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Malcolm XML
Aug 8, 2009

I always knew it would end like this.

Potato Salad posted:

do we need to do a refresher on the different requirements for backup media, portable media, and performance media

Love too vpn into my home Nas to restore redundant data at 1mbps.


Anyway: it works for fast imaging of my MacBook that I can restore instantly and travels everywhere


For $200 it was pretty good for 2 TB

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Binary Badger
Oct 11, 2005

Trolling Link for a decade


BeastOfExmoor posted:

Interesting to see that MicroCenter and Sabrent, who both sell drives under their own names, are continuing to drop prices even after the announcement of the power outage last week. There must be an incredible glut of NAND in the pipeline.

Everyone seems to be wary of that $100 mark, though. Sabrent's had any number of unannounced sales on Amazon of their Rockets, but the price has stayed near $100 for 1 TB every single time to date. Additionally, MicroCenter's kept their 1 TB Premium at $97.99 for the past month or so and holding. We shall see, but I doubt they'll lower the prices any more since I suspect they're approaching cost.

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

Binary Badger posted:

Everyone seems to be wary of that $100 mark, though. Sabrent's had any number of unannounced sales on Amazon of their Rockets, but the price has stayed near $100 for 1 TB every single time to date. Additionally, MicroCenter's kept their 1 TB Premium at $97.99 for the past month or so and holding. We shall see, but I doubt they'll lower the prices any more since I suspect they're approaching cost.
Flash itself (no controller cost yet) runs about 5-6 cents per gb

apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!
I just impulse-bought a Sabrent 1TB NVMe last night. I was tired and, having read the news/rumour about the power outage causing prices to stay steady made me do it!

Is the Sabrent as good as any other Phison E12? In the cold light of day I was wondering if I should've went with the similar Silicon Power model. I think it was the blue swooshes on the Sabrent and the fact that it was a couple of buxx cheaper that swayed me. They're pretty much the same in terms of quality, aren't they? i.e. They are the same board, so you've got just as much chance of one brand failing early as the next brand? Not that I expect any trouble from it for a couple of years.

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️
Ugh missed out on the 2TB 660p @ $110 on Amazon.

originalnickname
Mar 9, 2005

tree

apropos man posted:

I just impulse-bought a Sabrent 1TB NVMe last night. I was tired and, having read the news/rumour about the power outage causing prices to stay steady made me do it!

Is the Sabrent as good as any other Phison E12? In the cold light of day I was wondering if I should've went with the similar Silicon Power model. I think it was the blue swooshes on the Sabrent and the fact that it was a couple of buxx cheaper that swayed me. They're pretty much the same in terms of quality, aren't they? i.e. They are the same board, so you've got just as much chance of one brand failing early as the next brand? Not that I expect any trouble from it for a couple of years.

I checked out the website and it apparently has a 5 year warranty, not that that helps with data loss of course.. If it makes you feel better, I bought one too, so we can live in fear together!

apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!
#BlueSwooshBros4Lyfe

Bob Morales
Aug 18, 2006


Just wear the fucking mask, Bob

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Palladium posted:

Ugh missed out on the 2TB 660p @ $110 on Amazon.

:eek:

Seamonster
Apr 30, 2007

IMMER SIEGREICH

apropos man posted:

#BlueSwooshBros4Lyfe

gently caress it, I'm in for a 2TB Rocket RIGHT NOW.

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Palladium posted:

Ugh missed out on the 2TB 660p @ $110 on Amazon.

I think that was a pricing error though. Read a lot of guys were getting their orders cancelled.

apropos man
Sep 5, 2016

You get a hundred and forty one thousand years and you're out in eight!

Seamonster posted:

gently caress it, I'm in for a 2TB Rocket RIGHT NOW.

Aww, man. You're putting my 1TB to shame! Still, I'm not a huge gamer and I expect mine to be the sweet spot in terms of capacity to hold half a dozen Steam games. Whatever gets rarely played will get sideloaded onto an old OCZ SATA SSD I have in my rig. I think I'm developing something of an addiction to buying these Phison E12 variants whenever I've got a bit of spare cash to throw around. The Sabrent Rocket will be my third one, after the BPXP 240G and the Corsair Force MP510, also a 240G. They all work flawlessly in my short experience with them, so far.

Good luck with your 2TB one.

Seamonster
Apr 30, 2007

IMMER SIEGREICH
Yeah sorta coming from a different place here. Got over $1000 of credit card cashback to blow on a Zen2 build so I'm rocking some yoloswag for once.

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️
Bulk DDR4 and TLC prices are still falling

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...
So to pick up on something I asked about earlier this year, I was looking to add another SSD to my computer, as I've been running out of storage space.

