RTM most likely... The Intel Caching Driver likely isn't compatible with Windows 10 and isn't able to intercept the I/O calls from Windows 10 and silently forward them to the SSD.

 

OK for a start you can't just switch AHCI on without at least a repair install of all OS's on your system. But no AHCI may well be some of the reason.

 

Have you installed the RST drives on Win10? you've only said you installed them on Win 8.1...

 

As a note you should be in AHCI mode if you can be, so when you finally come to do a proper install of win10 if you can fix this issue and no longer need 8.1 then change to AHCI before you start the win10 install.

What do you mean? Switching AHCI on isn't going to break anything... I haven't tried this on Windows 10, but surely MS has fixed the missing AHCI drivers in Windows 7 bug by now??? The reason Windows 7 would fail to boot if you went from legacy to AHCI was simply due to the drivers not being installed for AHCI if it wasn't enabled initially. Installing the drivers would fix it...

 

Or have they still not addressed this?

Grand Master

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I may have misinterpreted the problem...but I saw dual boot.....there has been an issue with dual boot and fast start in the advanced power settings. I had sluggish starts on a triple boot and all due to the "hibernation type storage for fast start". Removing the fast start (on 10 and 8.1) feature cleared my problems...many mentions of this on line when I was searching for a fix. If not related, please ignore this comment....Cheers...

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kozukumi

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I may have misinterpreted the problem...but I saw dual boot.....there has been an issue with dual boot and fast start in the advanced power settings. I had sluggish starts on a triple boot and all due to the "hibernation type storage for fast start". Removing the fast start (on 10 and 8.1) feature cleared my problems...many mentions of this on line when I was searching for a fix. If not related, please ignore this comment....Cheers...

 

Ah ok yes you didn't mention dual boot. I am not sure how an SSD/HDD hybrid will work with a dual boot setup as it will need to keep a record of both SSD caches which I don't think they can do. Maybe they do support dual boot but not tri-boot or multi-boot? 

 

You have to remember an SSHD is a consumer device. Basically the only reason they exist is so that OEMs could sell a machine with a small amount of fast, flash storage to make the machine boot very quickly (and so appear super fast) while still offering a cheap 1TB or so HDD. Obviously they couldn't get away with selling a machine with 8GB SSD and putting in a separate SSD and HDD is expensive so they shifted the burden onto the drive makers. 

 

Sorry went a bit of on a tangent there lol, my point is they are designed for consumers who will have a single boot setup. Doing advanced things like dual booting is not a standard consumer thing and not something an SSHD is really designed for. 

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Gorilambo

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You'll have to wait until RTM most likely... The Intel Caching Driver likely isn't compatible with Windows 10 and isn't able to intercept the I/O calls from Windows 10 and silently forward them to the SSD.

 

Guess you're right. I thought build 10240 was the final build and that I could test it as a real-world Windows 10 installation. Thanks :)

 

 

I may have misinterpreted the problem...but I saw dual boot.....there has been an issue with dual boot and fast start in the advanced power settings. I had sluggish starts on a triple boot and all due to the "hibernation type storage for fast start". Removing the fast start (on 10 and 8.1) feature cleared my problems...many mentions of this on line when I was searching for a fix. If not related, please ignore this comment....Cheers...

 

Hmmm... most likely. I wonder why 8.1 takes advantage of fast booting and Windows 10 does not. But I'll try your solution. Thank you so very much!

 

 

Ah ok yes you didn't mention dual boot. I am not sure how an SSD/HDD hybrid will work with a dual boot setup as it will need to keep a record of both SSD caches which I don't think they can do. Maybe they do support dual boot but not tri-boot or multi-boot? 

 

You have to remember an SSHD is a consumer device. Basically the only reason they exist is so that OEMs could sell a machine with a small amount of fast, flash storage to make the machine boot very quickly (and so appear super fast) while still offering a cheap 1TB or so HDD. Obviously they couldn't get away with selling a machine with 8GB SSD and putting in a separate SSD and HDD is expensive so they shifted the burden onto the drive makers. 

 

Sorry went a bit of on a tangent there lol, my point is they are designed for consumers who will have a single boot setup. Doing advanced things like dual booting is not a standard consumer thing and not something an SSHD is really designed for. 

 

You have a point, indeed. I'll wait for RTM to upgrade on July 29th and wipe the Windows 10 Insider Build partition. Thank you so very much!

Why would switching to AHCI disable anything? I assume you are using Legacy mode if not using AHCI yes?

 

It disables fast booting through SSD cache drives handled by Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

 

Tried it three days ago. The Intel RST app tells me the cache drive is optimized for disk acceleration, but the performance on startup is awful.

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