Using NVME Optane drive in usb enclosure

mieleven · 2025-04-21T00:39:11-0400

Hazel123 said:
If the Optane drive is back in the computer though, wouldn't the IRST driver already be there?

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/lsh3ti/bsod_on_intel_optane_h10_nvme_while_trying_to

Except the drivers are in the drive which is inaccessible without Windows booting

and if the BIOS would support disabling the cache versus only conversion to non Optane which erases the drive data then that should have been able to resolve the recovery of the data dilemma.

I have put the drive back into the HP Envy and will try EaseUS just to see how it goes, if the RST driver will load somehow.

XxXxX · 2025-04-21T00:39:49-0400

is this of any help.
its Intel software to disable Optane on the drive and as far as i am aware doesn't require a format of the drive.

How to Disable System Acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory

Explains methods to disable system acceleration with Intel® Optane™ memory.

www.intel.com

best of luck, Steve ..

mieleven · 2025-04-21T00:50:19-0400

XxXxX said:
is this of any help.
its Intel software to disable Optane on the drive and as far as i am aware doesn't require a format of the drive.

How to Disable System Acceleration with Intel® Optane™ Memory

Explains methods to disable system acceleration with Intel® Optane™ memory.

www.intel.com

best of luck, Steve ..

Thanks Steve, unfortunately the only option in the HP BIOS is to convert to Non-Optane which it says to the right side of the screenshot I posted earlier will Remove all data which I am hoping to avoid…

XxXxX · 2025-04-21T01:02:29-0400

i was indicating this software from the MS store.

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Application - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store

With the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Application you can manage NVME and SATA SSD Storage devices and RAID (0/1/5/10) with ease! Application allows to control power management of SSD Storage. Multiple supported disks in the system that can be ‘paired’ into - RAID (Redundant Array of...

apps.microsoft.com

which may help in disabling Optane on the drive itself without the need to format.
best of luck, Steve ..

mieleven · 2025-04-21T08:28:04-0400

XxXxX said:
i was indicating this software from the MS store.

Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Application - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store

With the Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Application you can manage NVME and SATA SSD Storage devices and RAID (0/1/5/10) with ease! Application allows to control power management of SSD Storage. Multiple supported disks in the system that can be ‘paired’ into - RAID (Redundant Array of...

apps.microsoft.com

which may help in disabling Optane on the drive itself without the need to format.
best of luck, Steve ..

Yes, that is what will not install on my other Windows PC, keeps erroring out. But even if that would install on that PC, there still has to be a hardware harness that supports bifurcation so that both the Optane cache and the main drive are visible to the software. But thanks for posting.

Hazel123 · 2025-04-21T09:12:25-0400

mieleven said:
Except the drivers are in the drive which is inaccessible without Windows booting and if the BIOS would support disabling the cache versus only conversion to non Optane which erases the drive data then that should have been able to resolve the recovery of the data dilemma.

I have put the drive back into the HP Envy and will try EaseUS just to see how it goes, if the RST driver will load somehow.

Of course, apologies. You must be fed up of explaining to people

What actually happens if you turn the computer on? Assume you've already tried things like a hard reset?

My nephew's laptop was like this once, wouldn't turn on even. I did an offline virus scan and he had zillions of trojans and viruses ............. Cleaned the disk. And it still wouldn't boot - even with a new drive. Gave up at that point and suspected some kind of bios virus had borked the Motherboard maybe. He had downloaded a fake antivirus unfortunately, which was a virus. That wasn't Optane though, but I was just thinking of reasons why it might not boot. Which is Panda usb vaccine is one of my favourite little programs. To stop viruses jumping onto a usb stick. (Or rather, disable them if they do jump on so they can't jump off again if the usb is put in another machine).

Would it be worth trying an offline virus scanner? Also via bootable usb. Or are you fairly sure her antivirus situation was solid?