I have two hard drives, a 500GB 850 EVO Samsung SSD, and a 2TB Western Digital WDC WD2003FZEX-00Z4S. The SSD has the OS, games, and plethora of other miscellanea . The 2TB serves as storage for files that I don't immediately need (archived files from my old computer, video, game installers, etc.)

I just ordered a WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB PC SSD. I think I should be able to install it. Based on the old replies I got, my motherboard should have the capacity for more hard drives (ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z97-A-USB31, which means it should still have two free connectors).

Is there anything else I should do or keep in mind? The only thing I'm worried about at this point is figuring out how I'm going to physically install it, and if I'm going to need to buy a rack or some kind of adhesives to get the drive to stay put. However, it's possible I overlooked something, so I thought I'd check with the thread.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Max Wilco posted:

The only thing I'm worried about at this point is figuring out how I'm going to physically install it, and if I'm going to need to buy a rack or some kind of adhesives to get the drive to stay put.

SSDs are small and very light, they can get away with minimal attachment. If you don't move your PC ever you can just leave it sitting in somewhere with the power & sata wires holding it.

My personally vouched method is to use a bit of adhesive velcro, you can get that at any craft or dollar store. Or you can zip tie it to any handy part of your case, add zip ties together if needed.

The only reason to get a mounting bracket is if you have a case window and are concerned about how things look.

Max Wilco
Jan 23, 2012

I'm just trying to go through life without looking stupid.

It's not working out too well...

Klyith posted:

SSDs are small and very light, they can get away with minimal attachment. If you don't move your PC ever you can just leave it sitting in somewhere with the power & sata wires holding it.

My personally vouched method is to use a bit of adhesive velcro, you can get that at any craft or dollar store. Or you can zip tie it to any handy part of your case, add zip ties together if needed.

The only reason to get a mounting bracket is if you have a case window and are concerned about how things look.

Only time I move it is to keep to take it out for dusting. Otherwise, I keep it down in the cubby-hole where stays put.

Still, I would want to anchor the SSD, since otherwise, I will inevitably forget that it's not secured, and jostle it around if I take it out for dust or if rearrange the furniture or something.

I though about using these Scotch Mounting Squares to do it. The ones I linked are pretty big, but I have some smaller, restickable ones.

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Max Wilco posted:

Only time I move it is to keep to take it out for dusting. Otherwise, I keep it down in the cubby-hole where stays put.

Still, I would want to anchor the SSD, since otherwise, I will inevitably forget that it's not secured, and jostle it around if I take it out for dust or if rearrange the furniture or something.

I though about using these Scotch Mounting Squares to do it. The ones I linked are pretty big, but I have some smaller, restickable ones.

I use a couple of the 1x1" removable mounting squares and that's usually more than enough for a SSD. I used the regular kind once and getting it back off was awful (as designed).

MaxxBot
Oct 6, 2003

you could have clapped

you should have clapped!!
https://twitter.com/TechDeals_16/status/1148386350388916224?s=19

surf rock
Aug 12, 2007

We need more women in STEM, and by that, I mean skateboarding, television, esports, and magic.

Is this better than the Corsair MP510 960 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive?

When I compare the specs on those Newegg pages, it looks like the Adata is 3D NAND instead of 3D TLC (not sure if that's better or worse). The sequential read/write speeds are nearly identical but the Corsair has way higher figures for random read/write.

Edit: vvv Thanks!

surf rock fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Jul 9, 2019

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
The Corsair MP510 and SX8200 Pro both use 64L Toshiba 3D TLC NAND. They're both good drives and comparable in performance. The only thing the MP510 will have over the SX8200 Pro is that there are easily a dozen and a half functionally identical Phison E12 drives out there and they're getting a very healthy user support network with regards to firmware updates and tinkering to provide extra functionality, performance, and control over them. That being said, making use of that non-official advice and tools carries with it the very real possibility of voiding your warranty.

Also, if you live near a Micro Center, their 1TB Inland Premium drive is a Phison E12 drive the same as the Corsair MP510 and with a $5 RetailMeNot coupon is currently selling for ~$93 before tax. The downside is the Inland drive is only warrantied for three years while *most* E12 drives carry a five year warranty.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 04:53 on Jul 9, 2019

SlayVus
Jul 10, 2009
Grimey Drawer
Anything wrong with a Silicon Power Ace A55? Newegg has them on sale for $90 for a 1TB.

SM2258XT Dram less with an SLC cache. Going to use it as a portable hard drive so don't need it for really big files.

SlayVus fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Jul 9, 2019

Eikre
May 2, 2009
My understanding is that M2 SATA is just another SATA form-factor. Is this also true of NVMe, with respects to PCIe? In that, for example, a converter card would be purely passive, or that on-drive NVMe controller is basically just a RAID card handling all its own poo poo, and the only thing it wants from the motherboard in terms of mediation is a straight line straight up the Northbridge's rear end and into a kernal drive?

