SSD Thread: (its good, ignore the anime)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > SSD Thread: (its good, ignore the anime)

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Don Lapre posted:

Ditch the 120gb and just use the 500gb.

The OCZ drive can have some nice applications. One very interesting could be trying to find the answer to the crucial question: Does it blend? Or, does it float? Or, what happens when you throw it into a fire (don't try it at home folks)? Or, what force do you need to shoot it at to put it into orbit? Can you make it happen?

Think of the opportunities.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2016 16:56

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 02:36

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

nielsm posted:

Depending on when/how the disk was partitioned, it may be poorly aligned with the physical blocks of the SSD, in which case a 1:1 copy as you suggest would turn out troublesome performance-wise, and for the lifespan of the SSD. It's better to make an equivalent but not necessarily identical partition structure on the target and then copy each partition, potentially in a filesystem-aware way.

Won't that miss the copying of the boot record though? Essentially rendering the new disk unbootable?

# ¿ Dec 24, 2016 23:59

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Dante80 posted:

To clarify, this is going on a x370 Ryzen setup. It has a slot for a NVMe M.2 drive.

Will go EVO, many thanks.

Well, PRO is better than EVO. If you can afford the price premium and if the things that PRO does better than EVO are important to you, then go PRO. However for normal consumers EVO is enough, the price hike for PRO is not worth it.

A comparison chart seems to not be easy to find with google, but i found this (no idea how accurate it is):
http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-960-Pro-NVMe-PCIe-M2-512GB-vs-Samsung-960-Evo-NVMe-PCIe-M2-500GB/m182182vsm204072

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 21:53

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

oohhboy posted:

You would have to be a real cheap skate not to take 8GB these days. An SSD is still 50 times slower and as a rule never use swap. If you have to use swap you don't have enough RAM.

I suggest you take RAM out of his machine and see what happens. I am sure he would be most interested in the results.

If you use an *NIX OS, this may be fine (I use both Linux and FreeBSD, and with 32GB of ram, i never hit the swap). However, for windows is a different story. You should let windows have its swap, and you should let windows manage it. It will use it.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2017 23:12

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

I got NVMe working on my P9X79 motherboard. But that meant that I had to manually update and patch the BIOS file, otherwise it wouldn't boot from it. I was hoping that since I use GRUB anyway as a bootloader, I would be able to just install GRUB on a normal hard-drive and then boot the OS from the NVMe drive. But ... grub wasn't able to see it so it was either make the MB boot from it, or just use the drive as an additional drive (not a deal breaker, but I like it better when the OS itself is on a 2000 MB/s drive). Now, true, once the kernel loads , one could mount almost everything that matters (/usr, /home) onto the fast drive but that is :effort:

# ¿ Jun 23, 2017 15:18

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

WhyteRyce posted:

I expect everyone running a mission critical home server to run out and get one. Wonder what it will do for my Plex server

I don't expect anyone to have a mission-critical home server. Mission-critical sits in a datacenter. At home ... is anything but that.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2017 19:57

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Well hell:

quote:

ASUS Intros Hyper M.2 x16 Riser Card
...accessory which could prove useful for those who want to add up to four extra M.2 SSDs....

https://www.techpowerup.com/237582/asus-intros-hyper-m-2-x16-riser-card

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 02:18

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

BIG HEADLINE posted:

"Compatible only with its X299 motherboards."

(though the comments seem to suggest it works on X399 Threadripper boards as well)

If you're gonna pony up for 4 NVME SSDs, you better have an ASUS x299 MB.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 03:05

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

MonsterEnvy posted:

I am unsure of how to use the grey 800 gigs.

Probably you can extend the C drive in disk manager (control panel, administrative tools, computer management, disk manager) or just make a new partition to use that gray area.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2017 05:34

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

priznat posted:

So intel is giving away codes for ships in star citizen, a game that doesn�t exist yet, with the optane 900p drives. Are these worth anything? Can I ebay em?