Although - maybe an offline virus scanner wouldn't see the drive either .............but they do scan for rootkits and boot viruses etc as well. I think I used both Kaspersky rescue disk and Trend Micro bootable offline scanner. (Not sure if Trend Micro checks for root/boot viruses).

There's also this bootable HP Hardware Diagnostics tool - it might have some Optane options maybe .......... not sure.

HP PC Hardware Diagnostics | HP® Support

Learn how to isolate and identity hardware issues on your computer by running HP PC Hardware Diagnostics. Download HP PC Hardware Diagnostics today!

support.hp.com

mieleven · 2025-04-21T11:14:26-0400

Hazel123 said:
Of course, apologies. You must be fed up of explaining to people What actually happens if you turn the computer on? Assume you've already tried things like a hard reset?

My nephew's laptop was like this once, wouldn't turn on even. I did an offline virus scan and he had zillions of trojans and viruses ............. Cleaned the disk. And it still wouldn't boot - even with a new drive. Gave up at that point and suspected some kind of bios virus had borked the Motherboard maybe. He had downloaded a fake antivirus unfortunately, which was a virus. That wasn't Optane though, but I was just thinking of reasons why it might not boot. Which is Panda usb vaccine is one of my favourite little programs. To stop viruses jumping onto a usb stick. (Or rather, disable them if they do jump on so they can't jump off again if the usb is put in another machine).

Would it be worth trying an offline virus scanner? Also via bootable usb. Or are you fairly sure her antivirus situation was solid?

Although - maybe an offline virus scanner wouldn't see the drive either .............but they do scan for rootkits and boot viruses etc as well. I think I used both Kaspersky rescue disk and Trend Micro bootable offline scanner. (Not sure if Trend Micro checks for root/boot viruses).

There's also this bootable HP Hardware Diagnostics tool - it might have some Optane options maybe .......... not sure.

HP PC Hardware Diagnostics | HP® Support

Learn how to isolate and identity hardware issues on your computer by running HP PC Hardware Diagnostics. Download HP PC Hardware Diagnostics today!

support.hp.com

Thanks Hazel123, no worries chatting on here helps me to consider all kinds of potential remedies.

What happens on boot is an immediate 3F0 error, No Boot Disk. HPs guide for that involves reset of BIOS to default settings, did that, still 3F0. Next they ask to update the BIOS, did that as well still 3F0 error. So something clearly happened either in Windows (so many bad updates lately) or with the H10 which put the drive into disabled mode, see one of the screenshots I posted. That is where the only option that exists is the destructive step of converting it to a Non-Optane device which I am trying to avoid. I might as well just get a new NVME and start from scratch in that case. I have used a variety of tools in the past like SpinRite, Knoppix (older Linux distribution that could overcome traditional Windows file access problems), etc. But nothing on an Optane drive. So I feel even back in the laptop no tools are able to see the drive without an Intel RST driver loading which the Win PE tool has an option to load drivers but it just gets stuck in that loop I mentioned. So totally agree have seen virus and malware cause all kinds of issues but pretty easy to access Non-Optane drives.

gunrunnerjohn · 2025-04-21T11:26:39-0400

I'd CERTAINLY lose that Optane drive once this is resolved, I sure wouldn't want something like that to deal with. I do hope you can somehow figure how to get access.

Hazel123 · 2025-04-21T12:06:26-0400

Yes probably best to just attempt data retrieval now. Hopefully EaseUS will work or they might be able to help if it doesn't work. Wouldn't their bootable drive have all kinds of drivers already available perhaps?

mieleven · 2025-04-21T13:43:06-0400

Hazel123 said:
Yes probably best to just attempt data retrieval now. Hopefully EaseUS will work or they might be able to help if it doesn't work. Wouldn't their bootable drive have all kinds of drivers already available perhaps?

