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


Thought this might be interesting benchmark for people on a new system upgrade (Ryzen 3600+B550 motherboard) for me - 3 generations of drives: NVMe/WD SN850 (@pcix4 - max:7000/4100MBps), SSD/WD Blue (@sata6 - max: 560/530MBps), and HDD/Seagate Ironwolf (max:180MBps) .

Only registered members can see post attachments!

unknown fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Mar 22, 2021

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zhar
May 3, 2019

Guess ntfs is the way to go, I can just stream over the network for my tv here.

Cygni posted:

The combo digital hoarder NAS + home server + seed box + HTPC is a cool investment/toy if you don't already have a Synology or somethin.

It is very tempting but I'm going to fill up the physical space in my pc before I can really justify it (especially given I only built it a few months ago for a slightly sickening amount)

Jimbot
Jul 22, 2008

Can anyone help me with a little problem?

Motherboard: msi meg x570 Unify
CPU: Ryzen 7 5800x
GPU: Asus GTX 1070 Dual

With that, do I have to worry about m.2 slot support? The manual isn't exactly helpful on that front. My issue is that I have one in the M2_1 slot for my system files and got a second, bigger one for M2_2 for games and such but that second, bigger one isn't recognized in the UEFI. I tried it on my old PC's M2_2 slot and it doesn't show up in the UEFI either. Can I safely write this drive off as DOA or am I just missing something obvious?

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Jimbot posted:

Can anyone help me with a little problem?

Motherboard: msi meg x570 Unify
CPU: Ryzen 7 5800x
GPU: Asus GTX 1070 Dual

With that, do I have to worry about m.2 slot support? The manual isn't exactly helpful on that front. My issue is that I have one in the M2_1 slot for my system files and got a second, bigger one for M2_2 for games and such but that second, bigger one isn't recognized in the UEFI. I tried it on my old PC's M2_2 slot and it doesn't show up in the UEFI either. Can I safely write this drive off as DOA or am I just missing something obvious?

Based on the specs page, it looks like the top M2_1 slot is PCIe only and does not support SATA drives, and the bottom two (M2_2 & M2_3) support both PCIe and SATA. But if I'm reading you right, that's not the problem because your problem drive is in M2_2.

Re: Showing up in UEFI -- if you're looking at the list of UEFI boot drives, only a drive with an OS / bootable UEFI partition on it would show up in the list. If you're talking about a general BIOS list of devices, it should be there. The MSI also has this "board explorer" thing in advanced mode (press F7), where you can mouse over a device slot and it'll tell you if something is attached there.

Do you have an OS on the PC yet? I'd boot into windows and see if drive manager has it listed, rather than in the BIOS where you may be looking at the wrong thing.

Jimbot
Jul 22, 2008

Klyith posted:

Based on the specs page, it looks like the top M2_1 slot is PCIe only and does not support SATA drives, and the bottom two (M2_2 & M2_3) support both PCIe and SATA. But if I'm reading you right, that's not the problem because your problem drive is in M2_2.

Re: Showing up in UEFI -- if you're looking at the list of UEFI boot drives, only a drive with an OS / bootable UEFI partition on it would show up in the list. If you're talking about a general BIOS list of devices, it should be there. The MSI also has this "board explorer" thing in advanced mode (press F7), where you can mouse over a device slot and it'll tell you if something is attached there.

Do you have an OS on the PC yet? I'd boot into windows and see if drive manager has it listed, rather than in the BIOS where you may be looking at the wrong thing.

Yeah, I just double checked. It's not showing up in the board explorer or on the OS level. I think the thing is just dead. I have such rotten luck with SSDs, I swear.

Thanks for the help. I didn't even think to check the board explorer either, that's a really nifty feature. It will certainly help troubleshoot any future problems!


Just another quick question, will I run into problems if I decide to get a 3rd m.2 to put in the third slot?

Jimbot fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Mar 24, 2021

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Jimbot posted:

Just another quick question, will I run into problems if I decide to get a 3rd m.2 to put in the third slot?

Nope, the x570 has a lot of PCIe lanes and on that board it looks like they've kept the M.2 slots fully dedicated -- the PCIe slots share or split lanes such that you can't use all the slots at the same time, but the M.2s are always good.


