m2 SSD with a riser card?

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Hi all

Really just thinking out loud and seeking some insight?

On my motherboard the PCIEX16 slot has my graphics card, as it is dual width with its heatsink/fan I have the following PCI slots available:-

1 off PCIEX1 (the small very short slot)
1 off PCIEX8
2 off PCI (these are the ones that based on their number of connections are a tad shorter than the PCIEX8 or PCIEX16 and are so to speak reversed based on the 'split' point posistion)

I was looking into adding by using a riser card if needed an M2 SSD rather than a standard 2.5inch SSD to clone my W10 OS onto?

I would welcome any insights and/or advice on this (NB my OS and programs are in separate partitions on one 500GB HDD, and once cloned to the M2 SSD I was planning on using the W10 Disk Management tool to remove the partition returning the disk to a single partition leaving its contents intact :)

NB I have in the past used the free version of Macrium Reflect to clone drives (OS and data) when updating my drives to larger capacities (as appropriate) and/or just a precautionary replacement due to age of the drive!

TIA :)
 
I have this further info from the motherboard manual

Expansion Slots
 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16) (Note 2)
 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8) (Note 3)
(The PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 slots conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
 2 x PCI slots



This is the 'note 3' mentioned above:-

The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot.
When the PCIEX8 slot is populated with a PCI Express graphics card, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.


Oh, I have been used to using WD HDD's so have no idea as to best or optimal choices in regard to SSD let alone M.2 SSD brands???
 
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Frankly, I'd save the money and just use a 2.5" SATA SSD. You won't notice any improvement between that and NVMe, especially with only PCIe 2.0, but you will see a major improvement over spinning rust with any SATA3 SSD. I suggest looking at Crucial MX500 or WD Blue 3D (or the identical Sandisk Ultra 3D). You could spend more on a Samsung EVO 960 but it's really not necessary.
 
@Snapsh0t

Jonathan,

Thanks for the insight :)

I use Crucial RAM and have been happy with that so Crucial may be the route to go as they have such a proven history/record of memory technology :)

My motherboard has SATA2 (3GB/s) connectors and I surmise that SATA3 SSD is backwards compatible with that connection? These connections are controlled by the P55 chipset.

However, I do have two other connectors rated at SATA3 (6GB/s) but these need the Marvell driver and back when I got the motherboard the driver (it has not been updated!) was not considered that great.................or should it be that the Marvell 9128 controller chipset was not seen as that great? They are apparently natively defaulting to SATA2 without the driver installed.

Oh, as I read it an SSD runs very cool i.e. unlike my HDDs it will not need the cooling I have in place to keep the HDDs cooler :)
 
Yes, they are backward compatible and use a fraction of the power of a 3.5" HDD. You won't see as much of an improvement with SATA2 as with SATA3 but it should be quieter. :)
I have an MX500 & a WD Blue in this PC and there's nothing to choose between them so buy whichever is cheaper.
 
Jonathan

Thanks for the updated insights, can I also ask:-

With the drive you cloned to for your OS did you use the supplied (Acronis?) cloning tool or another such program?

Which one of the two you mentioned are you using for the OS?
 
If/when I clone I use the commercial version of Acronis as that's what I use for backups.
I'm not using either of those two SSDs for the OS as I have a current mobo so am using an NVMe drive in the on-board M.2 slot and built the OS direct to it. Had I known eighteen months ago what I know now I wouldn't have bothered with M.2. There's very little benefit to it even with PCIe 3.0 and NVMe really needs PCIe 4.0 to make it fly. Plus they run hot.

FWIW I have the MX500 as my data drive and the WD Blue as the backup but that's just the order I bought them.
 
I've recently bought a WD blue 2.5 1tb SSD for use as a second drive in my laptop.
I've got a Samsung EVO 512gb in my desktop and I was going to buy a 1 tb for the laptop but a firiend said the same as Snapsh0t.
It might be worth checking out the Marvel driver for SATA 3 as chances are they have sorted it out by now and it would give you an advantage over SATA 2.
 
