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Actuarial Fables
Jul 29, 2014

Taco Defender

Mental Hospitality posted:

Says it's "3D Nand". Well that's good to know. I'm so behind on my ssd knowledge. Like "Have you heard of that fancy MLC flash storage" behind. Are there any current generation drives that fail catastrophically and early these days?
Outright failure isn't as much of a concern with the latest few generations of drives.

There are more budget focused SSDs that don't have a high-speed cache (DRAM or SLC flash), and budget/high capacity drives that use QLC flash (opposed to MLC/TLC flash). These drives usually aren't recommended due to worse performance and being not that much cheaper than better drives, but aren't actively dangerous to your data.

e. I mean you should still backup your data but the cheap SSDs aren't as bad as they once were.

Actuarial Fables fucked around with this message at 01:34 on May 23, 2020

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Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
Are Micron 1100 series SSDs any good? Does anyone have a link to that SSD google sheet all the specs?

e: oh found the google sheet but can't seem to find the specific DRAM specs for the Micron 1100 512GB.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Shaocaholica posted:

Are Micron 1100 series SSDs any good? Does anyone have a link to that SSD google sheet all the specs?

e: oh found the google sheet but can't seem to find the specific DRAM specs for the Micron 1100 512GB.

They're normally commercial drives in the cheap ssd category, a few years ago lots of them showed up in the secondary market at discount. Those were the first drives that ever hit $200/2TB. AFAIK unlike some other OEM-only SSDs you can get warranty for the 1100s.

If they're the same ones that have been floating around since then then yes they have DRAM and are TLC, the only downside is they have a pretty small SLC cache. It's basically a MX300 but enterprisey.

Ugly In The Morning
Jul 1, 2010
Pillbug
Not quite SSD, but close enough. I just pulled the HDD data drive that came with my computer and I was gonna give it to my mom to use as an external so she can back up her files- what’s a good enclosure that fits the full size 3.5 drives but also is relatively cheap? The last enclosure I bought for my SSDs were garbage so I don’t want to risk that again.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Ugly In The Morning posted:

Not quite SSD, but close enough. I just pulled the HDD data drive that came with my computer and I was gonna give it to my mom to use as an external so she can back up her files- what’s a good enclosure that fits the full size 3.5 drives but also is relatively cheap? The last enclosure I bought for my SSDs were garbage so I don’t want to risk that again.

Anything that supports UASP is good.

examples on newegg

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Ugly In The Morning posted:

Not quite SSD, but close enough. I just pulled the HDD data drive that came with my computer and I was gonna give it to my mom to use as an external so she can back up her files- what’s a good enclosure that fits the full size 3.5 drives but also is relatively cheap? The last enclosure I bought for my SSDs were garbage so I don’t want to risk that again.

Whatever enclosure you get from shucking your drives! You could ask over in the Packrats thread and someone will probably send you one for the cost of shipping, if that.

Gruffalo Soldier
Feb 23, 2013

What's the deal with NVME m2 2242 drives? I'm looking for one to put in the WWAN slot of a T580 and all the models I've seen are out of stock. Did a factory burn down or something?

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

Gruffalo Soldier posted:

What's the deal with NVME m2 2242 drives? I'm looking for one to put in the WWAN slot of a T580 and all the models I've seen are out of stock. Did a factory burn down or something?

I don't know but it doesn't seem to be that popular of a form factor vs. 2280. Maybe they decided to focus on the product lines that have more sales. There's some Sabrent ones on amazon in 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, although I can't speak for the quality:
https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07XVR1KKR/

Cygni
Nov 12, 2005

raring to post

Gruffalo Soldier posted:

What's the deal with NVME m2 2242 drives? I'm looking for one to put in the WWAN slot of a T580 and all the models I've seen are out of stock. Did a factory burn down or something?

You probably know this already but check around to make sure the WWAN slot will actually take a storage device. Unsurprisingly, many OEMs decided to gently caress this up and do non-standard implementations or BIOS restrictions that straight up won't understand if storage is hung off of what is otherwise a generic interface.

"Computers: They Suck!"

