Asus Z690 ProArt Creator WiFi (Thunderbolt 4) + i7-12700K + AMD RX 6800 XT

[c-o-pr]

Points to keep in mind:

• Windows creates special support parts, including a utility and MSR part ahead of the main NTFS part, a recovery partition after, and may place another support part right before end of drive. I think there is also a backup of the GPT near the end of the drive, but don't know if this is part of GPT spec or something MSFT does.

• Windows will write the EFI partition with its own loader. When will it rewrite it?

• There may be other diffs in details of how Apple and MSFT think about GPT details.

So as to "trying it to see", how will you know when you've tried all the permutations of installs and updates and recoveries?

There's a lot of history of Linux and Windows that lets these two co-exist, and GRUB knows how to make its loader reside next to Windows. There's no such history for mac. And I have seen Ubuntu Unity clobber EFI/bootx64.efi of OpenCore on an attached drive not related to the Ubuntu install, and I would expect Windows to be less accommodating. The wise admin will install Windows first then fit Linux into the layout afterwards. I think this is for Mac too.

As aside, OpenCore sees a Windows install on a separate drive on my build, but when I choose it, it doesn't boot. I've never investigated because for me it's not more convenient to pick with OC.

 

[dehjomz]

So Windows 11 installed just fine no problems. macOS installed just fine, no problem. But then I used CCC to transfer the contents from my working installation on an external Thunderbolt drive to a new internal SSD, a Kingston Fury Renegade. PCIe4.0 power, unlike some Samsung drives, the Renegade has no issues with macOS and Trim. It is using a Phison 18 controller.

Disk speeds:

• Windows
  • Read: 7.05 GB/sec, write 6.89 GB/sec.
• macOS:
  • Read: 5.8 GB/sec, write 5.8 GB/sec.

So far so good. So we have windows booting, and macOS booting. I used Rufus to create the Windows 11 installer...

 

[c-o-pr]

So Windows 11 installed just fine no problems. macOS installed just fine, no problem. But then I used CCC to transfer the contents from my working installation on an external Thunderbolt drive to a new internal SSD, a Kingston Fury Renegade. PCIe4.0 power, unlike some Samsung drives, the Renegade has no issues with macOS and Trim. It is using a Phison 18 controller.

Disk speeds:

• Windows
  • Read: 7.05 GB/sec, write 6.89 GB/sec.
• macOS:
  • Read: 5.8 GB/sec, write 5.8 GB/sec.

So far so good. So we have windows booting, and macOS booting. I used Rufus to create the Windows 11 installer...

Perusing a detailed review yesterday, it found the Kingston to a very strong performing drive, up against both WD and Samsung.

The top performer across a wide range of workloads appears to be new SK Hynix. There's some talk about incompatibility of older SK Hynix with macOS per kernel panics on actual Macs. But according to a user, if you zap the drive format including the partition table and re-format it yourself, this problem goes away...? This info is purely anecdotal. I've seen no mention of Trim, so buyer beware.

 

[c-o-pr]

BTW, if you boot Linux and run GPartEd, that tool provides very grokkable drive layout information.

Use it to take a look at what Windows laid down and plan adjustments.

It is helpful because it's a GUI that helps you avoid bad moves and also shows both partition type code and name so you can figure out layout details.

The most complete synopsis of partition types I've seen is in docs related to linux fdisk. Look at the See Also for fdisk man page and follow links to the many other partition commands under linux. Each has its own culture and strengths.

There are many tools for partition editing / mgmt with decades of lore, so there's no definitive reference for layouts.

Command line tools offer more fine-grained control of layouts, but having the knowledge req'd that what you are trying to do makes sense is another matter.

Mac diskutil command is also a powerhouse tool that can help you achieve layouts that cannot be expressed using Disk Utility.

 

[c-o-pr]

SK hynix Platinum P41 SSD Review: The Best Around (Updated)

The fitting successor to the popular Gold P31 is finally here

www.tomshardware.com

These two graphs caught my eye...

 

[dehjomz]

Perusing a detailed review yesterday, it found the Kingston to a very strong performing drive, up against both WD and Samsung.

The top performer across a wide range of workloads appears to be new SK Hynix. There's some talk about incompatibility of older SK Hynix with macOS per kernel panics on actual Macs. But according to a user, if you zap the drive format including the partition table and re-format it yourself, this problem goes away...? This info is purely anecdotal. I've seen no mention of Trim, so buyer beware.

I like the WD black sn770 and sn850. But Amazon had a good sale on prime day on the Kingston, so after reading several favorable reviews, I took the plunge. So far so good.

