PC Tech Thread

BIOS doesn't see it. Checked cables, no difference. Maybe mobo is killing components?

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Samsung 950 PRO M.2 512GB NVMe SSD
This one died. This is the RAM-looking one plugged direct to mobo.

Samsung 850 PRO 1TB 2.5in SSD
This one was still working.

Basically the RAM-looking one (I guess NVME, I thought m.2 referred to the ram looking design) died and in its place I now have an NVMe / m.2 RAM-looking one from old laptop.

But now, the Samsung 850 PRO 1TB 2.5in SSD has now vanished from the BIOS

All the ports are enabled.

"Have you manually installed the correct chipset drivers in Windows?"

Not done anything in Windows, but if it's not even seen in the BIOS would that make any difference?

On some older motherboards, adding an M.2 drive would disable some of the SATA ports so try the data drive in the other SATA ports and see if it becomes visible.
It might be that if you have literally just installed the new drive in the PC then the drivers will be for the other PC and that can cause a lot of issues. You need to install the correct drivers which you can find here. Better still, unplug the 2.5" data drive and perform a full, clean install of windows on the drive.

Plugged the SATA dickhead into another port and we're back in business. Copying everything off the 1TB drive to an external drive now and then I guess I'll need to come up with a plan for the PC. Maybe I'll just keep the m.2 nvme from my partner's machine in there as a disposable boot drive and get a better data drive and then wait for the rest of it to die.

Thank you. Last one - would one perform better than the other? E.g. am I hobbling the Corsair to the same speed as the u.2 (which presumably fits in a completely different slot on the mobo based on shape?)

Performance depends on what you're doing. I'm assuming you just need fast sequential read/write for ingesting and editing large video files? If so, you'll get ~6GB/s read and ~4GB/s write out of the 7.68TB PM9A3, sustained, across the entire drive, with no slowdown.

The Corsair you posted will likely have a small amount of SLC cache which will give faster writes for the first few GB, then drastically slow down. This is where consumer drives fall down; their firmware and cache structure is set up for blazing-fast burst performance for small chunks of data, not continuous sustained performance.

Write endurance is another factor; look up and compare the DWPD rating for the drives you're considering. The higher the number, the longer the drive will last. Enterprise/datacentre drives are over-provisioned, meaning that 7.68TB PM9A3 drive actually has 8TB of functional flash capacity, but uses 'hidden' capacity to facilitate much more effective wear-levelling and garbage-collection algorithms to prolong the life of the flash cells. I think the Corsair you're looking at has something like a 10x lower DWPD rating than the Samsung, which speaks volumes (and the PM9A3 is a low-end enterprise drive).

Note that if you're after maximum speed, then 2x 3.84TB drives in a RAID0 array will nigh-on double your sequential performance. Caveats: both drives must have unfettered, full-fat PCIe lanes direct to CPU, in your case via a bifurcation riser card as previously mentioned.

This post is a big help, thanks.

Note: if you're looking to use a U.2 drive, and your motherboard doesn't have a U.2 connector, then you'll need to get a M.2 to U.2 adapter cable, as well as get power to it (via a standard SATA power connector) and physically mount the drive inside your case (it'll fit in most SATA drive bays).

@hippy take note also

Fairly sure it's m.2 only: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-VISION-D-rev-10/sp#sp

So I presume something like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/DiLinKer-SFF-8639-Cable-PCIe-Adapter-U-2-Converter/dp/B07VB6L8SJ and then figure out how to mount the U.2 after the fact. Presume it'll come with some kind of solution but if not I'll figure it.

Having trouble finding that PM9A3 in stock (maybe one place - 'senetic'?) but it's led me to these:
https://www.megamac.com/products/32tb-owc-u2-shuttle-drive-for-3-5-nvme-u-2-ssd-owcu2shuttle32 which I now covet...

The Samsung drive, as with all enterprise products, comes in plain packaging with zero accessories or documentation.

Any mounting bay/solution that fits a common 2.5” SATA drive will also work with a U.2 drive.

The adapter cable you linked to has the correct connectors on the ends, but no mention of which PCIe generation it is rated to support (you need Gen4).

That OWC thing is an expensive nonsense imo; no matter how many drives you stick in it, bandwidth will be crippled to that of a single U.2 connector (4x PCIe lanes).

but it's metal and has a fucking LOCK on it ffs

it MUST be good value

EDIT: presumably this is more apt then as it comes with mounting hardware and is gen4:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-com-M-2-U-2-Adapter-SFF-8639/dp/B073W65QX6/

What I don't want is another one of those m.2 NVME drives that I have to take the cooler off to access (although it's now loose so let's see if the CPU melts down and I don't have to worry about drives).

If I got one of these: https://www.scan.co.uk/products/192tb-samsung-pm9a3-25-enterprise-ssd-25-ssd-pcie-40x4-u2-6800mb-s-read-4000mb-s-write-1000k-180k-io it looks like it'll just go in one of the normal SSD drive bays, right? Does it use a different connector or will the normal sata ones work? Hard drives feel like bottom bracket standards nowadays...

PM9A3 stock: this kind of thing is usually not stocked, rather bought-in on demand by retailers from their distributor. Give Scan a call, they’ll let you know how long it’ll take.

There are also loads of various large capacity enterprise/datacentre drives out there; the Samsung that I keep banging on about is just an example of one that I have experience using.

All the info you need is in my posts above; SATA connector won’t work, you need a M.2 to U.2 adapter etc.

Right, yeah, I assumed it was a normal SSD connector on it, since they decided not to bother with that image, just a black rectangle. Useful Scan, useful.