The CPU and the chipset communicate via a PCIe 4.0 x4 link. So technically if you got two NVMe PCIe 4.0 x4 SSDs and put them into the lower slots, and tried to run benchmarks on both at the same time, they'd be limited by that CPU-chipset link. This has absolutely zero bearing on a real-world performance scenario though.


Jimbot posted:

Thanks for the help. I didn't even think to check the board explorer either, that's a really nifty feature. It will certainly help troubleshoot any future problems!
I have a MSI board with that feature as well and I'd always felt like it was both nifty and completely useless. Like, I can just look and see what's plugged in right? Never thought about how it would be good for diagnosing a DOA component.

Harveygod
Jan 4, 2014

YEEAAH HEH HEH HEEEHH

YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYIN

THIS TRASH WAR AIN'T GONNA SOLVE ITSELF YA KNOW
I'm looking to upgrade my 250GB SATA SSD to a 1TB M.2 SSD.

It looks like Samsung's 1TB 980 is only $130, so I'd go for that.

I've got a bit of an older motherboard (ASRock Z97 Extreme4). I don't see this exact model on ASRock's support list, but it's "PCIe gen 3 x4", which a bunch of other supported units are.

I'm guessing they just stopped updating that list. I haven't really done anything with M.2 stuff before, so I just wanted a sanity check before I spend my kids' tooth fairy money took the plunge that I wasn't doing something stupid.

Ika
Dec 30, 2004
Pure insanity

Harveygod posted:

I'm looking to upgrade my 250GB SATA SSD to a 1TB M.2 SSD.

It looks like Samsung's 1TB 980 is only $130, so I'd go for that.

I've got a bit of an older motherboard (ASRock Z97 Extreme4). I don't see this exact model on ASRock's support list, but it's "PCIe gen 3 x4", which a bunch of other supported units are.

I'm guessing they just stopped updating that list. I haven't really done anything with M.2 stuff before, so I just wanted a sanity check before I spend my kids' tooth fairy money took the plunge that I wasn't doing something stupid.

I've been eyeing a new ssd myself, but the 980 doesn't have DRAM for the lookup table. Apparently the driver takes care of that by using some of your system ram, correct me if I am wrong.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Harveygod posted:

I'm looking to upgrade my 250GB SATA SSD to a 1TB M.2 SSD.

It looks like Samsung's 1TB 980 is only $130, so I'd go for that.

Samsung is overpriced across the board for what you get.

By comparison, the WD SN550 is just over $100 and is comparable as a dram-less PCIe 3.0 drive. It's a pretty ideal drive for a regular games & apps desktop. Stepping up a notch, the SN750 is equivalent to the 970 Evo for the same price as the drive you were looking at.

edit: also good value at $135, the SK Hynix P31. This is a great drive if you ever might recycle it into a laptop, as the P31's interesting gimmick is being way more power efficient than most other drives.

Ika posted:

I've been eyeing a new ssd myself, but the 980 doesn't have DRAM for the lookup table. Apparently the driver takes care of that by using some of your system ram, correct me if I am wrong.

Yep, NVMe drives without dram use system ram. It's not even at driver level AFAIK, it's in the NVMe spec as a low-level feature.

Using system ram, they keep a small portion of the lookup table in memory (like 10-100 MB) and the rest in the flash. A drive with dram normally has 1GB per TB of storage, so lots more. Having the whole table in memory right on the drive is important when doing lots of small, highly random reads & writes. That's database & server workload. For most desktop users, a dramless NVMe drive has basically zero real-world performance impact.

Klyith fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Mar 26, 2021

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

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

Ika posted:

I've been eyeing a new ssd myself, but the 980 doesn't have DRAM for the lookup table. Apparently the driver takes care of that by using some of your system ram, correct me if I am wrong.

You're not wrong, and honestly screw them for making an "incomplete" product and charging a premium for it. It also *only* takes "up to" 64MB, which while it isn't a lot, still pales in comparison to something like the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 (not the Q SKU) which packs 512MB DDR4 on-package for :20bux: more: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-1TB/dp/B07TLYWMYW/

The Rocket's a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it'll work just fine in your Z97 and give you something to plug into a 4.0 (or 5.0) board when you finally upgrade.

