By FuzeDrive™ for Microsoft® Windows® 10 x64 User Guide Version 1.5 Date: July 11, 2019 ©2019 Enmotus, Inc. All rights reserved. FuzeDrive, FuzeRAM and vSSD are a trademarks of Enmotus, Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Contents Pre-Install Checklist .............................................................................................................................. 3 Software Installation ............................................................................................................................ 4 Configuring FuzeDrive .......................................................................................................................... 4 Activating the License ....................................................................................................................... 5 Deactivating the License ................................................................................................................... 5 FuzeDrive Top Level Menu Options ................................................................................................... 6 Create Bootable FuzeDrive ................................................................................................................... 7 Adding an SSD to an Existing HDD Boot Drive ....................................................................................... 8 Utilizing the Additional Capacity Over the SSD License Limit .............................................................. 12 Expand the Capacity of an existing SSD Boot Drive ............................................................................. 12 Accelerate or Expand a Data Drive...................................................................................................... 15 Move All Data to Slow Tier ................................................................................................................. 16 Delete FuzeDrive – Data Tier .............................................................................................................. 18 Change Settings ................................................................................................................................. 19 Change RAM Cache Settings ........................................................................................................... 19 Change Declared Disk Type Settings ............................................................................................... 20 Installing a New Operating System or Moving the License .................................................................. 21 Configuring FuzeDrive Using Systray Utility ........................................................................................ 22 Uninstalling FuzeDrive Software ......................................................................................................... 24 Troubleshooting ................................................................................................................................. 26 Unable to activate software using the license key........................................................................... 26 RAID is installed and FuzeDrive will not convert the boot drive ...................................................... 26 “Could not shrink highest volume” when removing fast media or transforming my boot drive ....... 26 My system no longer shuts down or hibernates ............................................................................. 26 I need more information, or my issue is not addressed here .......................................................... 26 Appendix A: Example Drive Configurations and FuzeDrive Options ..................................................... 27 Pre-Convert Example Configurations .............................................................................................. 27 Post-Convert Example Configurations ............................................................................................. 29 Appendix B: Cleaning Disks Previously Used as a FuzeDrive during Windows Setup ........................... 30 2 v1.5 07/11/19 ___________________________________________________________________________________ User Guide FuzeDrive™ is designed to run on Windows 10 PCs and motherboards based on Intel 6th generation Core and above as well as AMD Ryzen systems. The software utilizes advanced Machine Intelligence, virtualization and automated MicroTiering™ algorithms to offer users a full performance class SSD experience with the benefit additional capacity. FuzeDrive is able to significantly improve the performance of PC applications and boot times using a fast, solid state disk (SSD) fuzed with a larger, less expensive hard disk drive (HDD) or lower performance capacity SSD. The need to split programs and data across an SSD boot drive and an HDD data drive is now eliminated! FuzeDrive creates a high-capacity virtual SSD, or vSSD™, that operates consistently at the same performance levels as an SSD, continuously adapting to changing storage usage patterns in real time. FuzeDrive supports the following features: • Tier up to 256GB (standard license) or 1TB (plus license) of fast tier storage media e.g. NVMe or SATA SSDs with a high capacity SSD or HDD • Total capacity of both fast tier and slow tier storage is usable (minus small overhead) • 2GB (standard or plus license) or 4GB (plus license only) of system RAM may be used as a read only cache • Convert existing boot or data drives without the need to migrate data • Removal and replacement of fast tier devices without the need to migrate data IMPORTANT: Backup the boot drive and important data and follow the instructions below carefully! When upgrading to a FuzeDrive, the system boot and/or data drives will be transformed to a virtual disk to fully accelerate or expand the storage in the system. Backing up protects from potential hardware storage device errors or failures that may occur during the transformation process. Pre-Install Checklist If transforming an SSD or NVMe boot drive that is larger than the licensed SSD capacity amount, additional steps are required. See the section Expand the Capacity of an existing SSD Boot Drive for additional information. Check that your computer meets the following requirements before installing FuzeDrive: • Intel 6th generation Core (Skylake) or later or AMD Ryzen system • 4 GB RAM minimum (more to support FuzeRAM™ cache) • An available SSD or HDD that is unused (i.e., with no partitions) 3 v1.5 07/11/19 ___________________________________________________________________________________ • The SATA disk controller is set to AHCI (not RAID or IDE) mode in the BIOS. Consult your system documentation for further details. • If planning to create a bootable tier, Secure Boot must be disabled in the BIOS. It is possible to re-enable Secure Boot after transform. • There are no other software RAID or SSD caching solutions enabled. • Microsoft’s chkdsk or another third-party disk scan tool runs error-free on the boot drive. • If planning to create a bootable tier greater than 2TB in size (fast plus slow drive capacities), the system must be configured to boot in UEFI mode with a UEFI bootable Windows OS installation. Windows does not support > 2TB boot drives in Legacy MBR boot mode. When installing, be sure to boot your Windows install media with the UEFI option. Software Installation Step 1: Download and run the Enmotus FuzeDrive installer. Step 2: Follow the installer instructions to accept the license and install the FuzeDrive software. NOTE: Prior to starting the install, you may optionally verify your current storage configuration using the “Drive Controller Information” option. Step 3: Reboot the system to complete the installation. Configuring FuzeDrive The FuzeDrive configuration utility is installed in the Windows Start menu, under the Enmotus program folder. In Windows 10, you can click the Windows logo in the lower left corner or press the Windows key on the keyboard and type “fuzedrive” and hit Enter to search and run the FuzeDrive configuration utility. The utility will first scan the system for all visible SSD and hard drives. 4 v1.5 07/11/19 ___________________________________________________________________________________ Activating the License Run the FuzeDrive utility and enter the license key as shown below (requires an Internet connection): Deactivating the License Whenever possible, ensure your license is deactivated before moving your fuzed drives to a new PC or reinstalling Windows. Uninstalling the FuzeDrive software in the Windows 10 Settings Apps & features offers the option to de-activate the license on the current PC. Uninstalling does not remove the FuzeDrive driver, so all data on the FuzeDrive remains accessible, but the driver will no longer optimize performance and will slowly migrate all data back to the slow tier. Alternatively, the FuzeDrive configuration utility allows you to “Deactivate” by choosing the “License” option on the main configuration screen. You can alternatively open an Administrator PowerShell or Command Prompt and enter: > ecmd --license return 5 v1.5 07/11/19 ___________________________________________________________________________________ FuzeDrive Top Level Menu Options The top-level menu offers three primary options depending on the current system configuration, summarized as follows: FuzeDrive Does