I purchased the EaseUS 1 month, non-auto renewal Pro version as that was only way to create a bootable USB drive and that way wouldn’t try to auto renewal. However as opposed to the Media Creation Tool there is no way to give the location of the Intel SRT inf file I copied to the USB. In the EaseUS Win PE after booting it basically gives you a mini Windows interface so I tried to update the driver via Windows Device Manager for the Intel H10 drive but it just kept saying that the existing Windows driver is the best. I did run the Recovery scan and while it did identify 32 GB it could recover when I look at that data it is files all data from 2019 and nothing user specific so almost seems like it is some form of Windows Recovery partition in what it considers the C drive, which is odd because there is no way to get to that I have found.

After further reading, looks like I have to manually add the Optane driver inf into the boot.wim file on the USB stick, but Intel also says to disable the Optane volume before booting into Win PE and I have no Windows environment to get that to work only the BIOS which only offers convert to Non-Optane destroying the data in the process.

Hazel123 · 2025-04-21T18:30:31-0400

I'm sorry to hear that. I think 32gb is the size of the optane part of the ssd .........so it might be that it was only reading the optane part and couldn't access the main drive. Do you think if you phone Ease US they might be able to help - and if they can't they might agree to a refund?

So would the EaseUS recovery usb run even if you didn't try to add anything?

mieleven · 2025-04-21T18:55:41-0400

Hazel123 said:
I'm sorry to hear that. I think 32gb is the size of the optane part of the ssd .........so it might be that it was only reading the optane part and couldn't access the main drive. Do you think if you phone Ease US they might be able to help - and if they can't they might agree to a refund?

So would the EaseUS recovery usb run even if you didn't try to add anything?

Hi Hazel123, I chatted with EaseUS support. Ultimately they send me the WinPE ISO file to download because the tools no longer allow ISO as an option, only direct WinPE to USB stick. I am going through the dism steps to add the Intel SRT drivers into the BOOT.WIM file but the key driver file - iaStorAC.inf - refuses to load into WinPE...grrr....so the vision is if that driver would load at boot time then EaseUS should in theory see both parts of the Intel H10 drive. The 32 GB is likely a coincidence as in theory the cache of the Optane drive should contain frequently used files to make the drive appear faster when things are served from that cache instead of looking it up in the big portion...but then again, dont know for sure :) I used the Search Entire Disk on the 476.94 GB INTEL HBR drive.

So I am getting a DISM error code 2 when trying to use dism add drivers for 3 of the 4 Intel SRT inf files which I had just downloaded from Intel's site...I am thinking part of the issue could be the ISO file EaseUS sent is for Win11 versus Win10 which the drivers are for...I felt like I was so close

to at least getting more information if the drive was recoverable at all...I will contact support again to try to get a Win10 ISO.

Hazel123 · 2025-04-22T00:53:48-0400

mieleven said:
Hi Hazel123, I chatted with EaseUS support. Ultimately they send me the WinPE ISO file to download because the tools no longer allow ISO as an option, only direct WinPE to USB stick. I am going through the dism steps to add the Intel SRT drivers into the BOOT.WIM file but the key driver file - iaStorAC.inf - refuses to load into WinPE...grrr....so the vision is if that driver would load at boot time then EaseUS should in theory see both parts of the Intel H10 drive. The 32 GB is likely a coincidence as in theory the cache of the Optane drive should contain frequently used files to make the drive appear faster when things are served from that cache instead of looking it up in the big portion...but then again, dont know for sure :) I used the Search Entire Disk on the 476.94 GB INTEL HBR drive.

So I am getting a DISM error code 2 when trying to use dism add drivers for 3 of the 4 Intel SRT inf files which I had just downloaded from Intel's site...I am thinking part of the issue could be the ISO file EaseUS sent is for Win11 versus Win10 which the drivers are for...I felt like I was so close to at least getting more information if the drive was recoverable at all...I will contact support again to try to get a Win10 ISO.

That sounds hopeful - fingers crossed. Is it Windows 10 that is currently installed on the drive? Are the drivers different for Windows 11? Some are and some are the same.

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