I'd also recommend the SKHynix P31, but last I heard their SSD division's being bought out.

BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 02:20 on Mar 26, 2021

aparmenideanmonad
Jan 28, 2004
Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!
Fun Shoe
Inland Premium 1TB (PCIe 3.0, TLC, good Phison controller w/DRAM) is a good buy currently for $110 if you have access to a Microcenter too.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
I thought I remembered hearing they'd done something less-than-ideal to the Inland Premium drive.

Another drive that used to be highly recommended and shouldn't be anymore is the SX8200 Pro. ADATA went cheap on the newest revisions.

Harveygod
Jan 4, 2014

YEEAAH HEH HEH HEEEHH

YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYIN

THIS TRASH WAR AIN'T GONNA SOLVE ITSELF YA KNOW

Klyith posted:

Samsung is overpriced across the board for what you get.

By comparison, the WD SN550 is just over $100 and is comparable as a dram-less PCIe 3.0 drive. It's a pretty ideal drive for a regular games & apps desktop. Stepping up a notch, the SN750 is equivalent to the 970 Evo for the same price as the drive you were looking at.

edit: also good value at $135, the SK Hynix P31. This is a great drive if you ever might recycle it into a laptop, as the P31's interesting gimmick is being way more power efficient than most other drives.


Yep, NVMe drives without dram use system ram. It's not even at driver level AFAIK, it's in the NVMe spec as a low-level feature.

Using system ram, they keep a small portion of the lookup table in memory (like 10-100 MB) and the rest in the flash. A drive with dram normally has 1GB per TB of storage, so lots more. Having the whole table in memory right on the drive is important when doing lots of small, highly random reads & writes. That's database & server workload. For most desktop users, a dramless NVMe drive has basically zero real-world performance impact.

BIG HEADLINE posted:

You're not wrong, and honestly screw them for making an "incomplete" product and charging a premium for it. It also *only* takes "up to" 64MB, which while it isn't a lot, still pales in comparison to something like the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 (not the Q SKU) which packs 512MB DDR4 on-package for :20bux: more: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-1TB/dp/B07TLYWMYW/

The Rocket's a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it'll work just fine in your Z97 and give you something to plug into a 4.0 (or 5.0) board when you finally upgrade.

I'd also recommend the SKHynix P31, but last I heard their SSD division's being bought out.

Thanks for the responses! I'll probably spring for the Sabrent.

aparmenideanmonad
Jan 28, 2004
Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!
Fun Shoe

BIG HEADLINE posted:

I thought I remembered hearing they'd done something less-than-ideal to the Inland Premium drive.

Another drive that used to be highly recommended and shouldn't be anymore is the SX8200 Pro. ADATA went cheap on the newest revisions.

Pretty sure that was either the Platinum or Professional. The one thing I'm sure of is that their naming scheme leaves much to be desired.

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

BIG HEADLINE posted:

I thought I remembered hearing they'd done something less-than-ideal to the Inland Premium drive.

I'm using a Premium NVME and haven't had any issues.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week
The inland premium went from a phision E12 to a E12S that uses 1/2 as much dram, so it keeps less of the table in memory. If dram vs dramless is irrelevant for real-world desktop user performance, E12 vs E12S is even moreso. For the intended market it's a benchmarks-only difference. Big Headline cares about benchmarks.


That said inland is a house brand and their stuff changes spec without much notice. OTOH they do change the prices to reflect it, so if the price of an inland model has a big drop that's your notice. I'd totally buy them if I lived near a microcenter, but via their website or amazon isn't generally that much savings vs similar drives.

Third hand, the Inland Platinum is a QLC drive that's got great read speed so is IMO one of the best choices currently as a secondary games drive or for anything else that's ok with QLC.

BIG HEADLINE
Jun 13, 2006

"Stand back, Ottawan ruffian, or face my lumens!"
Uh, I could care less about benchmarks so long as it performs similarly.

That being said, thanks for clarifying what change they made. They should've found another term to print on the box to reflect it.

aparmenideanmonad
Jan 28, 2004
Balls to you and your way of mortal opinions - you don't exist anyway!
Fun Shoe

Klyith posted:

The inland premium went from a phision E12 to a E12S that uses 1/2 as much dram, so it keeps less of the table in memory. If dram vs dramless is irrelevant for real-world desktop user performance, E12 vs E12S is even moreso. For the intended market it's a benchmarks-only difference. Big Headline cares about benchmarks.