That game hasn't been released yet? I remember a friend telling me many many many years ago that he bought some Star Citizen poo poo for $100 and me thinking that he's insane for doing that on an unreleased game. I thought that the must have released something by now....

# ¿ Nov 30, 2017 00:34

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

JnnyThndrs posted:

Yeah, I've had a couple of older multi-boot machines where one of the Windows installs was on D:, I think it came from installing a new version of Windows while in the old, rather than booting from the install media.

A lot of lovely software defaults to installing on C: no matter where you boot from, so it's kind of a PITA if Windows isn't on C:

A lot of lovely software has "C:\Program Files" hardcoded and explode if such a folder does not exist.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2017 17:29

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Until you can afford to splurge on an 1TB nvme.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2018 22:45

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

I had to manually update the BIOS of my old ASUS x79 motherboard to be able to boot from an NVMe drive. Some nice folks from the internet had posted a patch of the BIOS (essentially adding an NVMe boot entry), which one was supposed to use to patch the latest version of the official BIOS. But, since it was manually modified, I had to use the USB-BIOS function to updated it since the other methods would check for its validity (assume they sign it, or checksum it or something).

# ¿ Feb 27, 2018 09:20

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

I have a 1TB nvme (Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller SM961/PM961 according to lspci , i think is 960 evo or something like that) and is the best thing since sliced bread. Was the jump from SSD to NVME as big and as noticeable as the jump from HDD to SSD? Hell no. Was it a jump and is it faster? Hell yes. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that.

code:

hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1

/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing cached reads:   19860 MB in  2.00 seconds = 9952.62 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 4746 MB in  3.00 seconds = 1581.55 MB/sec

# ¿ Apr 7, 2018 02:14

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

The price jump looks about right. The price, however, doesn't. 180 USD is about 240CAD, so asking for 300 CAD is just highway robbery. Just yesterday I saw on pc-canada.com a banner advertising price increases coming November 1st due to the tariffs? Wait, what tariffs? The ones between the US and China? What does that has to do with us? If anything, canadian prices should be even more competitive than american ones since we do not impose those tariffs on chinese products.
But, alas, it doesn't seem to be the case.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2018 15:20

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

teagone posted:

The OP says the avoid ADATA though

At this price, use it till it drops dead then buy another. You'll still come ahead.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2018 18:24

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

mmkay posted:

Would this actually work? I didn't think Sandy Bridge era motherboards had UEFI drivers capable of booting from NVMe drives.

I updated my x79 motherboard's bios with the nvme part from a newer platform and I could boot NVMe. The only way it could be installed however, was via the USB port on the back of the motherboard, as otherwise it would check for it to be signed and this one was obviously not.

# ¿ Dec 17, 2018 15:27

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Atomizer posted:

Why would you do this? Why why why why why?!?!? Why do you need to RAID NVMe drives for games???

If I'd ever get a second nvme drive and i'm fine with the backups and everything, I'll totally do that. I know, I know, nvme is plenty fast already, I'm just curious if double the speed is even achievable and what would that feel like on a day to day system.
But yeah, RAID0 is asking for trouble so obviously nothing beyond ephemeral things would go on there.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2019 01:57

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Sarcastro posted:

M.2 newbie question here - I received a WD Blue SSD for Christmas, and verified that my motherboard can handle the model I received (although I'll have to turn on the slot in the BIOS). I'm not planning on migrating the OS at this point, just throwing it in as extra storage/etc. because I can. However, I've never installed one of these before - is there anything I need to know, or is it as simple a plug-and-play as the other components at this point? (I am on Windows 10, if it matters.) Just want to see if there are any common pitfalls or if it's just as easy as plugging in a new regular SSD/whatever would be.

It's just a normal SSD as far as your OS is concerned. If you don't wanna make it an OS drive then there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2019 19:18

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Got new nvme drive and copying now / and /home from the old nvme drive. That poo poo is fast. drat.

