I kind of agree with this article! (Not a question)

Scannerman said:

Speed isn't everthang... Sometimes it's the only thing. Other times slow and steady works just fine. I'm thinking that's why mechanical hard drives still sell.

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Mechanical hard drives still exist because they offer lots of capacity for lower prices. For my Macrium backups, there is no practical advantage for me to have more speed reading or writing to my external mechanical hard disk drive....but there is a huge advantage of me having lots of capacity. It allows me to store many, many backups.

But on my Mac's, where I use Time Machine for backups, having these on an SSD has provided significant improvements. It takes quite a long time on a standard mechanical drive for the backup to scan the external to see what is different between the backup and the running machine. Moving to an external SSD here was like night and day.

Scannerman said:

So when it comes to speed standard SATA drives are just that. SATA has speed limitations, but it can still get you to where you're going in a reasonable amount of time with a standard SSD.

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Or in practically the same amount of time. Like we have said with games, for many I play there is pretty much an indiscernable difference in time between my 2TB NVMe (which was $450 new), and my 2TB SanDisk SSD ($160 when new). I'm not really benefiting from spending way more money on the NVMe's here as they don't improve my performance in any way.

Scannerman said:

Now in situations where you need to move a whole lot of data quickly you'll want to go with NVMe but it's gonna cost you some bandwidth so you're going to want a CPU that can deliver.

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This is true. In my case, this is something that I rarely do however. The biggest things I copy around are virtual machine hard drive files. I do back up some from time to time when testing something. It's nice on my NVMe drives. But it's not like I sit around doing this for hours each day.

Scannerman said:

RAID 0 on NVMe is crazy fast but then RAID 0 also has special problems of its own. Personally, I wouldn't run an operating system on it.

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I've never had a need to get faster than a single NVMe can go. Dealing with RAID is just an extra complexity that I don't care to have either.

Scannerman said:

Dead on.

Did you see Linus' video where he puts a bunch of gamers on identical rigs using each using either regular M.2, SATA, or NVMe? They seriously could not tell the difference! They often confused the SATA for the NVMe because they said it gave them a smoother game. It was hilarious. Now to be fair, if he had them do large file transfers NVMe would win hands down every time. So it really depends on what you're using your system for. Then there are those who like to boast about their crazy fast RAM speeds and I ask them what their CAS is and omgg some of this stuff is like in the high 20's! Nothing to write home about. Now if you can do 3600 @ a CAS of 14-14-14 you got me beat. (But just barely).

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Yeah, like i said above, I'll put my games on an SSD that costs 1/3 the price and for gaming, provides me the same performance. This frees up space on my NVMe for my virtual machines, where i see the most benefit of the increased speeds. It's the same thing for things like downloads, ISO files, MP3's, etc.....to me these don't need super fast storage subsystems. Not wanting to pay the $$/GB ratio for long term storage of these kinds of things.

MisterEd said:

However, many laptops are hard to open up

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I have been taking apart notebooks since 2008 and wish I had this little tool kit
"iFixit". I have had it since about three years now and can't say enough about how
useful this is. On average, to open the back of a notebook, if there are no wires in
way, takes about 3 to 5 minutes. On the newer ones like Asus , MSI , Razer all come
apart fairly easily as the back comes off in one section unlike the older ones the likes
of HP. A good magnetic screw driver, solid tab and a pair of strong tweeters is about
all that's needed. When I take one apart, I like to make a paper template of where the
screws are located and insert the screws in the paper template for an easy re-assembly.




As for the USB standards well, they can be a bit frustrating at times but, you just
have to look at the specs and it should make it clear enough.
You also forgot to include the Thunderbolt 3 / 4 which should give you about 40GB/s.

