SSD Thread: (its good, ignore the anime)

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

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Does anyone know if the WD SN850 heatsink has spacing issues with GPUs if you use your board's flat M.2 slots? I know it's board-dependent for the position, but is it substantially thicker than the plates that come with most high-end boards? I can always get the bare model, but I feel like WD's own solution beats generic thermal goop and whatever spreader.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2022 03:18

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:42

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Thanks - I'm looking at a 3070 that's the size of a small boat.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2022 03:33

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Thanks everyone; that was not a surprise I wanted to spring on Easter weekend.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2022 12:44

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Xander77 posted:

I don't actually need an SSD per-se, just a voluminous storage device.

Large files scattered around a bunch of drives, about 5TB atm. Not that I'll ever get around to them all, but still, a backup would be nice.

Code42 will back that all up for $10/month/device and you can go all the way up to zero-knowledge (though don't lose your key pair). Backblaze will be even cheaper than that.

Having done bi-weekly HDD backups going back to incremental/differential headaches with Acronis: Pay for a good backup service.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2022 16:43

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

In TGC Opal / IEEE 1667's final insult to crypto implementations everywhere, I just found out that enabling it prevents you from doing a normal ATA Secure Erase. Time to go the long way :v:

# ¿ Apr 30, 2022 15:57

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Klyith posted:

What tool are you using to do try to do a secure erase?

The last BIOS released for a Z170 motherboard to an 860 EVO in the M.2 slot. When that refused to do the job, I booted into WinRE to delete the partition table, make a new volume with 2-pass overwrite via /P:1, then delete the partition table again. This was after I cleared the TPM and BitLocker wouldn't unlock the volume with the correct PIN, so I'm confident my data isn't getting retrieved by whomever buys this PC.

# ¿ May 2, 2022 22:26

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Key management is seemingly all over the place. BitLocker would use the on-drive hardware if IEEE 1667 was enabled, but if you set a second factor some of that clearly lives in the TPM as I was unable to unlock the drive once I cleared mine. You also had to get Windows installed and set IEEE 1667 (and only that, not TGC Opal or ATA security, with only one choice forever) through Magician, then secure erase the drive to start using that mode. I doubt the hour it took me to do all that was regained over the machine's life in load time saved vs full software, even on a 6700K doing the AES.

Maybe using software-only BitLocker on my laptop is what caused its SSD to die an early death just shy of its 7th birthday, but I don't think incompressibility / entropy has been an issue since the SandForce days...?

# ¿ May 3, 2022 03:50

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Is it normal for SSD to SSD copying to be highly variable when going over a certain volume? Here's my setup:

Asus TUF GAMING Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard
Western Digital Black SN850 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME System drive
ADATA XPG SX8100 4 TB M.2-2280 NVME Media drive

When moving 20GB from the WD to the ADATA, I'll get a burst of multiple gigs a second that drops off sharply to 500MB/sec. I figured that's the SLC filling up and the drive having to write the rest out directly to multi-level flash. But when I copied the same load back immediately, it started at 500MB/sec then shot up to ~1.7GB/sec near the end...?

I just want to make sure I don't have some kind of bus bandwidth issue going on.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2022 12:51

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

The reported free space in Windows has also been bouncing around and I'm not whipping that many files back and forth. I'm questioning if it's worth just wiping and refunding but the next-closest 4TB is still $300 away and I'm likely beyond the return window.

Oh well; at least I have good backups if this thing is a lemon.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2022 03:42

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

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 :v:

# ¿ Jun 23, 2022 03:53

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I found out the hard way that Samsung 870 QVOs are very, very bad at what I need them to do. Who makes a good 4-8TB 2.5" SSD that will write ~50% of a fresh drive at full SATA3 speeds? The Samsung immediately ate poo poo at 75GB and stayed significantly slower than the spinning disk it was copying from. I'm leaning toward WD Blue or Red as my boss is paying.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2023 03:09

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I went with WD Red because my patience with Samsung is extremely thin, and I couldn�t ask management to pay for the same brand after accepting those QVO lemons. Can�t knock my T7 though; that�s been solid.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2023 06:48

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I've got a Dell laptop that I'm decommissioning, and it's too old to have the in-built ATA Secure Erase (yes it's ~~M.2 SATA~~ mSATA not NVMe). Is there an NVMe-CLI equivalent for ATA, or am I stuck trying to get the manufacturer's tool to boot? The drive is two-factor BitLockered, so I could just clear the TPM, but the thing still works after nearly 10 years so I'm hoping to donate it to a local electronics reuse centre rather than send it for scrap.