Like, I'm just curious about backwards compatibility and making sure I have it right that there is never going to be a catch, hardware-wise: you could meticulously cut equal-length strands out of a CAT5 cable, use them to manually bridge all the pins on one of these things into an expansion port on a motherboard from 2004, and as long as the operating system had the right drivers, it just wouldn't give a poo poo at all.




...To be somewhat more practical: I have a few old laptops with crashed HDDs sitting around. I'm not going to use them, but I know students and clerks who are for want of any old x86 with a keyboard attached, so I wanna throw super cheap but firmly adequate SSDs in them and hand them out like candy. What's my best bet? Anyone out there selling two-generation old 120gb drives in six-packs?

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Eikre posted:

...To be somewhat more practical: I have a few old laptops with crashed HDDs sitting around. I'm not going to use them, but I know students and clerks who are for want of any old x86 with a keyboard attached, so I wanna throw super cheap but firmly adequate SSDs in them and hand them out like candy. What's my best bet? Anyone out there selling two-generation old 120gb drives in six-packs?

10 packs, but yeah:
https://smile.amazon.com/Patriot-Memory-Burst-120GB-Internal/dp/B07FF8HBSQ/
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07Q8TN3B8/

singles on sale for 16.99
https://smile.amazon.com/Kingston-120GB-Solid-SA400S37-120G/dp/B01N6JQS8C/

Other than that I'd watch ebay. On retail sites a lot of times older models will have their value inflate just due to only having third party sellers with stock before long.

stevewm
May 10, 2005

Eikre posted:

My understanding is that M2 SATA is just another SATA form-factor. Is this also true of NVMe, with respects to PCIe? In that, for example, a converter card would be purely passive,

This is correct on both fronts. M.2 slots can have SATA, USB 3, and PCI Express connections in them. The slot will have keys that denote its configuration and prevent the wrong type of drive being plugged into a slot that doesn't support it. Its kinda complicated really: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2

NVMe is a protocol that uses PCI Express as its physical layer. Thus it can work on any PCI Express interface port with the appropriate passive adapter.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

Eikre posted:

My understanding is that M2 SATA is just another SATA form-factor. Is this also true of NVMe, with respects to PCIe? In that, for example, a converter card would be purely passive, or that on-drive NVMe controller is basically just a RAID card handling all its own poo poo, and the only thing it wants from the motherboard in terms of mediation is a straight line straight up the Northbridge's rear end and into a kernal drive?

Like, I'm just curious about backwards compatibility and making sure I have it right that there is never going to be a catch, hardware-wise: you could meticulously cut equal-length strands out of a CAT5 cable, use them to manually bridge all the pins on one of these things into an expansion port on a motherboard from 2004, and as long as the operating system had the right drivers, it just wouldn't give a poo poo at all.

...To be somewhat more practical: I have a few old laptops with crashed HDDs sitting around. I'm not going to use them, but I know students and clerks who are for want of any old x86 with a keyboard attached, so I wanna throw super cheap but firmly adequate SSDs in them and hand them out like candy. What's my best bet? Anyone out there selling two-generation old 120gb drives in six-packs?

Kind of confused as to what you're asking here. If you're asking if you can put M.2 SATA drives into laptops from 2004 - that's possible (barring the chance that some might be using SATA 1.0, which should *still* work), but you'd need an M.2 SATA to 2.5" SATA converter. Those are relatively inexpensive. If you're asking about the feasibility of getting an NVMe drive working on those laptops - no matter how much soldering you do it isn't going to change the fact that you still have to change the BIOS to recognize them. There are people who've done BIOS surgery to get NVMe drives working as boot devices all the way back to the Z68 series of chipsets, and if you really look around you'll find directions on how to modify popular legacy BIOSes to accept NVMe drives. NVMe drives have no circuitry/functionality on them to act as boot devices - they rely on the BIOS to handle that.

So to clarify - are you asking *one* thing here, or two? Because getting SSDs into 2003-04 laptops shouldn't be difficult at all, whereas 'manually bridging' an NVMe drive directly onto northbridge (which don't really exist anymore - most boards use a Platform Controller Hub and the northbridge functionality is performed by the CPU) leads using repurposed patch cabling on a chipset that predates NVMe by close to a decade is kinda :staredog:.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 19:08 on Jul 9, 2019

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


too much skew, too much reflection, too much crosstalk

you vastly underappreciate how difficult high-frequency electronics design or pci engineering is

Chikimiki
May 14, 2009
Just found a Samsung 860 QVO 2TB for 170€ - seems like a good deal to me, despite the crapiness associated with QLC?

/Edit: would be used as a game drive, I would keep on booting from my current SSD.