That said inland is a house brand and their stuff changes spec without much notice. OTOH they do change the prices to reflect it, so if the price of an inland model has a big drop that's your notice. I'd totally buy them if I lived near a microcenter, but via their website or amazon isn't generally that much savings vs similar drives.

Third hand, the Inland Platinum is a QLC drive that's got great read speed so is IMO one of the best choices currently as a secondary games drive or for anything else that's ok with QLC.

Thanks for the detail - FWIW I bought a 1TB Premium 3 months ago and from this is what I get from this tool: http://vlo.name:3000/ssdtool/

code:
v0.33a
OS: 10.0 build 19042 
Drive: 1(NVME)
Driver  : W10(1:3)
Model   : PCIe SSD                                
Fw      : ECFM22.7
Size      : 976762 MB [1024.2 GB]
LBA Size: 512
Read_System_Info_5008 error: -1
Firmware lock supported [02 01] [P004] [0100]
Drive unlocked [02 03]
F/W     : ECFM22.7 00
P/N     : 511-201016251   
Bank00: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank01: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank02: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank03: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank04: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank05: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank06: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank07: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank08: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank09: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank10: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank11: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank12: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank13: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank14: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Bank15: 0x2c,0xc4,0x18,0x32,0xa2,0x0,0x0,0x0 - Micron 96L(B27A) TLC 512Gb/CE 512Gb/die
Controller    : PS5012-E12 [PS5012AA]
CPU Clk       : 666
Flash CE      : 16
Flash Channel : 8
Interleave    : 2
Flash CE Mask : [++++++++ ++++++++ -------- --------]
FlashR Clk,MT : 666
FlashW Clk,MT : 666
Block per CE  : 944
Page per Block: 5184
Bit Per Cell  : 3(TLC)
DRAM Size,MB  : 512
DRAM Clock,MHz: 1600
DRAM Type     : DDR3
PMIC Type     : PS6102/PS6106
PE Cycle Limit: 1500
ONFI      : MICRON       MT29F2T08EMHBFJ4     [872F]
Page size : 18592 (16384+2208)
Page/Block: 5184
Block/LUN : 944
LUN/Chip  : 1
Bit/Cell  : 3 (TLC)
Endurance : 2000
PlanAdrBit: 2 (4 plane)

RME
Feb 20, 2012

Not sure if theres a better thread but I recently got an nvme drive and I wanted to migrate to it as my boot drive from a sata SSD
i used macrium reflect to clone onto it, and it finished and I can see the drive all cloned and good, but after shutting down to swap my boot orders the computer would get past the windows screen and then hang on the black screen with a loading circle of dots right under it indefinitely.
I can boot off the old SATA ssd just fine by going back to the UEFI and reordering the boot order again so I'm a little unsure what my next step would even be

Ika
Dec 30, 2004
Pure insanity

^^^^ Was the old drive set to AHCI mode, legacy, or RAID?


Klyith posted:

Yep, NVMe drives without dram use system ram. It's not even at driver level AFAIK, it's in the NVMe spec as a low-level feature.

Using system ram, they keep a small portion of the lookup table in memory (like 10-100 MB) and the rest in the flash. A drive with dram normally has 1GB per TB of storage, so lots more. Having the whole table in memory right on the drive is important when doing lots of small, highly random reads & writes. That's database & server workload. For most desktop users, a dramless NVMe drive has basically zero real-world performance impact.

Fair enough, but personally I'm willing to pay the premium for RAM on drive.

I actually ended up going with a Crucial P5 for 245 euro, which is ~25% premium over the cheapest available 2TB drives (195), but I wanted to avoid QLC and DRAMless. If its a piece of crap let me know before its too late to cancel. Sad thing is its mostly gonna be used as scratch space for photo editing and may also replace the old SATA game SSD. I'm keeping my OS and dev work on the intel P3600 I picked up during a firesale years ago.