I know diskpart will do it the hard way, but sequential overwrite of even that vintage of SSD seems needlessly tedious.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Jan 28, 2024

# ¿ Nov 19, 2023 21:50

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Klyith posted:

Yup, hdparm

Edit: though why would clearing the TPM be a cause for it to be scrapped? With a bitlockered drive, clear TPM -> format drive -> reinstall windows. Secure erase not needed because leftover data was encrypted by a key that no longer exists.

I meant as a courtesy of giving them a truly blank drive rather than something that wakes up asking for a recovery key because that's enough to secure my data.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2023 23:17

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Klyith posted:

That would be taken care of by a regular drive wipe / diskpart clean after clearing the TPM, wouldn't it? The bit that's asking for the recovery key is the windows bootloader, not the BIOS.

I mean "I could clear the TPM and walk away knowing that my data was safe and the recipient would need to spend extra time doing what I should have done in the first place". Like... how many different ways should I say that wiping the drive is just the nice thing to do?

e: Anyway, I don't mean to split hairs over what ends up at the e-Goodwill. Thanks for the lead; going to give it a shot now.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Nov 20, 2023

# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 00:39

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Dessel posted:

I got a Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB off a deal and I'm probably picking it up tomorrow. My Windows 11 is currently installed on a WD Blue SN550 NVMe (500 gb). Should I bother reinstalling/moving the installation to the 990 Pro? I'm also moving the WD Blue to a PCIe 3 slot, while the Samsung will be on a PCIe 4. I know the 990 Pro by specs is 2-3x a jump I think but as far as I know that doesn't really directly translate into real life difference. I might end up doing the moving to another drive next year though since life is so hectic right now. Maybe on the off-chance the file explorer popping out of nowhere -bug gets fixed on a clean reinstall, supposedly the latest major patch was supposed to fix it but it keeps happening.

edit: I need to look into how to update the firmware on the 990 Pro asap, supposedly they're prone to brick without an update?

If you want to move the existing installation, I'd recommend flashing the 990 from bootable media (or from inside the current Windows installation if you need to). You can then clone the WD with either CloneZilla (or Macrium if CloneZilla fails to see one or more drives), then adjust the partitions with GParted. Depending on how funky your Windows install feels right now, you could just start fresh on the 990.

# ¿ Nov 20, 2023 02:31

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I'm sorely tempted to rip this 4TB ADATA out and clone it to another WD Black. It's sitting at around 850GB free, and will often sprint along at 3GB/s, stop copying for 10-15sec at a time, and finish limping over the line in the double-digit MB/s range.

That or I need to bite the bullet on a NAS this Spring when that's money I could be putting on much smarter poo poo.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2024 02:02

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I'll try it next time, but I generally see cheap removable flash media plod along at a consistent pace. I want to say the ADATA is behaving consistently with a QLC drive running out of pseudo-SLC, but even Samsung 870 QVOs don't crater this hard.

Either way it looks like No Cabled Drives is running up against its limitations and I've probably got a TrueNAS build in my future.

# ¿ Jan 27, 2024 18:32

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Just confirmed it's not Defender. Oh well; given that this is an ADATA drive and it hasn't shat itself despite being half the price of all the other early-2022 4TB NVMe drives I'm not upset. But going cable-less and storing all my media in my main PC were definitely conflicting goals.

e:
SSDs!

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Jan 28, 2024

# ¿ Jan 28, 2024 04:00

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I left the ADATA drive in there because it was more trouble than it was worth to move all the data when I still had a free shielded slot (my last one is right under the GPU with no heatsink on it, so no thanks). It just occurred to me that I now have more storage in this PC than I've ever had in any previous, and there are zero cables :awesomelon:

Two observations:

1) The last slot accommodates whatever SSD size is bigger than 2280. Do I need to go back in and cut off the excess thermal interface on the heatsink not in contact with the new SSD? I assume it's going to collect dust, but if it dries out and crumbles that could be bad. This is an Asus board if they use a material I need to worry about.

