Hard drive upgrade

Forums › Desktop computing › Hard drive upgrade

BiggusDoggus

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#274578 29-Aug-2020 15:31

Hi all

I currently have a Gigabyte Z97p-d3 mobo, with 2 x 500gb ssd's.

I'm running out of room on the main drive (even when using the second one for as much storage as possible).

I've seen this, which seems like a good deal: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDSAM60100/Samsung-860-QVO-MZ-76Q1T0BW-1TB--Samsung-V-NAND-SA

My mobo doesnt have a M2 slot, but I've read something about getting an adapter to work through the PCIe slot.

So my question is please - is it worth spending more on an adapter and M2 drive, or stick with $149 for a 1tb SSD?

Thanks!

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries

1 | 2 | 3

20591 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2551967 29-Aug-2020 15:43

Maybe you need a spinning disk to offload media to? My OS SSD is 120GB and I have all the regular business apps, it's only half full. I put email and other latency sensitive stuff on a second 120GB SSD, but all images, video, media, etc, go to the spinning disks.

jjnz1

1363 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2551976 29-Aug-2020 15:59

Simple is better imo. Stick with SATA SSD drive unless you are planning on upgrading your mobo soon.

Adapters are just another expense and something else to go wrong.

M.2 speeds are very awesome compared to SATA though, I think my M.2 drive runs at 3000MBps vs 600MBps for my SATA drive.

BiggusDoggus

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2551987 29-Aug-2020 16:13

timmmay:
Maybe you need a spinning disk to offload media to? My OS SSD is 120GB and I have all the regular business apps, it's only half full. I put email and other latency sensitive stuff on a second 120GB SSD, but all images, video, media, etc, go to the spinning disks.

Yup, I've already done that - all music, videos, downloads etc go on my second drive.

The problem is my games - WOT, WOWS , War Thunder & Battlefield 1. Doesnt leave a lot of room!

My main drive is Samsung 750 Evo, btw - it looks like the new one I was looking at isn't quite as good (except for being twice the size).
Maybe need to look higher, unless I wont actually notice much difference in reality?

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries

Tzoi

424 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2552061 29-Aug-2020 20:41

No real difference is noticeable between NVME SSDs and SATA SSDs.

The QVO SSDs aren't great for large writes to the hard drive but should be fine once everything is copied to the drive and you are just running games from them.

Mehrts

1063 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#2552182 29-Aug-2020 23:24

My desktop had all SATA ports occupied with drives, so I installed a basic PCIe to M.2 adapter which allowed me to run a couple of NVMe drives directly from the PCIe slots.

Super simple install, and there's no extra cables, so it's tidy.

Just thought I'd say that a PCIe adapter certainly is a viable option for extra SSD capacity.

fe31nz

1233 posts

Uber Geek

#2552191 30-Aug-2020 00:42

Using an adapter for M.2 NVMe drives is fine. All the adapter does is connect the right pins from the PCIe x4 slot to the M.2 pins. There is no active circuitry on the adapter board. The PCIe bus is a self clocking serial protocol that can be extended many, many metres without any problems, so a few centimetres up a small PCB is no problem at all. I have PCIe adaptors for my M.2 NVMe drives in three different PCs. I am also running a DVB-T2 8 tuner PCIe card on the end of a 1.1 metre USB 3 cable carrying the PCIe x1 signals out the back of a PC. It works just fine. I had to do that as my only remaining PCIe socket was the one under my fanless PCIe x16 Nvidia graphics card, so I could not use it for a card directly in the socket. There is no need to buy an expensive PCIe to NVMe adapter - a cheap one should be fine, such as these:

https://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/components/other-pci-cards/listing-2754663023.htm

https://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/components/other-pci-cards/listing-2754368266.htm

The things to watch out for are:

1) Does your motherboard support booting from NVMe? If not, then you will need to set up booting from one of your SATA drives and get it to boot to the NVMe device. It is very simple in Linux (I am doing that on one PC) and should be fine for Windows also. And in any case, I think your motherboard is new enough to have NVMe boot code in the BIOS.

2) You need a PCIe x4 slot to put the adapter in. Your motherboard has two slots it will work in, one PCIe x16 running in x16 mode (intended for a PCIe graphics card) and one PCIe x16 slot that only runs PCIe x4 mode (the extra pins will not be connected to anything). If one of those two slots is free, then you are good. Since the adapter only needs PCIe x4, the best slot to put it in is the PCIe x16 that only works in PCIe x4 mode.

2) NVMe speed is dependent on your PCIe speed. Your motherboard has the Intel Z97 Express chipset, so it is only PCIe version 2.0. Most NVMe SSDs these days are PCIe 3.0 or even PCIe 4.0 speed. So if you run one of them in your motherboard at PCIe 2.0 speed, it will only run as fast as PCIe 2.0 can run it. See the speeds table in this Wikipedia article in the "History and Revisions" section:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

PCIe x4 slots with PCIe 2.0 specification only do 2.0 GB/s throughput. So if the NVMe SSD is rated faster than that, you will be wasting the extra speed. But you are unlikely to find many PCIe 2.0 rated NVMe SSDs available, so you just have to live with a little less than the top speed of the NVMe SSD.