The P55 chipset generation of motherboards are too old to use NVMe/M2 to boot from using riser cards, Win10 can see them for storage but the Bios won't recognise them as bootable drives.

I've only got SATA2 ports on my ancient workstation all populated with SSD's. I lose out on some speed when transferring large files between drives but the smaller files, random files and general OS speed is much improved over spinning disks. I haven't noticed any difference in app loading times and general use between my home PC using SATA2 and my work PC using SATA3, but the step up to proper NVMe on my laptop is noticeable. SATA2 is still faster than the speed of the CF/SD cards I use over USB3.
 
Snapsh0t said:
If/when I clone I use the commercial version of Acronis as that's what I use for backups.
I'm not using either of those two SSDs for the OS as I have a current mobo so am using an NVMe drive in the on-board M.2 slot and built the OS direct to it. Had I known eighteen months ago what I know now I wouldn't have bothered with M.2. There's very little benefit to it even with PCIe 3.0 and NVMe really needs PCIe 4.0 to make it fly. Plus they run hot.

FWIW I have the MX500 as my data drive and the WD Blue as the backup but that's just the order I bought them.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the added insight especially in regard to the M.2 type and its optimal usage including that they can run so hot.

hashcake said:
I've recently bought a WD blue 2.5 1tb SSD for use as a second drive in my laptop.
I've got a Samsung EVO 512gb in my desktop and I was going to buy a 1 tb for the laptop but a firiend said the same as Snapsh0t.
It might be worth checking out the Marvel driver for SATA 3 as chances are they have sorted it out by now and it would give you an advantage over SATA 2.
Click to expand...

The Marvell website has little to say of it and refers to using the motherboard makers support versions.

There have been no updates to the drivers since 2010,:-
https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Motherboard/GA-P55A-UD4P-rev-20/support#support-dl-driver-sataraidahci

And all the Marvell drivers reference RAID usage and the manual says this:-
"10) GSATA3_6/7 (SATA 6Gb/s Connectors, Controlled by Marvell 9128)
The SATA connectors conform to SATA 6Gb/s standard and are compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and SATA 1.5Gb/s standards. Each SATA connector supports a single SATA device. The Marvell 9128 supports RAID 0 and RAID 1. Refer to Chapter 5, "Configuring SATA Hard Drive(s)," for instructions on configuring a RAID array."

It is not 100% clear whether the drivers are needed to utilise the SATA3 speed of the connector???


Steeps said:
The P55 chipset generation of motherboards are too old to use NVMe/M2 to boot from using riser cards, Win10 can see them for storage but the Bios won't recognise them as bootable drives.

I've only got SATA2 ports on my ancient workstation all populated with SSD's. I lose out on some speed when transferring large files between drives but the smaller files, random files and general OS speed is much improved over spinning disks. I haven't noticed any difference in app loading times and general use between my home PC using SATA2 and my work PC using SATA3, but the step up to proper NVMe on my laptop is noticeable. SATA2 is still faster than the speed of the CF/SD cards I use over USB3.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the usage insight :)

I think I am going to get a couple of MX500 to replicate my previously mentioned OS and programs setup and for now stick with the HDD's for the data storage and backup/duplication on separate drives (i.e. some redundancy). In future (soon?) I may add a 2TB SSD as further data drive?
 
So I have an older machine and went with a riser card and a Samsung 960 m.2 nvme drive. As I got a small bonus at work so decided that then was the time to get one, about 3 months after that the price came down noticeably when the 970 came out. I am running a desktop with 4790k@4.6. Gigabyte Z97P-D3. NZXT Kraken X31. 32GB Team 2133MHz. RX 580. W10(64). EVGA 750w. As that motherboard is so old a raiser card was the only option. I was rocking a Crucial 2.5" SSD before and went with the Samsung as at the time it was getting the best reviews, plus it had its own migration software that came free with the drive.