Ika fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Mar 27, 2021

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

aparmenideanmonad posted:

Thanks for the detail - FWIW I bought a 1TB Premium 3 months ago and from this is what I get from this tool: http://vlo.name:3000/ssdtool/

That's the E12 version, so either it was older stock or maybe the E12S version wasn't a full switch of the product line? Could be they have both in the chain depending on what their suppliers are bidding at the moment. The mysteries of house brands.


RME posted:

i used macrium reflect to clone onto it, and it finished and I can see the drive all cloned and good, but after shutting down to swap my boot orders the computer would get past the windows screen and then hang on the black screen with a loading circle of dots right under it indefinitely.
I can boot off the old SATA ssd just fine by going back to the UEFI and reordering the boot order again so I'm a little unsure what my next step would even be
You cloned the full drive, not just the windows C: partition right?

If yes, and unless Ika's question has an answer of "raid", I'd try the built in troubleshoot -> advanced -> startup repair, which you might be able to access by hitting reset 3 times on the windows logo screen, or can use an install USB stick to get to. Longer instructions.


Ika posted:

I actually ended up going with a Crucial P5 for 245 euro, which is ~25% premium over the cheapest available 2TB drives (195), but I wanted to avoid QLC and DRAMless. If its a piece of crap let me know before its too late to cancel.

It's fine, in the US it's not priced very competitively so we don't talk about it as much. The P5 is stupid hot for some reason, one of the few where heat in normal real-world use is a thing -- it'll throttle from just a 50 GB write. So it does benefit from a mobo heatspreader & being installed in a location that gets air movement, if possible. And it would be a bad laptop drive.

SUNKOS
Jun 4, 2016


BIG HEADLINE posted:

You're not wrong, and honestly screw them for making an "incomplete" product and charging a premium for it. It also *only* takes "up to" 64MB, which while it isn't a lot, still pales in comparison to something like the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 (not the Q SKU) which packs 512MB DDR4 on-package for :20bux: more: https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-1TB/dp/B07TLYWMYW/

The Rocket's a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it'll work just fine in your Z97 and give you something to plug into a 4.0 (or 5.0) board when you finally upgrade.

I'd also recommend the SKHynix P31, but last I heard their SSD division's being bought out.

What do you think of the Sabrent Rocket 4TB external SSDs? I was looking at the 'Pro USB 3.2' model, as well as the SanDisk Extreme Pro 4TB NVMe SSD that's USB-C.

Been waiting on externals 4TB in size for a while and the SanDisk is £200+ more than the Sabrent on Amazon. I'm mainly looking to use the devices as reliable storage without much writing once stuff's backed up. My main concern is how heat affects the lifespan as my only external SSD so far is a 2TB WD SSD that I use with my Xbox which runs fine but gets very hot, which makes me worry if it will simply be unusable when Summer rolls round and the temperature gets much higher. These other drives appear to be similarly small but with double the capacity I worry if they might overheat and be damaged/unusable as a result?

Do you think I'm being overly-concerned and that these things are perfectly fine running at such high temperatures, or do you think I should reconsider?

Also, going over the OP I see writing files affects the endurance of the drives but does reading have any affect at all? Files would be accessed daily but it's going to be 99% reading with rare cases of writing.

Edit: Just noticed the heat comment in the post above and decided to have a look at HDDs on Amazon, discovering WD now does small drives up to 5TB that don't need a power source and run off USB like SSDs. Given the huge price savings and speed not being very important aside from the initial backup process, do you think that would be a better option? I know they're not as reliable due to being mechanical but are cheap enough that I could buy a few for if/when a drive did die? Not sure if those smaller external HDDs without the external power for fans are at risk of overheating as well though?

SUNKOS fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Mar 27, 2021

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

SUNKOS posted:

Do you think I'm being overly-concerned and that these things are perfectly fine running at such high temperatures, or do you think I should reconsider?
You're being over-concerned. The flash chips themselves actually like being warm: data longevity is highest when the chip is like 50C when writing (and also when it's cool while it *isn't* in operation). The controller chip will throttle when it's in that 90-100C range that modern chips top out at, but for that the difference in room temp between summer and winter isn't that big a deal.