# ¿ Apr 27, 2019 01:10

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Tiny Tubesteak Tom posted:

I'm so far behind on storage technology, it's crazy. That WD Black M.2 I ordered came in and even running at PCI-E Gen2 speeds, it's roughly three times faster on the read/write speeds than the SATA M.2 I'm running Windows from now. And even the SATA SSD is totally mindblowing to me, I have absolutely no idea what I would even do with speeds that are faster

Nothing really. For day to day usage, those performance improvements are not that massive. For benchmarks, for "level loading" in games, for certain operations yes, they certainly are mindblowing.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2019 17:49

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

priznat posted:

There are but they�re usually quad m.2 drives behind a PCIe switch and big bucks.

Gigabyte just dropped an 8TB one that is PCIe Gen4 compatible too:

https://www.gigabyte.com/Solid-State-Drive/AORUS-Gen4-AIC-SSD-8TB#kf

Also there are ones that require the x16 slot to be bifurcated x4x4x4x4. Asus has an adapter for this:

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Motherboard-Accessories/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD/

Hmm, the asus adapter is only 85CAD on amazon.ca . Hmm, that looks quite reasonable.

# ¿ Nov 7, 2019 06:12

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

I have a 7820X CPU on an X299 motherboard. After the video card slot, the next best I have is an PCI3.0x8 slot. So yeah, I will not be able to use 4 of these ssd's in my system. As for VROC: thanks, but no thanks. I have the slot for the key, but it's silly to expect people to buy such a thing.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2019 20:33

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Lambert posted:

Also, when installing fresh, disable CSM/Legacy BIOS emulation in your BIOS. That way, Windows will install in UEFI mode (faster boot times). This will also prevent the bootloader from ending up on the wrong drive.

When I disable CSM (go full UEFI) on my motherboard, it will not turn on the monitors (they say no signal) until I boot into an OS. No idea what's the deal here, maybe old video card (970GTX), maybe it has trouble with 2 DisplayPort connected monitors, or maybe the MB firmware itself is lovely. My MB is MSI x299 raider.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2019 15:35

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

repiv posted:

16 bit signed at that, just in case they needed to store negative hours operated

Well, the common wisdom is that one should prefer to use signed integers if there are any operations made on them (such as incrementing). Of course, one should also use the appropriate size signed integer. Unsigned types are cool and fine on masks or in file formats that store the size of the file in the header or some other constants.

Being signed was not the problem here (would have bought another 3 years). 16 bit is the problem.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2019 19:27

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

DrDork posted:

If they'd used unsigned it'd reset to 0 and possibly keep on trucking.

Possibly being the key word here.

There's always a chance for code like this to exist:

code:

if(oldCounter > currentCounter)
{
    dieVeryPainfulDeath();
}

# ¿ Nov 26, 2019 20:17

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

I need to expand my /home partition as 700GB doesn't seem to cut it anymore (got 1 NVME 1TB drive, of which I gave less than 300GB to the / partition and the rest to /home). I was thinking on getting one of those PCIe boards that can hold more NVME drives (some can even do 4). Since I just need them for /home, I thought maybe I could get a couple of drives (to be determined if buying 2 drives is cheaper/better than 1 larger drive) and RAID-0 them.

Is RAID-0 providing any benefit to NVME? I have an x299 intel MB, so I assume it'll have some kind of lovely software raid chipset available and nothing more. Or are there NVME cards that can do RAID-0 internally, all in hardware, presuming it's worth the speed boost?

# ¿ Oct 29, 2020 01:46

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Thank you for the insight. My main driver of this was the desire to have only 1 "drive" to mount poo poo to rather than 2 or 3 That is, having a /home/<user> drive rather than one /home/<user>/projects and a /home/<user>/somethingelse mounts . Since I backup important stuff, losing data is a non-issue. But if RAID-0 on NVME will not decrease performance, then maybe it'll be something to consider.