Chikimiki fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Jul 11, 2019

Lambert
Apr 15, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
Fallen Rib
That seems like a great price. If consistently fast writing speed over many GB of data written at once isn't an important part of your usage, it'll do just fine.

FRINGE
May 23, 2003
title stolen for lf posting

Klyith posted:

SSDs are small and very light, they can get away with minimal attachment. If you don't move your PC ever you can just leave it sitting in somewhere with the power & sata wires holding it.

Ive done this with a bunch of machines. Especially if the power and sata cables are at different angles (even more so if they are routed from the backside of a modern case) the ssd wont go anywhere.

Fauxtool
Oct 21, 2008

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
I have an extra 256gb nvme after upgrading a laptop. I want to place it into a external enclosure that connects via usb-c.
Is there anything specific to look out for?

I like this one so far. Im okay with spending the $35 its priced at. Is there a better option for the same or cheaper?
https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-US...gateway&sr=8-13

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007



Fauxtool posted:

I have an extra 256gb nvme after upgrading a laptop. I want to place it into a external enclosure that connects via usb-c.
Is there anything specific to look out for?

I like this one so far. Im okay with spending the $35 its priced at. Is there a better option for the same or cheaper?
https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-US...gateway&sr=8-13

The last time I looked they were closer to $50; I'd give that one a shot.

skylined!
Apr 6, 2012

THE DEM DEFENDER HAS LOGGED ON
Cheapest 1tb nvme m.2 I've seen, for $93 - it is TLC. https://computers.woot.com/offers/centon-m-2-solid-state-drives?ref=w_cnt_lnd_cat_pc_8_1

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"

Caveat emptor: http://www.centon.com/download/products/RDSSDNVME-M.2-2280-IT-1TB/Datasheet.pdf

I don't think I've ever seen such an information-free datasheet. Not even listing the controller it uses?

Micro Center's back to offering the Inland drive for shipping: https://www.microcenter.com/product/600422/1tb-ssd-3d-nand-m2-2280-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
I find it’s pretty hit or miss for drive makers to list the controllers, but I would bet it’s a phison. They seem to own the low end consumer nvme for non OEMs like Intel and Samsung.

Who else is there for 3rd party nvme? Microsemi/microchip does the enterprise for HGST etc but I’m drawing a blank on other silicon vendors.

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull
Marvell sells several NVME controllers on the open market. I know there are others too, I just can't remember which companies.

Phison seems to have the most compelling package of silicon, reference board design, reference firmware, and price right now, which is why you see them all over the place: anyone can make a decent SSD if they just avoid the temptation of doing anything beyond changing the logo silkscreened on the PCB.

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
Oh yeah Marvell is the other biggie! Thanks.

skylined!
Apr 6, 2012

THE DEM DEFENDER HAS LOGGED ON

Fauxtool posted:

I have an extra 256gb nvme after upgrading a laptop. I want to place it into a external enclosure that connects via usb-c.
Is there anything specific to look out for?

I like this one so far. Im okay with spending the $35 its priced at. Is there a better option for the same or cheaper?
https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-US...gateway&sr=8-13

Sabrent's on sale for $30

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07K4TZQ7...SSD%20Enclosure

edit it requires a coupon code apparently? https://slickdeals.net/f/13214104-a...atnav_computers

skylined! fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jul 13, 2019

Binary Badger
Oct 11, 2005

Trolling Link for a decade


I have the Plugable and another:

https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Tool-free-Enclosure-Thunderbolt-Compatible/dp/B07N48N5GR/

I get up to 930 MB/sec on straight copies with an Inland Premium 1 TB installed.

It's not really Thunderbolt compatible, it's USB-C compatible as far as I can tell, if it were really Tbolt it should get much higher throughput (like up to 2 GB/sec)

It's got the same controller as this, which I also bought:

https://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/m...mdnvme-m2x-usb/

This one also uses a JMS 583 controller with the added deal that MDD provides a firmware updater for their unit dated March of this year. Don't see much difference in speed after applying it though.

Binary Badger fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Jul 14, 2019

Atomizer
Jun 24, 2007




BIG HEADLINE posted:

Caveat emptor: http://www.centon.com/download/products/RDSSDNVME-M.2-2280-IT-1TB/Datasheet.pdf

I don't think I've ever seen such an information-free datasheet. Not even listing the controller it uses?

Micro Center's back to offering the Inland drive for shipping: https://www.microcenter.com/product/600422/1tb-ssd-3d-nand-m2-2280-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive

Looks like it's basically a 600p. Not an enthusiastic recommendation.

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Fauxtool
Oct 21, 2008

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
Can anyone recommend an easy to use, free tool for cloning a drive? I want to upgrade some relatives' PC with SSDs now that they finally cheapish

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