OTOH:

SUNKOS posted:

Edit: Just noticed the heat comment in the post above and decided to have a look at HDDs on Amazon, discovering WD now does small drives up to 5TB that don't need a power source and run off USB like SSDs. Given the huge price savings and speed not being very important aside from the initial backup process, do you think that would be a better option? I know they're not as reliable due to being mechanical but are cheap enough that I could buy a few for if/when a drive did die? Not sure if those smaller external HDDs without the external power for fans are at risk of overheating as well though?

For a backup device, spending SSD money is just silly unless you really need SSD-level performance. (And that sabrent drive you were looking at is gonna be QLC if it's that cheap, which means that very large writes will have bad performance, eventually. QLC drives have worse than HDD write speed when they run out of fast buffer and have to write directly to the QLC.)

Hard drives fail, SSDs fail, everything fails. For HDDs we know a lot about why they fail, and it's a lot to do with hours of operation. A backup drive that you plug in once a week to do your backup and sits on a shelf the rest of the time isn't gonna accumulate many hours.

SUNKOS
Jun 4, 2016


Thanks for the information :) Knowing they run best at 50C is surprising but also a relief, and knowing they can handle all the way up to boiling point is very reassuring. Appreciate the education.

Regarding SSD/HDD for backup, although it would be backup it would still be connected and in-use daily (e.g. I listen to a lot of music and backing up my collection is very important) so do you think that makes a difference? Obviously SSD speed isn't needed for that but would a HDD wear out quite fast being always-connected and reading regularly? I'm guessing it's not a big issue since my current computer is 8 years old and has the same drive working just fine, but the WD externals I was looking at are very small and go up to 5TB which is ideal, I just imagine things must be very cramped internally and they would be extra-sensitive to small shocks that might damage the reader perhaps? Do you think these small HDDs have the same hours of operation as the internal drive I have right now, or would miniaturization and getting the price down cheap maybe make them less reliable in your opinion?

The planned usage is backing everything up and then having it sat there permanently connected and not moving, but reading files quite often. Given the saving in money however I could get a couple spares to keep in a drawer in case of failure. That 4TB Sabrent is £650 while the 4TB SanDisk is £858 :stare: Comparatively, the 5TB WD HDD is just £94.

Ika
Dec 30, 2004
Pure insanity

Most WD external drives just have normal HDDs inside em, the smaller ones will have a notebook drive. Occasionally they have a custom board for the USB connection instead of an adaptor board.

If you want to use it as a true backup drive, I wouldn't keep it connected to the PC when not updating - that makes it susceptible to ransomware attacks and damage due to lightning strikes, surges, theft etc.

I picked up a 4? TB 2.5" external WD drive a few years back to backup photos while on vacation, its fine for that usage.

Saukkis
May 16, 2003

Unless I'm on the inside curve pointing straight at oncoming traffic the high beams stay on and I laugh at your puny protest flashes.
I am Most Important Man. Most Important Man in the World.

SUNKOS posted:

Thanks for the information :) Knowing they run best at 50C is surprising but also a relief, and knowing they can handle all the way up to boiling point is very reassuring. Appreciate the education.

Regarding SSD/HDD for backup, although it would be backup it would still be connected and in-use daily (e.g. I listen to a lot of music and backing up my collection is very important) so do you think that makes a difference?

If you care about the backups, then a backup drive that is connected constantly isn't enough since a single zap could fry both your computer and the backup drive. If you only connect it during the backups that seems like a bit of a hassle and still doesn't protect from things like house fires. Cloud backups are usually a better option.

BobHoward
Feb 13, 2012

The only thing white people deserve is a bullet to their empty skull

SUNKOS posted:

I'm guessing it's not a big issue since my current computer is 8 years old and has the same drive working just fine, but the WD externals I was looking at are very small and go up to 5TB which is ideal, I just imagine things must be very cramped internally and they would be extra-sensitive to small shocks that might damage the reader perhaps? Do you think these small HDDs have the same hours of operation as the internal drive I have right now, or would miniaturization and getting the price down cheap maybe make them less reliable in your opinion?

By very small I presume you mean WD Passport 2.5" drives. The drives in those are basically laptop HDDs, meaning they should be engineered to be less sensitive to small mechanical shocks than desktop 3.5" HDDs.