There are lots of people out there who will say that you do not notice the difference between a SATA SSD and an NVMe one. That is a psychological effect. NVMe is actually significantly faster.

richms

28218 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2552193 30-Aug-2020 01:01

Some of the PCIe to m2 slot adapters have stupidly bright lights on them for disk activity. That is something I wish I looked out for with mine because they are blue and nothing else in the case is and it annoyed me so much I just desoldered them. I was planning on getting some amber SMD leds to replace them with but never did and dont really miss having a drive light. You will not have your motherboard one working if you use an adapter card and none seem to have headers to connect the case LED onto.

Richard rich.ms

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

BiggusDoggus

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2552472 30-Aug-2020 16:35

Thanks for the replies - really appreciate it.

So in summary (and keeping in mind the core issue I'm wanting to resolve is hard drive capacity - not speed):

I have 2 options:

A Samsung QVO 1Tb SSd for $150 - $160: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDSAM60100/Samsung-860-QVO-MZ-76Q1T0BW-1TB--Samsung-V-NAND-SA

A PCIe to NVMe adapter: https://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/components/other-pci-cards/listing-2754368266.htm plus a M2 1Tb Drive: https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDCRU32600/Crucial-P1-1TB-NVMe-PCIe-M2-2280-Gen-3-X-4-SSD-Up

So all up around $240.

From I can gather, the Samsung SSD is a little lower spec than my current 500gb Samsung 750 Evo, but not enough that I would actually notice.

The M2 drive is obviously a lot faster, but since I'm not going to be regularly managing large files (it's a home PC used mainly for games, watching videos, kid's homework etc) it's unlikely I'll see much actual benefit. Especially since any files I would be managing would be moving to another SSD anyway, which would be a bottleneck.

Plus, while I'm reasonably comfortable playing around with PC components (I've built my current one from scratch) having an adapter to use a M2 drive just seems a little "jury rigged" to me - I could be completely wrong of course.

Which means, in my mind, the extra $80 could very well be wasted. And I DO need a new pair of trainers!

Hopefully nothing wrong with my logic...

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries

timmmay

20591 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2552524 30-Aug-2020 16:54

For general use it makes little difference which variety of solid state storage you use. Buy the cheapest reliable device. I stick with samsung pro range to get lower numbers of bits per cell, for reliability.

Lias

5590 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2552525 30-Aug-2020 16:54

For many games, the difference between SATA SSD and NVME SSD is very much noticeable.

I'd pick the NVME personally if you are a gamer.

I'm a geek, a gamer, a dad, a Quic user, and an IT Professional. I have a full rack home lab, size 15 feet, an epic beard and Asperger's. I'm a bit of a Cypherpunk, who believes information wants to be free and the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. If you use my Quic signup you can also use the code R570394EKGIZ8 for free setup.

Mush1364

44 posts

Geek

#2552631 30-Aug-2020 20:42

Tzoi:

No real difference is noticeable between NVME SSDs and SATA SSDs.

The QVO SSDs aren't great for large writes

^^^^^ This i completely agree with.... ^^^^^

Also if you buy a adapter to fit m.2 drives then next mb upgrade you are not going to really need it so i see it as a waste of money. Also maybe look at a Crucial MX500 as they get good write ups. Me personally i do not have a swap file (you can also move this to another drive) as i have enough ram also i moved my temp folders and browser cache to a second ssd so i do not fill or thrash the boot drive.

BiggusDoggus

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2552632 30-Aug-2020 20:49

Mush1364:

Tzoi:

No real difference is noticeable between NVME SSDs and SATA SSDs.

The QVO SSDs aren't great for large writes

^^^^^ This i completely agree with.... ^^^^^

Also if you buy a adapter to fit m.2 drives then next mb upgrade you are not going to really need it so i see it as a waste of money. Also maybe look at a Crucial MX500 as they get good write ups. Me personally i do not have a swap file (you can also move this to another drive) as i have enough ram also i moved my temp folders and browser cache to a second ssd so i do not fill or thrash the boot drive.

Thanks - hadn't thought of the temp folders or browser cache - I'll try that too.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries

richms

28218 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2552684 30-Aug-2020 22:26

The adapters are dirt cheap so not a waste at all, and if you want to upgrade SSD to a newer bigger faster one you will need one anyway since its very rare to have multiple nvme slots on motherboards without going to the absurd spec ones.

Richard rich.ms

fe31nz

1233 posts

Uber Geek

#2552745 31-Aug-2020 01:24

I had to buy an extra M.2 adapter board to be able to upgrade my Windows box from its old 240 Gbyte MVME M.2 SSD one to a new 1 Tbyte one. It has now found a home in an ancient (11 years old) spare motherboard where it makes that PC tolerably fast running Ubuntu on the old 240 Gbyte NVMe SSD.

BiggusDoggus

391 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2557905 6-Sep-2020 15:21

Bump!

Sorry, but:

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDHPC2600/HP-S700-1TB-Solid-State-Drive-25-SATA-III-SSD-up-t

https://www.playtech.co.nz/samsung-860-qvo-1tb-2-5-sata-iii-6gb-s-4-bit-mlc-v-nand-ssd.html?fee=48&fep=308172&gclid=Cj0KCQjw7sz6BRDYARIsAPHzrNIU_Ok-Q0rDGD7lTbxtneo0TaEF-IKFyfTC2nQPPwFpDEyFQ4TtXswaAkZxEALw_wcB#specifications-tab

Much difference? From what I can tell online there isn't - but a lot of the comparisons are between the HP S700 PRO, which I don't think this is.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries

1 | 2 | 3