Looking at getting an SSD

[Biowarejak]

Hey everyone! Like the title says, I'm looking at getting an SSD. I haven't had one before so I'm curious if it's worth the premium just to go straight to an M.2 drive in an S4 Mini. What do y'all think?

PS:
I flirted with the idea of using optane as a cache for a couple of 2.5in 5400 rpm drives I already own and decided pure SSD was better.

 

[Phuncz]

An M.2 NVMe PCie 3.0 x4 SSD is the bee's knees for SFF storage: fast, tiny, no cables. The only quibble would be that Samsung might be imminent (think Q1 2018) to launch the next gen 980-series, which is to be expected to maintain their lead in M.2 NVMe storage.

 

[VegetableStu]

If you're going for SATA M.2 you could get a simple m.2 to USB adapter to troubleshoot or repurpose next time. only downside is SATA 6G speeds.

NVMe M.2 on the other hand is a bit tricky. there aren't many simple (USB) adapters (they have to be thunderbolt based). Cloning into an NVMe stick the easy way would be to have the source and target disks in the same PC running a cloning program while on an OS, which means if you need to clone your OS disk you most likely need another PC or a separate SATA disk duplicate as a tide-over

 

[Biowarejak]

An M.2 NVMe PCie 3.0 x4 SSD is the bee's knees for SFF storage: fast, tiny, no cables. The only quibble would be that Samsung might be imminent (think Q1 2018) to launch the next gen 980-series, which is to be expected to maintain their lead in M.2 NVMe storage.

Might be well-worth waiting then. Though, a few quarters after that the whole RAM/NAND shortage might see some measure of relief. All the same I really do prefer the M.2 form factor.

f you're going for SATA M.2 you could get a simple m.2 to USB adapter to troubleshoot or repurpose next time. only downside is SATA 6G speeds.

NVMe M.2 on the other hand is a bit tricky. there aren't many simple (USB) adapters (they have to be thunderbolt based). Cloning into an NVMe stick the easy way would be to have the source and target disks in the same PC running a cloning program while on an OS, which means if you need to clone your OS disk you most likely need another PC or a separate SATA disk duplicate as a tide-over

Yeah that was another thing, moving everything over. Thank you for the solid advice there. I was thinking I'd cut back on my storage space with the upgrade, so I was planning on just installing the applications I missed/needed and transferring over the relevant files as necessary. I do at least have multiple HDDs for cloning my main drive into an NVMe at a later point, though.

 

[robbee]

Having recently moved up from a SATA ssd to a NVME ssd, there's not much noticeable gain between the two. Sure, the benchmarks will be very much faster, but launching your OS or a program will not be that different. So if price is an issue, might still consider SATA (if your mobo supports it).

The difference between a hdd and ssd though, you're in for a suprise...

 

[VegetableStu]

I haven't tried comparing with mass photo processors (Lightroom, Canon DPP, etc) because I don't have an NVMe drive to begin with, but if I separate out the source photos and target export disk (i.e. source on one SSD, save to another SSD) (SATA btw) apparently it's quick enough to notice the difference (rather than processing on the same SSD)

 

[jtd871]

@Biowarejak, if you don't mind the cabling, I'm loving my 500GB SATA Samsung 850 EVOs. Made a night and day difference in my family's laptop (HP with mobile i5-4???) ditching the spinner. It made Win10 on that thing usable and more. I use one in my rig as my primary and only drive, too.

 

[Biowarejak]

Was thinking about those, actually Not entirely certain which direction I'll go yet, should be more clear come next semester.

 

[Aichon]

We swapped my wife's 500GB HDD out from her 2011 MacBook Pro for a 500GB SSD and it made a world of difference, easily extending the life of that laptop by another few years. You won't regret going SSD. It's easily the best bang for the buck upgrade you can make in computing right now.

And if I were building a computer right now, I'd go M.2 in a heartbeat, particularly for SFF, if for no other reason than to save space, cabling, and complexity. The price difference isn't too bad and the benefits are—at least to me—well worth it. As for NVMe, while I'd love to go with it, the price different is tremendous while the performance benefit is marginal for the vast majority of people. If you have a specific use case where it would make a difference, give it due consideration, but otherwise I'd think you'd be well-served by a SATA SSD, whether M.2 or not.

As for Optane, it comes at a steep premium as well. I briefly toyed with the idea of using it as a cache sitting in front of a RAID, but it wouldn't provide much benefit to me with the way I was planning to use it (media server storage). Again, if you have a specific use case that would benefit from it, give it some serious consideration, but most people aren't particularly well-served by it just yet, though within a few years I hope that will change.