By far the biggest danger of slamming a HDD around while it's running is the risk of generating enough acceleration to move a head through its air bearing, causing it to touch the surface of the disk. Touching isn't good. The drive can often survive the initial damage, but it generates debris (such as material chipped off the glass-like material the head's made of), which then becomes an abrasive that roughens the disk and head surfaces which generates more debris and it's this accelerating spiral of death.

For mitigation, some HDD manufacturers integrate a solid state accelerometer into their 2.5" portable drives. This lets the drive sense when it's falling, allowing it to retract its heads to safe(r) unloading ramps before impact. I'm finding it hard to tell which WD products have an accelerometer, though.

Regardless, just don't abuse it and it should be fine. That means roughly: plan on mostly not moving the drive while it's plugged in, and waiting until it's spun down (only takes a few seconds for 2.5" drives typically) before picking it up. And definitely don't drop it, even if you know for sure it has an accelerometer.

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

SUNKOS posted:

Regarding SSD/HDD for backup, although it would be backup it would still be connected and in-use daily (e.g. I listen to a lot of music and backing up my collection is very important) so do you think that makes a difference? Obviously SSD speed isn't needed for that but would a HDD wear out quite fast being always-connected and reading regularly? I'm guessing it's not a big issue since my current computer is 8 years old and has the same drive working just fine, but the WD externals I was looking at are very small and go up to 5TB which is ideal, I just imagine things must be very cramped internally and they would be extra-sensitive to small shocks that might damage the reader perhaps? Do you think these small HDDs have the same hours of operation as the internal drive I have right now, or would miniaturization and getting the price down cheap maybe make them less reliable in your opinion?

2.5" laptop drives generally have lower MTBF rating than 3.5" desktop ones, but they still last quite a while. Even if you do daily backups that means that each backup session is quite short.

Your backup device does not need to be some type of bulletproof ultratech, because it's just a copy of your data. If you put things on the backup drive that aren't stored elsewhere, it's not a backup anymore. If the device fails, you buy another HD. Heck, for the price of a 4TB external SSD you could buy half a dozen regular 4TB external HDDs with money left over.


(A simple backup drive should not be left plugged in and live all the time, if you use basic backup methods that just mirrors / archives your data. Mostly because one of the nastier data risks these days is ransomware that encrypts all your data for bitcoins. If you get hit by that it will look through all connected drives for documents, media, etc. The best way to prevent that, and other mishaps like accidental deletion, is to leave it unplugged. For someone that wants 24/7 constant backups, that is a reason to get a NAS or invest in cloud services.)


BobHoward posted:

For mitigation, some HDD manufacturers integrate a solid state accelerometer into their 2.5" portable drives. This lets the drive sense when it's falling, allowing it to retract its heads to safe(r) unloading ramps before impact. I'm finding it hard to tell which WD products have an accelerometer, though.

I feel like that's gotta be a standard feature by now? The introduction of perpendicular recording made the heads get even closer to the platters, the poo poo is insane.

SUNKOS
Jun 4, 2016


Thanks for all the information and advice. Definitely seems like a large SSD would be unsuitable and overkill for what I want to do and I'd be much better buying 2/3 HDDs and making sure one or two are safely kept in a drawer somewhere. Will look into cloud storage options for other data that I want to keep extra safe as well since that never occurred to me but is definitely sensible advice and appreciated :)

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


e. nm I figured it out

CommonShore fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Mar 28, 2021

Harveygod
Jan 4, 2014

YEEAAH HEH HEH HEEEHH

YOU KNOW WHAT I'M SAYIN

THIS TRASH WAR AIN'T GONNA SOLVE ITSELF YA KNOW

BIG HEADLINE posted:

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Internal-Extreme-Performance-SB-ROCKET-NVMe4-1TB/dp/B07TLYWMYW/

The Rocket's a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it'll work just fine in your Z97 and give you something to plug into a 4.0 (or 5.0) board when you finally upgrade.

I connected this M.2 drive to my motherboard, but I didn't see anything in the when I booted to the BIOS. I ran Macrium Reflect and was able to copy my C drive to it. Windows made it the D drive and it's there with all my files and everything:




However, when I go back into BIOS/UEFI it still doesn't see it. How does Windows find it but not the BIOS?