Gruffalo Soldier
Feb 23, 2013

Cygni posted:

You probably know this already but check around to make sure the WWAN slot will actually take a storage device. Unsurprisingly, many OEMs decided to gently caress this up and do non-standard implementations or BIOS restrictions that straight up won't understand if storage is hung off of what is otherwise a generic interface.

"Computers: They SucK!"

Yah there is a lot of variation. Reports seem to be that yes you can, but only nvme (no SATA). The Sabrent one mentioned above apparently doesn't fit despite being ostensibly the correct form factor. It's all quite confusing!

At the moment I'm leaning towards cutting my losses and just getting a big ol' main drive. Annoying though cause I've got a 2tb hdd in my current laptop that works great for storage. I wanted this in my main slot and a boot drive in my WWAN. Ah well.

Palladium
May 8, 2012

Very Good
✔️✔️✔️✔️

Shaocaholica posted:

Are Micron 1100 series SSDs any good? Does anyone have a link to that SSD google sheet all the specs?

e: oh found the google sheet but can't seem to find the specific DRAM specs for the Micron 1100 512GB.

I have one. Tested 4K QD1 throughput at 30MB/s is around half of my NVME EX920, aka "more than fast enough for anybody looking for a SATA SSD".

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy
I had a 850 Evo choke and die. RMA to samsung on year 4 of 5 of waranty. Fuckers sent me back a used 860 Evo. 9TB written out of box. Im not sure how to feel about that.

repiv
Aug 13, 2009

redeyes posted:

I had a 850 Evo choke and die. RMA to samsung on year 4 of 5 of waranty. Fuckers sent me back a used 860 Evo. 9TB written out of box. Im not sure how to feel about that.

The 860s have much better endurance ratings (the 1TB went from 150TBW to 600TBW) so you still came out ahead there

dragon enthusiast
Jan 1, 2010
I'm trying to install an M.2 drive onto my motherboard but I can't seem to get enough clearance to get the screw in. This is about as far in as it goes using what seems like reasonable amounts of pressure.



Should I be expecting the gold contacts to be barely visible, or slide in much easier? I'm not sure how to apply more pressure without taking out the motherboard.

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
That seems like more contacts visible than usual, kind of put it in at an angle to the board, like 30deg, then push down and it should slide in and hit the socket cutout stopper thingie. If the cutout on the other end doesn’t line up with the 2280 screw hole something ain’t right. There is usually a bit of slop though.

redeyes
Sep 14, 2002

by Fluffdaddy
It's not in all the way, shove harder. At an angle, not straight.

dragon enthusiast
Jan 1, 2010
Shoving it in at an angle did the trick. The manual for my motherboard had a big DONT DO THIS YOU IDIOT which is why I avoided it.

I'm moving from a 512GB drive to a 1TB drive. WD has a drive cloning tool, but it keeps trying to assign the new capacity to one of the old recovery partitions instead of the C:\ drive, and won't let me expand C:\ if I try to manually massage the new capacities.

Anime Schoolgirl
Nov 28, 2002

macrium reflect will transfer partition space as-is by default (so if you want to expand the main partition, you can define "reserve" space for the remaining recovery partitions before adding them and completely fill up the partition space that way)

Fame Douglas
Nov 20, 2013

by Fluffdaddy

dragon enthusiast posted:

Shoving it in at an angle did the trick. The manual for my motherboard had a big DONT DO THIS YOU IDIOT which is why I avoided it.

Weird, probably just a badly written manual. With every m.2 slot I've ever seen you have to put in the drive at an angle, then press it down.

ConanTheLibrarian
Aug 13, 2004


dis buch is late
Fallen Rib
Years ago it was recommended not to fill your SSD past some percentage (75-80% maybe?) or performance would decrease. Is this outdated info for modern drives?


Second, I'm going to build a new PC around the end of the year after the new crop of CPUs and GPUs are released. I was thinking of getting a 2TB NVMe drive (preferably PCIe4 because why not). Is there anything interesting in the pipeline that fits that bill or will we still be looking at read speeds of 5.? GB/s at best?

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

ConanTheLibrarian posted:

Years ago it was recommended not to fill your SSD past some percentage (75-80% maybe?) or performance would decrease. Is this outdated info for modern drives?