 

[Biowarejak]

We swapped my wife's 500GB HDD out from her 2011 MacBook Pro for a 500GB SSD and it made a world of difference, easily extending the life of that laptop by another few years. You won't regret going SSD. It's easily the best bang for the buck upgrade you can make in computing right now.

And if I were building a computer right now, I'd go M.2 in a heartbeat, particularly for SFF, if for no other reason than to save space, cabling, and complexity. The price difference isn't too bad and the benefits are—at least to me—well worth it. As for NVMe, while I'd love to go with it, the price different is tremendous while the performance benefit is marginal for the vast majority of people. If you have a specific use case where it would make a difference, give it due consideration, but otherwise I'd think you'd be well-served by a SATA SSD, whether M.2 or not.

As for Optane, it comes at a steep premium as well. I briefly toyed with the idea of using it as a cache sitting in front of a RAID, but it wouldn't provide much benefit to me with the way I was planning to use it (media server storage). Again, if you have a specific use case that would benefit from it, give it some serious consideration, but most people aren't particularly well-served by it just yet, though within a few years I hope that will change.

I mean I'm just doing CAD and gaming, I don't think the performance difference between SATA and NVMe would make that much of a difference to me If I can find a comparable set of M.2 and 2.5in drives in both capacity and cost then I will likely go with the M.2 flavor for the compactness, plus it saves me from the additional expense of more cable sleeving/pins/etc.

 

[Soul_Est]

I definitely would recommend at least a SATA SSD. I started with a 60 GB Mushkin Chronos Deluxe in my ThinkPad X200s back in 2013. Even from the 7200 RPM HDD that I had in the machine at the time, there was a huge difference in responsiveness and performance. Go for it when you can.

 

[Kooki]

I've had a 60Gb SSD cache in the past, using Intel Smart Response and I didn't have a very good experience.

Booting from shutdown was relatively fast, by when restarting the system it felt as sluggish as no cache were installed. I also felt almost no improvement on overall usage for everyday use. But after switching the 60Gb as my main drive I did feel a great improvement on the response of the system.

Sure the optane cache is a newer tech, but I wouldn't recommend SSD caching for anyone.

 

[Choidebu]

Nicely said. No need to do optane.

Get the most reasonably priced nvme out there, anything better than intel 600p.
'team' or 'team force' brand nvme ssds are quite good value for their performance, if they're available in your country. Corsair MX300 is overpriced, samsung 960 evo is the current king of the crop, 960 pro is overkill. Adata, if you can find it, also good value for money.

Be prepare to be amazed by the performance! It's over 9000!!!

For people with m2 sata ssd, no urgent need to upgrade straight away. Nvme starts to make sense if your workflow includes moving/copying large files, e.g video/audio editing, rendering etc

 

[Biowarejak]

Seeing as I have some old hardware lying around, I think I'm going to build a NAS out of that for remote storage (eventually going into either a Radian or my S4, but for now using my not-sff case) and then get a lower capacity SSD. I save some money that way and can also increase my RAM

 

[Josh | NFC]

Oh man, you are in for a real treat if you haven't had an SSD before...

I could live with internal graphics but could not deal without an SSD.

 

[Biowarejak]

Haha oh man, that's getting me excited

 

[Soul_Est]

Haha oh man, that's getting me excited

Allow me to get you even more excited. @Soul_Est <- SSD only since 2013.

 

[Biowarejak]

Allow me to get you even more excited. @Soul_Est <- SSD only since 2013.

Hurray!

Ordered the Crucial MX300 525gb and a 16gb kit of G.Skill Trident Z RGB Memory Thanks for all the help guys! Decided the NVMe tax was too much for me, but wasn't opposed to using the savings.

 

[Soul_Est]

Hurray!

Ordered the Crucial MX300 525gb and a 16gb kit of G.Skill Trident Z RGB Memory Thanks for all the help guys! Decided the NVMe tax was too much for me, but wasn't opposed to using the savings.

Dang. Nice. Tempted to go for that RAM but it costs as much as the video card I want. NOPE!

 

[Biowarejak]

Dang. Nice. Tempted to go for that RAM but it costs as much as the video card I want. NOPE!

Yeah I'm putting off a GPU upgrade until Radian is ready Wanted to up my memory capacity and improve aesthetics though.