SK hynix Platinum P41 SSD Review: The Best Around (Updated)

The fitting successor to the popular Gold P31 is finally here

www.tomshardware.com

These two graphs caught my eye...

View attachment 552217
View attachment 552218

They caught mine too... look how long the fury sustains it write speed at 6,000 MB/sec for... the SN850 is also pretty good in terms of high sustained write speeds too, but my SN850 is my game drive... my Steam Library and Windows Xbox...

 

[c-o-pr]

They caught mine too... look how long the fury sustains it write speed at 6,000 MB/sec for... the SN850 is also pretty good in terms of high sustained write speeds too, but my SN850 is my game drive... my Steam Library and Windows Xbox...

The second graph with the curves for total throughput shows that the 980 Pro is the leader for sustained writes.

I have a hard time thinking in terms of "this other drive is faster until" because I view the world more as 0,1,infinity, where in this case "until" means infinity.

The rest of the tests are worth a look to round out the perspective

 

[dehjomz]

The second graph with the curves for total throughput shows that the 980 Pro is the leader for sustained writes.

I have a hard time thinking in terms of "this other drive is faster until" because I view the world more as 0,1,infinity, where in this case "until" means infinity.

The rest of the tests are worth a look to round out the perspective

If you look at the chart The Samsung only takes the lead after 5 minutes of sustained writing. If your writes finishes in less time than that then other drives like the wd black and the Kingston write faster.

 

[c-o-pr]

Precisely the point I am trying to draw out: there's a tradeoff.

If you look around the edges, you see that there are some reasons why 980 Pro has generally won the reviews, because it's strong balance of traits. If you read the whole review and look at all the traits, the SK Hynix is the new overall leader, showing in top rank across all performance criteria considered in the review.

But of course, it's still more complex than I wish. For example — and I keep beating on this — Sabrent Rocket 4 was top reviewed when I chose it in early 2021 and it seemed to run blazing fast. But mine died in a fiery crash. And when I got the replacement direct from Sabrent, it also quickly died in a fiery crash! So its performance advantage is rediculous: make it go half as fast and keep my data!

Yet others are using Rockets... So what gives?

I chose this 980 Pro after the Sabrents because it was top rated and a 970 Plus was working OK for me — It was too small for my needs. The first 980 Pro got hard errors and threw some files away. The second one has the Trim problem, and sometimes it just comes to a near halt for reasons I don't have the chops to investigate. It benches pretty well and most of the time my system is speedy.

OTOH, the WD SN750 has been a consistent trooper. Not the best benchmarks and gen3, but most dependable overall for me. So I would be very inclined to SN850.

But this said, what do I know?! These companies are known to replace chipsets and keep the same model number. A 980 Pro firmware update literally gave me the Trim boot problem where it had not been a problem for 4 months before that update.

Anyway, the article is worth a close look.

 

[dehjomz]

Precisely the point I am trying to draw out: there's a tradeoff.

If you look around the edges, you see that there are some reasons why 980 Pro has generally won the reviews, because it's strong balance of traits. If you read the whole review and look at all the traits, the SK Hynix is the new overall leader, showing in top rank across all performance criteria considered in the review.

But of course, it's still more complex than I wish. For example — and I keep beating on this — Sabrent Rocket 4 was top reviewed when I chose it in early 2021 and it seemed to run blazing fast. But mine died in a fiery crash. And when I got the replacement direct from Sabrent, it also quickly died in a fiery crash! So its performance advantage is rediculous: make it go half as fast and keep my data!

Yet others are using Rockets... So what gives?

I chose this 980 Pro after the Sabrents because it was top rated and a 970 Plus was working OK for me — It was too small for my needs. The first 980 Pro got hard errors and threw some files away. The second one has the Trim problem, and sometimes it just comes to a near halt for reasons I don't have the chops to investigate. It benches pretty well and most of the time my system is speedy.

OTOH, the WD SN750 has been a consistent trooper. Not the best benchmarks and gen3, but most dependable overall for me. So I would be very inclined to SN850.

But this said, what do I know?! These companies are known to replace chipsets and keep the same model number. A 980 Pro firmware update literally gave me the Trim boot problem where it had not been a problem for 4 months before that update.

Anyway, the article is worth a close look.

I have been using Samsung for many years since, the 840 and 950 days. But as TRIM problems with macOS have arisen with some 970-based drives, for macOS purposes I've moved on... Mainly WD to black, the sn770 is quite a swift performer for the price, and the 850 is faster still. I wanted to give Kingston a try, this go around, and so far, so good. I have a 980 in my ps5.