2) Discussion a while back about NVMe being able to saturate AES-NI on modern CPUs is spot-on. I haven't benchmarked drive-to-drive for a physical copy or partclone, but in-Windows copy and past of my media library is averaging only 1GB/s with the SX8100 showing maxed-out and the SN850X somewhat unbothered. They're in the slots that have to go through the board rather than direct to the CPU so that's probably influencing things.
Nah the CPU load isn't what I thought. The SX8100 is just "slow" at 3x the best SATA HDD can put out and 2x the best SATA SSD.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Feb 1, 2024

# ¿ Feb 1, 2024 21:05

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

1TB is the minimum I�d bother with, and I usually split my OS / installed software and non-executable files onto separate drives.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2024 01:06

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Shumagorath posted:

Just confirmed it's not Defender. Oh well; given that this is an ADATA drive and it hasn't shat itself despite being half the price of all the other early-2022 4TB NVMe drives I'm not upset. But going cable-less and storing all my media in my main PC were definitely conflicting goals.

e:
SSDs!

POW

# ¿ Feb 6, 2024 02:54

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

The 990 Pro is their best offering. The only reason to buy something else is if you like another brand more.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 21:43

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Oh I knew that ADATA was QLC, but how lazy the controller could be as it approached 75% full was getting annoying.

e: or did you mean the 870 QVO :v:

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Feb 16, 2024

# ¿ Feb 15, 2024 23:29

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Optane sounds fun, but what's the appeal of wedding your system to dead-end tech?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2024 00:38

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Perplx posted:

It�s a dead end but its write endurance is basically infinite compared to normal ssds.

I guess that�s nice? I�ve never even come close to burning out an SSD, though maybe QLC will start to make me sweat that.

Why did 3DXpoint lose out to NAND? Cost?

# ¿ Mar 17, 2024 03:04

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Are the various secure erase ops any worse on SSD endurance than a normal write cycle? I understand there�s deleting an AES key and forcing all cells to 1 or max_voltage�?

# ¿ Mar 19, 2024 19:50

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Klyith posted:

When talking about NVMe drives, you can send distinct commands for Sanitize Crypto Erase or Sanitize Block Erase, if you use a tool like nvme-cli with the discernment.

I noticed this, but I've also found drives that would only support SBE and fail SCE.

BobHoward posted:

When I looked at it on SATA drives, the ATA Secure Erase command permitted both of these implementation choices. Some manufacturers publish technical documentation which discloses how they do it. Others, you can infer based on observing how the drive behaves during a secure erase (mostly, how long does it take - 10 or more seconds hints at bulk erase, a few seconds suggests key destruction), or other factors like SMART stat counters before and after the wipe.

Don't count on one vendor doing the same thing every time. IIRC, I found that Samsung 840 appeared to be a bulk erase family, while 850 used key destruction.

Yeah, like this.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2024 00:31

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

I'd be interested to know what's in this thing for secure erase: https://www.startech.com/en-us/hdd/sm2dupe11

# ¿ Mar 20, 2024 01:16

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Makes sense since iirc Opal and IEEE 1667 are dead after so many manufacturers hosed up a good thing and everyone went back to implementing poo poo in software.

Speaking of which... is write amplification a thing / of significance with software full-disk crypto? I remember back in the Sandforce days it would ruin their deduplication / compression special sauce.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2024 01:31

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Bitlocker defaults to encrypting only used space iirc, but doesn�t offer guidance for media; only history of the drive.

# ¿ Mar 20, 2024 02:40

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:42

Shumagorath: Jun 6, 2001

Wandering Orange posted:

Any issues with Samsung 980 Pro's these days? Looking to add a 2TB M2 form-factor (e.g. MZ-V8P2T0B/AM) to my system. It appears the often recommended Crucial P5 Plus is discontinued.

The only knock against the Samsung models is that I've been seeing the WD SN850X half-off everywhere.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2024 17:31

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