I am getting around 1,700MB/sec both read and writes, so close to the stated writes but quite a bit down on the reads, but saying that on the SSD I was getting around 450MB/sec, There is a noticeable increase in speed in some things such as the temp monitor software loading for the kraken from 40 seconds down to around 10 seconds. Day to day it feels a little more snappy but cost of that I would say would not have been worth it for what I paid. But where it is more noticeable is in Lightroom (Classic) a folder loads quicker then even when it was running the SSD, when importing off a memory card it is still the same import time but the rendering up of the thumbnails is noticeably quicker. A strange one is that I have a very large pano that would never load properly even with the SSD, but with the nvme it loads fine and renders out quicker than the old one used to do (even if the older one were missing some of the frames at each end), strange but the change of drive was the only change I made at that time.

So in summary it is quicker in some things and only slightly quicker in other things. If I was to buy a new computer an nvme drive would be top of my list. For an older system requiring a riser card then for the £150 odd that a 500GB nvme costs a 1TB SSD seems a better buy.
 
Thanks for the insights Mark @Suomi

By way of an update I have ordered directly from Crucial (the prices were not vastly different to say Amazon) two MX500 models, a 250GB and 500GB

As for the cloning & copying, in the past I have used the free version of Macrium Reflect but on paper it does the same as Acronis................having said that Crucial offer a branded version of the free version of Acronis so for now I will likely install that (though its installer is real bloatware compared to Macrium :lol: ) I have planned the physical install in my Lian Li case to put there in the floppy disk cage....this has 3 spaces to take 3.5inch adaptor plates for the 2.5inch SSDs

PS having read some more about the SATA3 ports on the motherboard ~ the Marvell Controller is aimed at RAID and apparently not or never intended for discreet drives! And of the posts I found even the SATA3 speed was optimistic, with one user saying it was more like SATA2.5 (or words to that effect. As I said above, I was reassured by Gigabyte that the ports will run at SATA2 speeds without any intervention of drivers but as I have a couple of spare P55 controlled SATA2 ports I will start with them to make sure all is well once the cloning is done and maybe try the SATA3 ports in due course ;)

PPS as for the medium to longer term, I know the P55 is quite ancient in PC terms but the i5 Quad core CPU keeps going well so not yet time for a brand new build...............? If the use of the SSDs gives it a 'new life' that will be welcome :D
 
Steeps said:
The P55 chipset generation of motherboards are too old to use NVMe/M2 to boot from using riser cards, Win10 can see them for storage but the Bios won't recognise them as bootable drives.
Click to expand...
I thought that might be the case but wasn't certain enough to mention it.
 
If the primary controller is SATA2 then I'd use those ports, I remember years ago when that gen of motherboard was out one of my friends boasted he had SATA3 on a separate controller for his SSD (this is going back 10 years) but it wasn't very reliable. It's still a worthy upgrade going from spinners to SSD for daily use. My PC is the generation before built in 2009 but upgraded to the max with a hex core xeon processor and 24gb ram, still no plans to upgrade for a year at least.
 
Steeps said:
If the primary controller is SATA2 then I'd use those ports, I remember years ago when that gen of motherboard was out one of my friends boasted he had SATA3 on a separate controller for his SSD (this is going back 10 years) but it wasn't very reliable. It's still a worthy upgrade going from spinners to SSD for daily use. My PC is the generation before built in 2009 but upgraded to the max with a hex core xeon processor and 24gb ram, still no plans to upgrade for a year at least.
Click to expand...

Back then when I was spec'ing it the P55 board with the i5 quad core(as far as I can recall it was the only variant with 4cores) was the best bang per buck for me.

Has since had the GPU updated, ram replaced with Crucial Ballistix(had issues with the initial G-skill Ripjaws) , added HDDs(currently 4 in use).......two of which, including the OS one were legacy from the previous build, cloned & replaced with newer/larger capacity ones on a replace before failure approach.
 
