M.2 SDD

awsum140

awsum140

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Nov 14, 2017
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I'm being pulled, kicking and screaming all the way, to migrate from Win7/64 to Win10/64 on my BI machine. As part of that process I plan on a new SSD drive to replace the current platter drive. I'm looking at the Samsung EVO 970 Plus. The motherboard supports M.2 drives so that isn't a problem. The 970 Plus is extremely fast from what my research has found and is rated at 6 TB of writes so it should last a while.

Anyone have experience installing/using M.2 drives in a BI installation?
 
The five bucks difference isn't really very significant. I'm wondering how BI performs on an M.2 drive.
 
I'd expect going from conventional HDD to a M.2 would provide at least the same or better improvements to boot time, et al., as going from HDD to SATA-type SSD.

I run my BI machine on a Samsung 950 EVO SATA-type SSD for the program, database, etc., but mass storage is still conventional (Purple) HDDs. I used the SSD mainly because that's the way the computer was equipped in its previous life; before I wiped it and did clean install of W10 and BI. The only stuff on that computer is W10, BI, TeamViewer, and Dahua ConfigTool.

If your BI machine is dedicated just to BI as is mine, I'd opine the SSD and or M.2 improvements in boot time, etc., are of little material benefit in the big picture.
 
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awsum140 said:
The five bucks difference isn't really very significant. I'm wondering how BI performs on an M.2 drive.
Click to expand...

Works very well, I installed that exact M.2 in my new BI machine. Boot and reboot time is less than 5-6 seconds. the only issue I have with it is the Samsung Magic program won't recognize it. But, no issues otherwise. Been running a couple of months. I did it to free up a SATA port for another spinner.
 
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looney2ns said:
I did it to free up a SATA port for another spinner.
Click to expand...

That is honestly the only reason anyone should pay extra for the M.2 form factor in a BI box! The additional speed of the faster interface is of no importance.
 
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Thanks for the comments, guys.

My thought is to maintain the current number of SATA connections for the inevitable, future, expansion that will happen. I'm cheap, but the price difference from a SATA to an M.2 isn't all that big in the grand scheme of things.
 
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awsum140 said:
kicking and screaming all the way, to migrate from Win7/64 to Win10/64 on my BI machine
Click to expand...

Now that ClassicShell.net has ridden into the sunset, StartIsBack.com makes the journey much less egregious.
 
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Thanqs for that, Q. It still doesn't fix being serviced though. Although updates can be disabled fairly easily.
 
Walrus said:
The cheaper M.2 SSDs are still SATA, and use up/disable SATA port 1. You need a PCIe M.2 to free up the SATA port. The Evo Plus is PCIe (as is the ADATA I mentioned).
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Came here to say the same thing but I also think even if you get an M.2 PCIe it is still Motherboard dependent. I will be putting a M.2 in mine only to free up a SATA power plug and 1 less drive bay spot.
 
M.2 works fine and since you have M.2 you may as well use it but as others have said check to see if your M.2 is a SATA only or PCIe port. If PCIe then definitely get the PCIe as it's a lot faster than SATA.
 
The mobo supports either SATA or PCIE, automagically for the M.2 "slot", and the M.2 is a PCIE. Now, if I can only find the time to install the damn thing!
 
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To put this to bed...

I finally found enough "spare" time, IE a rainy, windy, day, to get Windoohs 10 installed on the M.2 drive. I did a clean install of Win7 and activated that first, then ran setup from the Windoohs 10 boot disk I created. Other than the updates slowing things down, it went fairly quickly. I had deactivated BI from the original boot drive and did a fresh install of BI on the M.2. Rather than import the registry entries, I re-did the basic layout and logins then imported each camera. Everything came right back up and is running with no problems. The next step is some basic tools, ONVIF, port scanner, update helper, BI tools, and Pale Moon to name a few, as well as tuning Windoohs 10 for no updates. Why did MicroSoft have to re-invent the wheel for managing a Windoohs OS? What a PITA!

I've had SSD boot drives in this machine previously, SATA, but the M.2 seems even faster. Maybe that's an illusion but once the BIOS loads it's under 30 seconds to Windoohs 10. Plus, being able to run BI as a service has dropped the CPU utilization by about 10%.
 
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