Flashorn said:

I have been taking apart notebooks since 2008 and wish I had this little tool kit
"iFixit". I have had it since about three years now and can't say enough about how
useful this is. On average, to open the back of a notebook, if there are no wires in
way, takes about 3 to 5 minutes. On the newer ones like Asus , MSI , Razer all come
apart fairly easily as the back comes off in one section unlike the older ones the likes
of HP. A good magnetic screw driver, solid tab and a pair of strong tweeters is about
all that's needed. When I take one apart, I like to make a paper template of where the
screws are located and insert the screws in the paper template for an easy re-assembly.

iFixit Essential Electronics Toolkit

Our gateway kit to electronics repair, perfectly sized and priced for essential electronics repair.

www.ifixit.com

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0964G2Y7S/ref=emc_b_5_t?th=1

As for the USB standards well, they can be a bit frustrating at times but, you just
have to look at the specs and it should make it clear enough.
You also forgot to include the Thunderbolt 3 / 4 which should give you about 40GB/s.

Click to expand...

As I stated earlier, my eyes aren't what they used to be. (Even back then they weren't that great.) Opening laptops is such a bother. I only keep them for travel and I really don't do a whole lot of travelling these days because of health issues. I didn't forget to include Thunderbolt because the focus was on standard USB. Thunderbolt is in its own category. I have Thunderbolt 3 and rarely ever use it. In fact, I'm a bit sorry I got it because the drive enclosures to connect to it in order to enjoy that 40GB/s are so costly. Another thing I'm unimpressed with is all the hoopla about USB4 that was supposed to be out ages ago for regular PCs. Only now are they coming out with select system boards that are USB4 ready and I have to ask myself, do I really need it? No, not really. NVMe is fast enough for my needs. I've given up on waiting for that elusive USB4 PCIe adapter card. I'd rather max out my PCIe with another LSI card and snag myself 8 more SATA ports. A project in the making!

The card just made it into Canada today! I feel like a kid anticipating his birthday present.

What model lsi controller is it?

It's a 9272 pre-flashed to "IT" mode. Supposedly an "open box" that was simply flashed and tested.
I hope it works with my 9207 IR card okay.

I am curious, pparks1 person: You stated in one of your posts that you don't do RAID at home and I respect your choice. I run various arrays. Have you considered the advantages of hard RAID 10? I've been using it for over a decade now and it never fails on me. I've had a drive or two die on me simply because I wore them out, but that's to be expected. All I do is slap in another drive and it rewrites itself. It's thrilling to watch it in action. Even Windows couldn't kill my backup for my Win 7 when it over wrote all my other backups because I used Windows Recovery tools that were only supposed to write over drives C and D. My LSI card represented drives A and B, both in RAID 10. Had I backed up my Win 8.1 to my RAID 10 I probably would have never experienced this nightmare. As it stands I have a whole lot of 1's & 0's to scrape off those drives that windows overwrote, hence the reason for needing more ports. I hate having to recover from my errm "recovery" but I have little choice if I want to get that data back. (Well, some of it anyway.)

Scannerman said:

I feel like a kid anticipating his birthday present

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That's an expensive BDay gift . I guess you'll be using this with the rack that you
posted a few posts ago?
I've never worked with one of those or any hardware like this. How does it control
those HDDs. I only used the software RAID 0 and that was from 2012 which worked
but, not stable.

It says L3-25410-10D on the label. It looks similar to one I saw on Ebay.

LSI Logic L3-25410-11B MegaRAID 9261-8i 8-Port PCIe SATA/SAS Controller

Flashorn said:

That's an expensive BDay gift . I guess you'll be using this with the rack that you
posted a few posts ago?
I've never worked with one of those or any hardware like this. How does it control
those HDDs. I only used the software RAID 0 and that was from 2012 which worked
but, not stable.

Click to expand...

Software RAID is not as reliable as hard RAID but I still use it in some situations. If you use RAID 0 at all (doesn't matter if it's on a card or just soft) you need to follow some simple rules: #1 Always have a backup. #2 Build with flawless drives. #3 Keep a drive image on hand. #4 Expect it to fail. RAID 0 is likely one of the most volatile arrays going and when it's gone baby, it's gone! Now having said that, my wife is an avid gamer. Her RAID 0 on her Haswell build has been running steady without dying for 8 years now on Windows 8.1. Even her IRST software is still working. She's using two Kingston 240 GB SSDs and she's quite pleased with it. So sometimes one just flukes out and my wife gets to call me a liar. Even so. There have been times she needed me to do a system restore or recovery on that array, but it's still the same old installation with the same old games so there it is. Cute little Icy Dock too. Used to be mine but, you know how it is... Gotta keep the girls happy.