Update

Well, order seems to have been sorted.......though the order is still showing as 'in process' I have had a UPS email advising me of the tracking number and anticipated delivery of tomorrow.

But slightly oddly the UPS email was too a different email address, though I one I have registered to the physical postal address....so makes some sense! Looking at where the label was generated it is Czechia and I thought for the UK all Crucial stuff came from Scotland ~ or at least that is where the PC RAM and the odd USB drive have come from over the years :)

Based on the UPS email I am expecting to see one from Crucial at the end of the day telling me it has been shipped ~ Covid19 not withstanding ;)

PS the sender of this (so far unconfirmed ~ but I am not expecting any other such UPS delivery) parcel is not Crucial but I can only surmise they are using a 3rd party distribution warehousing operator!!!
 
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An update

Finally, i finished the PC reconfiguring with both of new MX500 SSD's the only oddity I hit was that one of my Windows start programs didn't. To all intents it was OK but other than a bit of head scratching all it took was another "restart" and there it was launching as usual. This was my ESET Internet Security program :)

So, what has improved:-

Start from W10 Shutdown used to be:-
POST 10.5'
Loading OS 27'
Login Screen 1"15'
Fully ready 3"30'

Using the SSD's
POST 12.5'
Loading OS 31'
Login Screen 45'
Fully ready approx 55'

Also two programs that used to take their time to start & load
Lightroom
Before 1"16' After 50'
Photolab3
Before 55' after 30'

NB in both programs ~ once running they run more snappily in regard to image browsing and update zooming in on the images.

Even Word opens and quicker and the docs open quicker.

Overall ~ this has been welcome & worthwhile improvement to the way the the PC runs.

Oh, I mentioned the speedier boot from Shutdown ~ well even the boot via re-start is improved, though I did not time it, it seemed to only be marginally longer than the boot from shutdown and it used to take an age!!!!

In regard to temperatures of the SSD's
The 250GB with the OS on maxed out at 40 degrees C
The 500GB with the programs on maxed out at 50 degrees C
Both appear to 'idle' at 35 degrees C, not sure what maxed them out but this was early after the start up...........................I have yet to try a stress test!

PS I found the free Acronis cloning software useless because it did not recognise & honour that the HDD I wished to clone had two partitions that I wished to clone to two separate drives..............so I used the most current v7 of Macrium Reflect and it did a champion job :)

PPS Only time will tell how it affects the photo editing etc but AFAIK with 'Trim' set in W10 by default to run every week and with Crucial's "Active Garbage Collection" function the system should look after itself?!
 
@Steeps @Snapsh0t @Suomi

Hi guys, can I please ask for your help with this question :)

I have just spotted a cloning oddity ~ help please.

In the past when I have cloned a smaller HDD onto a larger HDD Macrium just took the whole of the new HDD as a single partition (whole drive). This was AFAIK a default action!

However, I have just spotted using that in Windows Explorer the drive is not reporting as the 500 GB it should be in in Disk Management I see 206 GB as an unallocated 'partition' :(

Therefore, what is the most simple practical way to removed the unallocated partition to create the single 'drive'????

PS I can see the *extend volume" in the Disk Management for that SSD but and no idea how I missed seeing it but for the 250 GB C drive there is 26.89 GB unallocated but for the C drive the "extend volume is greyed out???

PPS as noted above for whatever reason Macrium either by default or me missing a setting did not clone the smaller to the larger drive..............as far as I can tell it (only?) allocated the same amount of space as the original source drive partitions!


TIA for the insight & advice as appropriate :)
 
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Ah well!

I learn something new every day............................having read up about the Disk Management "Extend Volume" that seemed like a logical step. However, rather than make one contiguous drive volume it has now made two volumes that W10 sees a single dynamic drive and it would appear that due it being two volumes named E drive the W10 optimisation no longer functions for that drive. According to Crucial this is not a significant issue as they say this:-

"Trim and Active Garbage Collection are useful tools that can benefit the speed, function, and longevity of your SSD. But if your operating system doesn't support Trim, it's not a disaster. All Crucial SSDs are designed and tested assuming that they will be used without Trim."