This is outdated for most drives. Normal SSDs are much better about being close to full due to TRIM, plus just from being much bigger. You want to avoid filling them all the way up, but can get away with relatively low free space if you don't have tasks that require a lot of working space on the drive (for example photoshot or video editing programs).


However, it has become relevant again with QLC drives (QLC = 4 bits per cell). QLC is very slow in write performance, so depends strongly on SLC cache for performance. The SLC is dynamic -- when the drive is less full it might be 100 GB, when full it might be 10GB. They try to keep everything active in SLC cache, because performance drops off a cliff when you hit the QLC.

Generally it's worth avoiding QLC drives for your main system drive. They're good as secondary drives for video games or storage, anything that is all reads and no writes doesn't have the downsides.

unknown
Nov 16, 2002
Ain't got no stinking title yet!


Mental Hospitality posted:

I probably should have asked here before spending money...

Group opinion on the Western Digital Blue 1TB?

I have a whole bunch of them at work that are being used as cache drives for applications that are basically a 25/75 read/write ratio (yes) running 24x7. So basically the worst thing you can do to them. Not one bad one yet over the past year and smart reports are still giving me the 2 thumbs up.

dragon enthusiast
Jan 1, 2010

Anime Schoolgirl posted:

macrium reflect will transfer partition space as-is by default (so if you want to expand the main partition, you can define "reserve" space for the remaining recovery partitions before adding them and completely fill up the partition space that way)

I don't think I understand. Using Acronis, this is the default allocation given to the drives (the original size of the second recovery partition is 524MB).



I can shrink down the second recovery partition but I just get this and no option to increase C:



By the way, what's the general process if I want to keep my original SSD around as a storage drive? Googling around there's a bunch of warnings about trying to do this.

Geemer
Nov 4, 2010



Try removing the second recovery partition, changing the size of the c: one and then adding the recovery partition again.

Otherwise Macrium Reflect can do it.


Depending on what you mean by keeping it around, there's some minor steps to take.
Either way, make sure your bios is set to boot from the new drive.

If you want to keep it as is, just set a different wallpaper after cloning. Something to tell you you're on the wrong install. I believe you can use disk cleanup to get rid of the old Windows install, or otherwise booting into a Linux live session lets you ignore ntfs permissions to delete it.

If you just want it for storage and don't want to keep anything on it, you can just format it.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

dragon enthusiast posted:

I don't think I understand. Using Acronis, this is the default allocation given to the drives (the original size of the second recovery partition is 524MB).



I can shrink down the second recovery partition but I just get this and no option to increase C:



By the way, what's the general process if I want to keep my original SSD around as a storage drive? Googling around there's a bunch of warnings about trying to do this.

I'm not sure what the acronis procedure is, but with macrium reflect you drag each partition over one at a time, when you get to C: you resize it bigger (leaving enough space for the remaining partition), and then drag the last partition over.


Keeping your old SSD as a secondary drive is fine, but cleaning the old partitions off is a bit fiddly because normal windows drive manager will refuse to delete the system partitions. You can use diskpart, or various hdd erasing tools.

orcane
Jun 13, 2012

Fun Shoe
Just triple check every option you select in diskpart :v:

dragon enthusiast
Jan 1, 2010

Klyith posted:

I'm not sure what the acronis procedure is, but with macrium reflect you drag each partition over one at a time, when you get to C: you resize it bigger (leaving enough space for the remaining partition), and then drag the last partition over.


Keeping your old SSD as a secondary drive is fine, but cleaning the old partitions off is a bit fiddly because normal windows drive manager will refuse to delete the system partitions. You can use diskpart, or various hdd erasing tools.

Didn't realize there was a free version of Macrium, that method seems to have worked.

Is there anything I need to watch out for while getting ready to format the old drive? Windows won't freak out if it sees two C: drives connected?

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

dragon enthusiast posted:

Is there anything I need to watch out for while getting ready to format the old drive? Windows won't freak out if it sees two C: drives connected?