Every day's a school day.
https://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/m-2-vs-u-2/

If I wanted to do the same kind of upgrade (more storage with enterprise spec. reliability) to my Dell Inspiron laptop PCIe, NVME, m.2 there's only Micron and Kioxia on Scan and I've never heard of those brands. Is there even any point doing that to a laptop or should I just continue backing stuff up and waiting for failure?

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/solid-state-drives/enterprise-m2-pcie-nvme-ssds#t76.f47=1.6TB-4TB

Micron and Kioxia are huge enterprise SSD manufacturers, along with Solidigm, Memblaze etc.

Most enterprise M.2 drives are of a different, longer, form factor than that of consumer drives, and most laptops can’t accommodate them.

They’re also more power-hungry and hotter than consumer drives.

Stick to high-end consumer drives in laptops.

Thanks.

This was the first google result I got. Is one brand bettr than another or do you have to deep dive into their endurance properties to pick?

https://www.mrmemory.co.uk/ssd-upgrades/dell/inspiron-notebook/7391-2-in-1

Maybe I'd be better off using an external drive in a cooler and/or stronger caddy. It's just annoying having to remember another thing to carry around.

Crucial
Life Expectancy: 1.5 million hours (MTBF)
Endurance:

500GB - 110TBW
1TB - 220TBW
2TB - 440TBW
4TB - 800TBW

Kingston
Endurance:

512GB: 400TBW
1TB: 800TBW
2TB: 1.6PBW
4TB: 3.2PBW

Samsung 970
Life Expectancy: 1.5 million hours (MTBF)
Endurance:

250GB - 150TBW
500GB - 300TBW
1TB - 600TBW
2TB - 1,200TBW

Samsung 980
Life Expectancy: 1.5 million hours (MTBF)
Endurance:

250GB - 150TBW
500GB - 300TBW
1TB - 600TBW
2TB - 1,200TBW

What do you use the laptop for?

High write endurance only matters if you’re constantly dumping massive files onto the drive, over and over, all day. Or running a high transaction rate database on it, writing millions of tiny blocks every second.

Just get a Samsung 980 Pro or WD SN850, it’ll be fine.

I'm not. But I don't like wasting half a day or more trying to sort out dead machines so I was looking for durable over fast.

I'm half tempted to just replicate my main drive to a cloud provider or something and then sync with the laptop so the computers are quicker to replace when something dies. Personal DR planning...

I mean, I did get 8 years or so out of my PC's boot drive, that was a Samsung 950 PRO M.2 512GB NVMe SSD

8 years is a good innings for a 950 Pro; they run hot & hungry, and wear quickly. Your passive CPU cooler won’t have helped keep it cool nestled under there either.

Like I say, just get a modern, high-end consumer SSD like the ones I mentioned above and don’t sweat it.

Cheers. Sounds like a plan. I just have to remember how I cloned my partner's one. :S

As per the Android thread I need to come up with a better plan for moving data between laptop and PC (maybe just ditch the PC and use a better laptop only) and some kind of cloud backup that isn't as slow as Glacier but doesn't cost the earth. That way when a boot drive dies I don't care, I just resync the files from the other machine or cloud location and build another machine.

Easiest way to clone drives with a PC is via a Clonezilla live USB, it's free.

Backblaze is the best bang for buck cloud backup service last time I looked.

Best backup strategy is having 2x external backup drives (1x SSD, 1x spinning rust). Keep the fast SSD locally and do regular incremental backups to it; this is your 'warm' backup. Keep the spinning drive off-site somewhere, and backup to it when you can; this is your 'cold backup'. Then also have a cloud backup in case all else fails. This way, your data is stored in 3x separate locations, one of which is in a secure datacentre. The likelihood of all 3x getting toasted is nigh-on zero.

The challenge is seeing how long you can keep this regimen up before ceasing to be arsed...

Thanks, I'll have a look at Backblaze.

I already have this system to some extent. PC and laptop share a lot of data. I used to run a NAS but that died so then moved to a simpler external caddied drive, which is now full, so I moved to a larger, pocketable SSD USB drive and I also do regular Glacier backups so if the place burned down I'd still have a pretty recent copy. My partner does less frequent backups (okay I do them) so there's a lot of manual stuff happening and I'd love to automate it more.

I basically do not back up.

I sync in multiple directions depending on the volume and value of the data.

Personal docs: high value and relatively low volume (under 10GB) sync'd to multiple computers and a NAS, stored in about 5 places (5 devices)... thinking about it I should sync all this to my phone too!

Music and Films: low value and relatively high volume (over 30TB) and I can always pirate it, so just sync'd between 2 NAS devices, both those are already both equivalent to RAID6, so pretty damn reliable.

I don't bother sending small amounts to the Cloud, easier just to send it to all devices.

I don't bother sending big amounts to the Cloud, it's just not cost effective and the time to restore from it is insane even on a 1Gbps connection.

If I had medium value and medium amounts, maybe the Cloud scenario becomes plausible... but I doubt it, I'd just do the 2 NAS devices and a laptop or two.

From the Android thread:

I guess it's unlikely I lose my PC and laptop in one go (save for robbery or house fire or something) and in that case I could just use my Glacier backups (and time to restore isn't an issue as I could be selective in what I brought down).

So maybe the answer is just to clean up, buy a 4TB drive for the laptop, buy a 2TB enterprise drive for the desktop and then use syncthing to keep the the whole lot (data, not OS) in sync between desktop and laptop and continue with the regular Glacier updates.