Romex Software Forum

Hi,

I have a REFS Storage Spaces volume on Win 10 workstation, based on a mirror of 2x 4To WD Red NAS (type EFRX, CMR) drives.

I use a mirror of 2x SSD (Micron MX500) as a L2 cache.

On v3.2.0, no problem, everything works as expected, whatever the settings.

On v4.0.1, I can't create the cache because of error message "4Kn disks not supported".

However there was no difference on my hardware and Storage Spaces setup.

So this is a regression, and I need it fixed in order to upgrade Primocache to v4.0.1

Thanks & regards !

It was mentioned in the initial announcement that the drives 4Kn are not supported in release 4.0.1. The support is expected to come in a future version. From my experience, you can set L1 cache for a 4Kn drive with PC 3.2.0 but you cannot use such a drive for L2 cache for any released version of PC. Hopefully, it will be changed in the near future.

janusz521 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 13, 2021 11:09 am It was mentioned in the initial announcement that the drives 4Kn are not supported in release 4.0.1. The support is expected to come in a future version. From my experience, you can set L1 cache for a 4Kn drive with PC 3.2.0 but you cannot use such a drive for L2 cache for any released version of PC. Hopefully, it will be changed in the near future.

Hi, thanks for your comment, but the problems are:
- WD Red Nas are NOT 4Kn drives but 512e (==> false positive error)
- v3.2.0 was Ok with these drives, v4.0.1 is not, this is a regression

That is why these are bugs.

@dmist, Your Storage Spaces volume is a 4Kn volume. You may verify it by the command "fsutil fsinfo sectorInfo X:" where X is your Storage Spaces volume.
v3.x or prior versions doesn't check if a drive is a 4Kn volume or not, and have bugs. We will issue a new version in this month.
Thanks.

Support wrote: ↑Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:24 am v3.x or prior versions doesn't check if a drive is a 4Kn volume or not, and have bugs. We will issue a new version in this month.
Thanks.

Does it mean that a L1 cache for a 4Kn drive with v3.0.2 is buggy too?

janusz521 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:23 pm Does it mean that a L1 cache for a 4Kn drive with v3.0.2 is buggy too?

Theoretically, it should be no problem.

Support wrote: ↑Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:46 pm

janusz521 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 14, 2021 3:23 pm Does it mean that a L1 cache for a 4Kn drive with v3.0.2 is buggy too?

Theoretically, it should be no problem.

... So L1 cache is not buggy on 4KN, but ... well... what is the bug?

zBeeble wrote: ↑Thu Jan 28, 2021 3:53 pm ... So L1 cache is not buggy on 4KN, but ... well... what is the bug?

When handling some abnormal data, it might have bugs. Now we have released the version 4.1.0 and support to cache 4Kn drives.

Support wrote: ↑Thu Jan 14, 2021 10:24 am @dmist, Your Storage Spaces volume is a 4Kn volume. You may verify it by the command "fsutil fsinfo sectorInfo X:" where X is your Storage Spaces volume.
v3.x or prior versions doesn't check if a drive is a 4Kn volume or not, and have bugs. We will issue a new version in this month.
Thanks.

Thank you for your answers.
Indeed my Storage Spaces is viewed as a 4kn drive (even though the underlying HDD are not 4kn).
So, I will try the 4.1.0.
Regards!

Hi back,

I have tested the 4.1.0 for creation of a L2 Cache based on a Storage Spaces Mirror, using 2x SSD Micron MX500 (cf. 1s post of this topic).

I still have the error "does not support 4kn drives" : I can't create the L2 Cache...
(I have tried with both formatting to ReFS and NTFS and the result is the same; see picture attached).

Please advise,

Regards,
David