Windows defines which drive is C: so it would just assign a different letter to the non-boot drive.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
I'm I going to notice SATA 3G slowness over SATA 6G on a machine that's mostly for web, photoshop and light gaming? I can always put in a SATA 6G card but is it even worth the bother?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Don't bother

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Shaocaholica posted:

I'm I going to notice SATA 3G slowness over SATA 6G on a machine that's mostly for web, photoshop and light gaming? I can always put in a SATA 6G card but is it even worth the bother?

If you've got a SATA II drive and you're asking is it worth it to buy a new SATA III drive, then I'd say no. Are they faster? Yeah. But you aren't likely to notice it all that much in daily use, especially since I'm going to go ahead and assume you're using an older / low powered machine anyhow.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

DrDork posted:

If you've got a SATA II drive and you're asking is it worth it to buy a new SATA III drive, then I'd say no. Are they faster? Yeah. But you aren't likely to notice it all that much in daily use, especially since I'm going to go ahead and assume you're using an older / low powered machine anyhow.

Oh the SSDs are all SATA-6G. The onboard SATA controller is only SATA-3G. So a new add in SATA-6G card would only be a few bucks.

DrDork
Dec 29, 2003
commanding officer of the Army of Dorkness

Shaocaholica posted:

Oh the SSDs are all SATA-6G. The onboard SATA controller is only SATA-3G. So a new add in SATA-6G card would only be a few bucks.

Gotcha.

Well then I'll double down and assume that whatever machine you're using it in that's so old that it has SATA II instead of SATA III won't noticeably benefit from the mildly higher speeds. But for $15 or whatever, sure, it'll at least speed up installing games.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110-7.html

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
It's probably the fastest SATA-3G config :mrgw:

Dual Xeon X5492s (3.4ghz 4Cx2)

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.
Anyone have any good recommendations for 2TB portable (usb-c/TB3) SSDs?

I was looking at the sandisk one. It’s for my wife and she needs at least 1TB but 2TB would give more of a margin. It’s for transferring graphic design assets from work to home and back.

Hdds would probably be too slow.

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

priznat posted:

Anyone have any good recommendations for 2TB portable (usb-c/TB3) SSDs?

I was looking at the sandisk one. It’s for my wife and she needs at least 1TB but 2TB would give more of a margin. It’s for transferring graphic design assets from work to home and back.

Hdds would probably be too slow.

I've had a 2TB MX500 in a 2.5" USB enclosure that's served me well at work shuttling footage from vendors. The enclosure is nice to have just in case you need to swap some other drive.





Totally tooless.

If you want something thin and sleek this is not it but its very utilitarian.

Shaocaholica fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Jun 10, 2020

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E
How dumb is putting 4 mSATA SSDs into a raid0?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Syba-SI-PEX40109-4-port-mSATA-to-PCI-e-x2-adapter-with-RAID/333461902976?hash=item4da3e0d680:g:f3UAAOSwqNxeC-mS

priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

Shaocaholica posted:

I've had a 2TB MX500 in a 2.5" USB enclosure that's served me well at work shuttling footage from vendors. The enclosure is nice to have just in case you need to swap some other drive.





Totally tooless.

If you want something thin and sleek this is not it but its very utilitarian.

That’s neat, I will check those out!

Shaocaholica
Oct 29, 2002

Fig. 5E

priznat posted:

That’s neat, I will check those out!

Oh its not USB-C so if those are the only ports you have like on a MBP and you don't want dongles then this might be more trouble than its worth.

You're in Canada right? Here in the US Amazon has a used Samsung T5 2TB USB-C for US$250

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-T5-Portable-SSD-MU-PA2T0B/dp/B073H4GPLQ/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=usb-c+2TB+ssd&qid=1591819423&sr=8-3

Shaocaholica fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jun 10, 2020

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priznat
Jul 7, 2009

Let's get drunk and kiss each other all night.

Shaocaholica posted:

Oh its not USB-C so if those are the only ports you have like on a MBP and you don't want dongles then this might be more trouble than its worth.

Yeah I think there are sata to usb-c adapters so I’m looking at that. Also saw sabrant has a usb c to nvme u.2 one that is quite slim but apparently gets hot under sustained load.

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