I have bolded & underlined it.

But further to my post above ~ is there an appropriate way to make theses two volumes into a single volume.................and what about that odd 26 GB on the C dive SSD ???
 
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I've only seen that happen when the unused space wasn't unallocated. When it's been truly unallocated Disk Management has always created a single simple volume.
The easiest way to deal with it is to copy the data to an external drive, nuke both the partitions on the SSD, create a new single partition then copy the data back.

For the C drive, extend is probably locked as it's the boot partition. Can you boot from the original drive you cloned from as this should unlock the extend option?

Apologies for not responding sooner but the @ function didn't notify me.
 
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Snapsh0t said:
I've only seen that happen when the unused space wasn't unallocated. When it's been truly unallocated Disk Management has always created a single simple volume.
The easiest way to deal with it is to copy the data to an external drive, nuke both the partitions on the SSD, create a new single partition then copy the data back.

For the C drive, extend is probably locked as it's the boot partition. Can you boot from the original drive you cloned from as this should unlock the extend option?

Apologies for not responding sooner but the @ function didn't notify me.
Click to expand...

Hi Jonathan,

Thanks the reply

I did more reading up on the matter and did end up doing what you say above:-
  1. Because I had Macrium installed on the E drive (the one in question)
    I uninstalled it and re-installed it on the C drive in readiness for step 2 below.

  2. I made another Image of the E drive.
    Then deleted the extended volume...............a bit to my surprise it also deleted the other volume containing the programs!

  3. This gave me the whole drive as 'unallocated space'
    I created a new Volume.

  4. And copied the previously created Image back to that Drive
Equals all well and good :)

The mystery of the unallocated space on the C drive is still a bit of a head scratcher. I do have the original and see what you are getting at but for now as my C Drive has 105GB of free space it can 'use' I may just leave it, as will be a fair bit of to'ing & fro'ing and approx 3 hours of cloning and/or image making with possibly using a recovery Macrium CD as well......not sure I want to spend the time doing it???

PS On a related note ~ having now used all the available SATA ports and fully latching the HDD cage in, I noticed have much pressure the wiring/wires & connectors were under as the cage had to be pushed firmly in against the cabling :(

So I have ordered some slimline SATA connectors that will mitigate for the strain being created now. My system is old and do not want that physical pressure on the connectors & motherboard to give me a problem later on!

PPS As far as can tell, as mentioned above, the way the cloning worked I appear to have missed a setting step that was a default before whereby it should have cloned the chosen partition and treated the target drive as a single space.

What appeared to have happened on the C drive the odd smaller space is the rump of (available) space left over because it could not, even though the E partition was not selected for cloning, Macrium 'remembered' it??? And likewise the E partition clone ;)

When I copied the Image as in step 4 above there was a partition control option and had defaulted to the 'use maximum space' setting :)
 
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Yes, I can quite believe the problems were down to the cloning process. In hindsight, the correct way could have been to clone the original drive to the new OS drive then, before it was used, delete the data partition and extend the OS partition to fill the drive. Finally, a simple copy, rather than a clone, of the data partition from the original drive to the new data drive.

I use nothing but Akasa slimline cables in my PCs.
 
Ooh, they look nice. I didn't know about those. Akasa's advantage is that they make a 150mm cable as well as 300 & 500 and that can save a lot of clutter.
 
Snapsh0t said:
Ooh, they look nice. I didn't know about those. Akasa's advantage is that they make a 150mm cable as well as 300 & 500 and that can save a lot of clutter.
Click to expand...

I can see where a shorter cable makes more sense.

I did spot the Akasa ones but at the time could not readily identify or compare how slim compared to standard........whereas the Silverstone ones stood out especially with the example usage/positioning pictures.
 
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