M.2 is pretty sweet

Last year I bought a 960 Evo. It doesn't really have any real advantages for me over a regular ssd, but I was curious about the form factor, my board had 2 m.2 slots, so I went for it.

Now, a year later, I'm saving up to get a 1tb m.2 ssd because I just really like how little space it takes. I'm a data hoarder, so I have 10tb in 5 mechanic drives, but everytime I add a new one or switch one to use it's sata port, I get the feeling that the technology is starting to show it's flaws, now that it can be compared to something else. For instance, I'm sure many of you had at some point a 2.5 external hdd for travelling or whatever. I had a few. And now I look at them and realize that they were ticking time bombs. It's stupid to put a mechanical drive in an enclosure that makes it super easy to move it around while working. It's just a disaster waiting to happen.

So yeah, even though m.2 ssds are still too costly and not as reliable for long term storage, I like where storage drive's technology is heading. In a few years we might have reliable m.2 drives for a slight premium over hdds, making small factor cases capable of also having shitloads of storage, which I like.

Either way, I was just curious about your opinions on the m.2 form factor. Is it the future? Just a cash grab? Do you want one?

It's pretty handy honestly, my next storage purchase will definitely be an M.2 SSD. On the other hand with the current inflated prices I don't really see myself rushing to buy one, already have two SATA SSD's - 256 GB for OS and another 500 GB for gayums. Everything else goes to good old spindrives. I don't hoard data either.

>I don't hoard data either.
There is no shame in having a fileserver with spinning rust.

Do you have a data server?

I was thinking about moving my drives to a separate computer, but I'm afraid of get shitty transfer speeds.

wait, do they die more often than normal ssd's?
i'm considering buying an ssd in the next couple of days, m.2 or sata? any recomendations?
preferably a small fastboi since i dont hoard anything

As far as I know, they are AS reliable as ssds, which is not saying much compared to old hdds in term of long term storage.

A ssd will loose it's content due to how it works, making it ideal for dinamic data. data that is constantly changed, updated and accessed, since it can be overwritten many times before it stops working.

HDDs on the other hand handle long term storage quite well, but are not as good in being constantly written and erased.

>wait, do they die more often than normal ssd's?
They are normal SSDs, just in a different form factor.
Get M.2 because SATA is garbage that doesn't support NVMe.

i wanna put wangblows and a couple programs that run on startup on it, how muchof a differencenshould there be?

But NVME doesn't have any real world advantage over a sata ssd for most users.

Don't get me wrong. I'm OP, I have a nvme drive, but taking into account the difference in price and the noticeable difference today, it isn't worth it.

I think this also replies to your question.

Just to be clear, I am advocating for M.2 ssds. Nvme isn't worth it nowadays.

>But NVME doesn't have any real world advantage over a sata ssd for most users.
Other than being 6 times as fast?
>difference in price
I don't know where you live, but the 850 EVO 250GB is only 30 bucks cheaper than the 960 EVO 250GB.

It's way faster, we both know that.

Thing is, the OS won't benefit from it. If you had several NVME drives and accessed large files constantly, I totally get it, but if you are aiming to having just one NVME drive, I assure you that it won't make a difference. The transfer speeds will get bottlenecked by everything else, making it awesome for benchmarks, but you won't take advantage of that speed. At least I don't. It's nice to have, and it will be awesome in the future when programs and OSs take advantage of it.

so is there a noticable difference in boot times between sata and m.2
how much faster compared to a hard drive?

>It's nice to have
That was kinda my point, of course if you're poor you wouldn't get the NVMe drive.

You are confusing the port with the drive technology.

M.2 is a form factor. You can find a m.2 sata ssd and a m.2 NVME ssd. The m.2 sata ssd is limited to the same speeds as the regular ssds.

M.2 NVME ssds are way faster than Sata.

Basically there are ssds with the same speeds in both 2.5 and m.2 factors, and then there is the m.2 nvme drives, which are way faster.

full pcie x16 ssd when

And replying to your question, there is a small difference between m.2 sata and m.2 nvme. I'm guessing this difference will grow with time, but today it won't make much of a difference, like i said here ssds compared to a hdd, you will go from about a minute boottime to less than 15 seconds. Same goes for accessing programs and files, it is way snappier, definetly noticeable and a must have nowadays. wether you choose a 2.5 ssd or an m.2 ssd.

Like said, it's nice to have the nvme one, since it technically is faster, but for your average user, sata ssds are as fast in daily use.

Nothing major like a data server, just a file-,media-,torrent-server.
I have old networking equipment, I'm getting around 120MB/s.

>2017
>Not getting a server motherboard and use the second socket for a cpu shapped drive.

I'm wary of investing too much in the m.2 form factor until it becomes more widely adopted. Most board currently only have what, two slots? Imagine a newer and improved standard comes out and the m.2 standard is gradually phased out, then you're left with stuff you need adapters for (unlikely but very possible given how fast technology advances nowadays) SATA is great because it's mature and widespread.

At most I'd buy one or two to max out the storage potential of a supporting mobo build.

I get your point. It's not as common and it's also true that they might go a whole different direction and make up some magical drive that connects to your pwm fan socket and thrash m.2 all together.

But you will always have PCI cards to connect m.2 drives into boards without its socket. But still, I get it. I don't like pci cards too much myself.

m.2 is here to stay due to its size advantage in laptops

most boards have very few (compared to sata) m.2 slots because they use precious PCIe lanes