PC Drivers & Software

[painful8th]

This is a brand new Windows 10 Home installation on an Asrock B450 motherboard. I had a 1Tb boot HDD and installed additionally a 256Mb SATA SSD.

I then proceeded to install the new beta StoreMI v2 software. Everything went smooth, I combined the HDD and the SSD and the cache was starting to fill.

I then downloaded the SSD manufacturer's toolkit to check for a firmware upgrade (I noted that I should do this before installing StoreMI v2 but forgot). The toolkit could not detect the SSD. I presumed that this was due to the fact the SSD/HDD were now under a special virtual StoreMI "bottom" controller. So I separated the drives, rebooted, and uninstalled Storemi. Again everything progressed without an error.

Unfortunately, even after uninstalling StoreMI, both drives remain under the same controller! They are not listed under the Microsoft/AMD AHCI controller. So the toolbox can still not detect the SSD!

I thought to forget this thing altogether, and tried to install StoreMI. But after unpacking files, it throws an error that the drives are not under the standard controller and stops!

What can I do to have my drives under the normal AHCI controllers again? This is driving me crazy...

[adrianhensler]

I installed StoreMI to try it out as well.  Something broke, and the configuration portion of the app would no longer load; it would open and state I should reinstall to repair.

When I tried to reinstall to repair, it said I had to remove the configuration first (which I could not do because the app won't open).

Same thing if I tried to remove; the removal would state it could not proceed until I removed the configuration first (which I could not do because the app wouldn't start).

I did open a case with AMD; they asked for all the details of the system which I provided.  The suggestion that came back was that perhaps I could try reinstalling Windows to see if that fixed the issue.....

So I tried a few other things as I didn't really want to reinstall the OS; I did finally get the uninstall to work correctly after renaming a registry key.

However, now the drives are still under the StoreMI Controller / StoreMI bottom and I can't update firmware/read temperatures etc.

The StoreMI installation won't work; I receive a similar error.

Edit: Oh, and it is a bit silly that AMD doesn't mention the version on the amd.com/storemi page; just a download button.  I guess we are supposed to download it every now and then just to open the zip file and check what the current version is.  They have everything done so well on the amd.com/drivers page; not sure why they didn't just tag it on there with release notes/version numbers etc.

[painful8th · Accepted solution]

Sorry to hear that. I finally managed to resolve my case by doing the following:

1. Opened device manager and displayed devices by connection. Found the storemi main device, with another under it. Under the latter were my disks and a config device.

2. I uninstalled each device, starting from the bottom layer: disks and the config device. When I was offered the option to delete the driver I selected it too.

3. Did the same thing with the immediately upper device and finally with the remaining storemi device. I rebooted at this point.

4. After reboot I had the same situation. For some reason I had a hunch that redoing these steps and did so.

5. After the reboot my disks were correctly listed under the ahci controller at which point I was able to re install storemi.

According to the latest beta notes, removal of the special store mi controllers should have taken care of the situation. Which clearly did not happen in my case. I expect this to be a bug.

Other than that it worked just fine. I have another 2 systems at home with fuzedrive (upgraded from store mi v1), which also works great. My advice: if you are eligible for the free store miv2 AND the ssd is much smaller than the hdd, go with store mi v2. Otherwise try fuzedrive.

[adrianhensler]

Thanks for sharing the steps that worked for you.  Sadly, these did not work for me.  I was able to remove the devices/delete the drivers.  After the reboot (** more detail about reboot issues to follow) I received an Inaccessible Boot Device.  Another reboot got me to the Windows 10 repair; I used the Advanced to 'Repair Startup'.  It spun for a few minutes, then booted back into Windows.   (Edit - the StoreMI devices were back in place; the app still does not open, I can't uninstall or reinstall as it tells me I need to use the app - that won't open - to first remove the config prior to proceeding)

The ** above refers to a weird issue affecting some of the Gigabyte X570 boards; loss of BIOS settings when nothing should have affected the BIOS. Makes no sense but I've done this a few times; deleting the StoreMI devices from device manager and restarting.  Should not affect BIOS correct?  BIOS settings gone... this was repeatable during my attempts to remove the StoreMI devices from device manager.  Strange.  I don't think this is related to StoreMI at all, but a strange issue affecting some Gigabyte boards (seems easy to trigger events that erase the BIOS - odd).  Mine is an Elite Wifi for what it is worth.

[painful8th]

I'd try a revouninstaller to hard-remove anything related to the storemi installation. Which won't get rid of the drivers most likely.

After a reboot, go to device manager and try out my steps to get rid of the hdd/sdd and assorted devices. If this does not work, do the same thing from safe mode.

Hope it helps. It's good software for a beta but does have some scary RAID-like quirks (as does Fuzedrive/StoreMI v1).

What's the size of your drives?

EDIT: With regard to the weird issue you're describing, it sounds like a fix for a future UEFI version. However, it is true that certain "choices" from Windows do affect things displayed in UEFI, e.g. bootable devices.

[adrianhensler]

I think I'll wait a bit and see if perhaps the next StoreMI update perhaps allows a reinstallation over itself and then subsequent removal.  Otherwise I'll likely just eventually get annoyed at it and when I have time I'll try more aggressive things until I'm either successful or have to reinstall Windows.  I'll just leave it for now as it is not really causing me any issues; I just want it gone.

Drives are 4tb spinning drive / 128gb SSD.  It never seemed to do anything correctly anyways; the app (when working) reported that it had cached 5gb in the first week, then never increased over the next few weeks. 

Thanks for taking the time to provide the suggestions in any case.

[painful8th]

Sounds like a plan.

A suggestion perhaps: don't really know if you are into gaming our not. If you are, then your current ssd will be thrashed.

I've tried all storemi versions and currently using fuzedrive at two. Some tips:

1. Get a 512gb ssd (nvme if possible) and use that to combine it with your hdd, leaving the 128ssd alone as a boot drive. This way you'll be able to boot no matter what (especially important for fuzedrive/storemi v1 users). Slow and small ssd for boot, large and possibly faster disk for games.

2. Fuzedrive 1tb is an excellent product. Run into some issues a couple of times, but mail support is excellent.

3. Using storemi v1 in recent win 10 builds is a catastrophe waiting to happen really. I couldn't figure out why AMD did not instruct it's users to uninstall it when it went unsupported, until 8 I had to uninstall it: it leaves you with its special drivers! Backup and reinstall is the only option. Happily for me I upgraded to fuzedrive, which does allow untiering and reverting to a "normal" installation...

Good luck my friend!

[adrianhensler]

My reply earlier detailing my drives - I had only mentioned the two that I was configuring with StoreMI.  My boot drive is a NVMe 1TB drive that should have been untouched by StoreMI.  The drives I am adding to StoreMI are a 128GB SSD and a 4TB spinning platter.  There are other drives attached as well.  I never touched StoreMI v1; all of this was done with StoreMIv2.  

[painful8th]

This is an excellent setup for afuzedrive installation IMHO. Make the 128gv ssd the boot driver and combine the 1tb nvme with the hdd to produce a 5tb tiered drive.

That's almost my own setup. Extremely satisfied.