As for NVME drives ... Samsung is no longer the king of the hill, right? Crucial, WD are they suitable alternatives?

# ¿ Oct 29, 2020 02:11

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Klyith posted:

Since you're in linux you should just do it in software by pooling drives with LVM, or make your /home using a filesystem that can do pooling itself like btrfs.

The failure potential of raid 0 may not be a big deal to you with your backups, but the other crap thing about putting drives in motherboard raid 0 is that it's rarely portable to a new machine. Move the drives to a new mobo, set up the same raid 0 set, and it'll say "press Y to wipe drives".

Doing it in software makes it trivial to move to a new PC. Also the good think about these things in linux is that you can add & change storage more easily. Let's say you get 2 1TB drives and pool them, then a few years from now that's not enough. With LVM you can add a third drive, or add a 2TB drive and then remove one of the 1TB ones! All dynamically.

Samsung is still king of the hill in performance but now they charge a major premium. Crucial & WD are much better in terms of not paying 1/3rd more for a trivial difference in speed. Also look into adata.

That's an interesting approach. What's the performance penalty of LVM, if any? Is btrfs better from the performance standpoint? I just usually format my disks with ext4 and think no more of them, but maybe it's time to learn more about these logical volume managers or the butter-fuss thingy. Would I be able to convert the current /home partition to LVM (without destroying data) and just add drives to it? Basically, the question is: How lazy can I get? The lazier the better!

Volguus fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Oct 29, 2020

# ¿ Oct 29, 2020 03:29

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

After long debating with myself and some research on the interwebs (in addition to advice in this thread) I went on and ordered a "ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2" with a "Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB ". I know you all said that Samsung is not worth it but it was just a bit more expensive than ADATA and about the same price with HP, WD and others. At least here in Canada. I hope it will be worth the money. While the card can support 4 drives, my CPU only has 28 lanes so I will be limited to 2 drives in that PCIe slot, which for now it'll be fine. I'll upgrade the CPU anyway in the next little while so I will be able to take advantage of all those 4 slots.

And LVM definitely sounds like the best option for expanding my /home drive.

# ¿ Nov 1, 2020 17:46

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

What other options are there for hardware NVME pcie cards, raid or not, but to not require PCIe bifurcation? I was only aware of HighPoint.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2022 06:11

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

priznat posted:

Broadcom, Microchip/Adaptec has a controller but it's really enterprise focused and mostly is in HPE servers.

Alternatively you could get a PCIe switch card and fan it out to U.2 using cables and do any RAID stuff in software.
https://www.serialcables.com/product-category/pcie-gen3-microsemi-host-card/
https://www.serialcables.com/product-category/gen4-microsemi-host-cards/

I'm biased towards the microsemi/microchip ones for reasons

All these are pricey enterprise ones there might be other cheapo brands like highpoint too

Jesus, and I thought that Highpoint was expensive at $500. Well ... it's either that or stick with an HEDT platform longer. The advantage of a card like this with multiple nvme slots is that you can just buy them (the drives) at your leisure. No need to throw in the big bucks all at once. Ok, thanks, that's quite some food for thought.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2022 04:01

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Shumagorath posted:

My build went from zero spinning drives to zero cabled drives and I'm sticking to it.

Optical is in a caddy on the desk

I'll give my Bluray burner another decade and if I'm not using it, for sure I'll take it out.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2022 04:02

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Agrajag posted:

I've never heard of vuugo I usually buy all my electronics from my local electronics/pc chain store Canada Computers.

edit: looks like Crucial P5 Plus $219 at Canada Computers

I bought from vuugo a couple of times in the last 10 years and they were ok. There's also MemoryExpress, who have brick and mortar stores as well in some locations. Sometimes they're cheaper than Canada Computers.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2023 17:22

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 02:36

Volguus: Mar 3, 2009

Klyith posted:

yo dawg I heard you like computers, we put a computer inside your computer so you can have firmware bugs while you have software bugs

Like Intel ME?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2024 03:50

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