Hierarchy of drive interfaces

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I can't remember the last time I went looking into storage technology. I think all my SSD drives are SATA port, which speed i'm not even sure, probably SATA II ? 3Gbps? I look at the drives out today and I'm confused as which interface is the fastest and offers the best. I'd imagine PCIe 3.0 is but I see M.2, NVE, mSATA, etc etc and I don't know how many more there are besides SATA II. What interface will be the next best/fastest interface for a consumer desktop machine?


Thanks!

 

[Essence_of_War]

The NVMe specification is sort of the next level of crazy fast devices, and they will be addressed either through a high-bandwidth interconnect like the M.2 form factor, or a pcie 3.0 x4/x8 slot or something like it.

For the time being, SATA3 (6 Gbps) w/ AHCI is plenty fast. Especially in applications that are not long sequential io, and aren't very deeply queued random io.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

The NVMe specification is sort of the next level of crazy fast devices, and they will be addressed either through a high-bandwidth interconnect like the M.2 form factor, or a pcie 3.0 x4/x8 slot or something like it.

For the time being, SATA3 (6 Gbps) w/ AHCI is plenty fast. Especially in applications that are not long sequential io, and aren't very deeply queued random io.

Can it be somehow used with an old X58 setup?

 

[Elixer]

They do make PCIe cards that have M.2, as was mentioned, and that should work on a X58, though, unsure about booting from it.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

They do make PCIe cards that have M.2, as was mentioned, and that should work on a X58, though, unsure about booting from it.

What is M.2? I've seen it around, looked it up but it makes no sense to me.

EDIT: just checking youtube videos of it right now. I'm sure my X58 boards don't have that slot

 

[Deders]

You don't need to worry about M.2 at the moment. For the most part the speed improvement on just having a good SSD, even with Sata 2 will make much much more of a difference than the change to Sata 3 or NVMe.

Best to look for reliability and capacity, that way more of your programs will benefit.

 

[Coup27]

X58 long pre dates M.2 The only way you could use M.2 is with a PCI Express adapter card. Then there's still the question marks over compatibility, booting etc..

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I wonder if the upcoming Intel 3D Xpoint drives will work in this system. What's the story with them?

 

[Coup27]

3D Xpoint is a non-volatile memory technology, like NAND, but different/better. The type of non-volatile memory technology used on an SSD is not your problem. Your problem is your platform is essentially old now and lacks the modern interfaces used today. Modern SSD's primarily use either SATA 6Gbps with AHCI or PCI Express with NVMe or M.2 with NVMe. Future 3D Xpoint SSD's will likely use these interfaces. The best you can do with X58 is SATA 3Gbps with AHCI.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I've heard that I basically need a UEFI bios to make it work, right?

 

[Coup27]

To make what work?

 

[MongGrel]

You're running SATA 2 I'm sure atm. Still do on my hardware HDD array, but have a separate PCIe card at SATA 3 running my SSD's with the X5680.

Probably the fastest you would even bother with on a X58, as has been mentioned.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

To make what work?

A UEFI bios is needed to make NVMe work, right? At least that's what I heard, and I would assume correct.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

You're running SATA 2 I'm sure atm. Still do on my hardware HDD array, but have a separate PCIe card at SATA 3 running my SSD's with the X5680.

Probably the fastest you would even bother with on a X58, as has been mentioned.

Yup, thanks

 

[Coup27]

I think UEFI is only needed for it to be bootable, although don't quote me.

You can get NVMe working on 6 series chipsets by modding the BIOS but X58 was a good few years before 6 series so extremely doubt it's possible.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

I think UEFI is only needed for it to be bootable, although don't quote me.

You can get NVMe working on 6 series chipsets by modding the BIOS but X58 was a good few years before 6 series so extremely doubt it's possible.

Yeah I just read some guy used one as a data/storage drive.

I think this issue will finally be the compelling reason to make me upgrade, when 3D Xpoint comes out.