The only option I see is the "M2_1/SATA3_4.SATA3/5 Swith", which was "Auto" by default. I changed it to "Force M.2" but it still doesn't see it. I've tried unplugging the old SSD just to try to force it to boot there but nothing. There's also not an option when I go to the "Boot" tab in UEFI.

Am I overlooking something dumb?



E: It turns out I had to do update the bios to "Improve M.2 compatibility". Now it shows up as a boot option.

And here we are!



Thank you thread for help!

Harveygod fucked around with this message at 04:21 on Mar 28, 2021

Rexxed
May 1, 2010

Dis is amazing!
I gotta try dis!

B&H has the 2TB Sandisk Plus for $170 today ($40 coupon applied in cart). Seems pretty cheap and my Sandisk Ultra IIs are fine but :shrug:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...6987a0a01ff0INT

Binary Badger
Oct 11, 2005

Trolling Link for a decade


Just plunked down $219 for a 2 TB NVMe Thunderbolt 4 drive over at IndieGoGo for "The World's Fastest External SSD"..

Never heard of the company but their drive seems to benchmark well.. although same benchmarking says it'll fall prey to thermal slowdowns like most external SSDs..

hbag
Feb 13, 2021

Just connected my Pi to my desktop machine via webDAV, and...


Apparently, the SSD plugged into it has 8 exabytes free.
For context, that's 8 billion gigabytes.



Cool.

TITTIEKISSER69
Mar 19, 2005

SAVE THE BEES
PLANT MORE TREES
CLEAN THE SEAS
KISS TITTIESS




You should have enough space there to download *.*

Klyith
Aug 3, 2007

GBS Pledge Week

Binary Badger posted:

Just plunked down $219 for a 2 TB NVMe Thunderbolt 4 drive over at IndieGoGo for "The World's Fastest External SSD"..

Never heard of the company but their drive seems to benchmark well.. although same benchmarking says it'll fall prey to thermal slowdowns like most external SSDs..

Their review sample to AppleInsider has a WD Black SN750 in it. They are not shipping drives with WD Black SN750s in them. They are shipping drives with "Intel AGI M.2" drives, a company that is not Intel and has near-zero english language presence.

$220 seems like a lot to throw at indiegogo, the kickstarter for people who are too sus for kickstarter.

fletcher
Jun 27, 2003

ken park is my favorite movie

Cybernetic Crumb

hbag posted:

Just connected my Pi to my desktop machine via webDAV, and...


Apparently, the SSD plugged into it has 8 exabytes free.
For context, that's 8 billion gigabytes.



Cool.

I am impressed somebody coded that to display EB units, that is one forward thinking developer

admiraldennis
Jul 22, 2003

I am the stone that builder refused
I am the visual
The inspiration
That made lady sing the blues

fletcher posted:

I am impressed somebody coded that to display EB units, that is one forward thinking developer

Same. Really digging this elegance.

Though I can't say I don't enjoy connecting to my fileserver via one of my vintage macs and seeing this kind of juxtaposition:

Cool Dad
Jun 15, 2007

It is always Friday night, motherfuckers

My mom had a lenovo thinkpad with a NVMe M.2 samsung drive in it, model number is mznln256hajq-000l7. The laptop has died, and my mom wants her files from the drive. My desktop has M.2 and NVMe support, but I can't get the drat drive to show up in Windows or in the UEFI setup, either in the motherboard's built in M.2 port or a PCIE M.2 adapter. Anyone got any idea how I can get into this dumb drive?

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Helter Skelter
Feb 10, 2004

BEARD OF HAVOC

Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:

My mom had a lenovo thinkpad with a NVMe M.2 samsung drive in it, model number is mznln256hajq-000l7. The laptop has died, and my mom wants her files from the drive. My desktop has M.2 and NVMe support, but I can't get the drat drive to show up in Windows or in the UEFI setup, either in the motherboard's built in M.2 port or a PCIE M.2 adapter. Anyone got any idea how I can get into this dumb drive?

That appears to be a m.2 SATA drive, not NVMe. Not all m.2 slots support SATA mode. If your motherboard has multiple m.2 slots one of them may have SATA support so check your manual, but you may just need to buy a m.2 to SATA adapter.

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