What I posted wasn't a "rack" per se. It was just an internal enclosure that I hope to run non-raided CMR klunk drives in. I have a 12 TB, a 10 TB, and two 4 TB drives that I want to use for copying rescued files to. The card was flashed to "IT" mode so that the OS will see the attached drives as singular and the controller for RAID is by-passed. At least in theory this is how it works. My RAID arrays are in RAID cages and the drives actually plug into bridges at the back of the enclosures. Two of these are in RAID 10. Another two are in RAID 1 (they're data drives so I mirror the data for in the event one drive fails). The fifth array is RAID 0 and I just mess around with that now because RAID 0 on my work station is strictly for fun. If it dies, it dies. I really don't care since Windows destroyed the data on it anyway. Yes, it was a soft RAID array. So I no longer have Win 8.1 on this machine because Windows destroyed it. I used the activation key to certify my Windows 11 which has it's own issues but that's running on NVMe.

Oh, how does it control those HDDs? Well, I guess technically it's an HBA card so it just passes the data through to the OS and lets the OS sort it out. If it were an IR card then it would use its own controller and that's a whole different deal. You have to configure your RAID arrays in a GUI in IR mode, sort of like a secondary BIOS shell, before they show up in device manager in Windows. It's really simple. There are videos on how to do this on YouTube. MegaRaid is sooo easy but the shell is butt oglee.

I love options. That's why I bought this case. That's why I bought this hybrid Work Station/Server type EATX board. I can even put U.2 on it. (Not that I ever would.) Sadly, there's one thing it can't do... It can't run TPM2. So that really sucks.

MisterEd said:

It says L3-25410-10D on the label. It looks similar to one I saw on Ebay.

LSI Logic L3-25410-11B MegaRAID 9261-8i 8-Port PCIe SATA/SAS Controller

Click to expand...

Yeah it is a bit of an oddball because it was made for NEC. Had a heckuva time trying to get the specs on this card. Plus it was flashed to a 9207 IT mode which I'm hoping will help as I'm using a 9207 IR card on this system as well. Anyway, type in NEC 9272 in your browser and you'll see they all look the same. I don't care what model it is as long as it works.

I want to know
Have you ever seen the RAID?
I want to know
Have you ever seen the RAID
Comin' down on a sunny day?

Kills Windows Screw You Updates like purple haze... ♪♫

lol The good ole daze.

Scannerman said:

Yeah it is a bit of an oddball because it was made for NEC. Had a heckuva time trying to get the specs on this card. Plus it was flashed to a 9207 IT mode which I'm hoping will help as I'm using a 9207 IR card on this system as well. Anyway, type in NEC 9272 in your browser and you'll see they all look the same. I don't care what model it is as long as it works.

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Okay, maybe I do care... I wouldn't want this in my PC even if it worked.

Try again. I chose a different link.

Scannerman said:

Try again. I chose a different link.

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I kind of liked seeing all the different "dogs of Amazon".
But the link works now.

Yeah, they have good taste in dogs. That card is so oglee I'd be embarrassed to have it in my case. Cable management would be a nightmare.

hdmi said:

https://www.amazon.com/Extension-Cable-Extender-PCIe3-0-Speed/dp/B089YPXMNQ

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Mercy sakes! It looks like something the school principle used on my hands when I was a wee lad.

M.2 extender M to F (long)

I think instead of PCBs they should do it with heat sinks.


I couldn't find one, but what I'd like to see is...
One end just plugs into the motherboard M.2 connector (right angle), and the other end (say 20" away), is a heat sink that takes the M.2 drive.

They should never have required mounting M.2 drives on the motherboard.
In fact... the M.2 connectors should be over by the SATA connectors.
Then you'd have all your SATA and M.2 cables in one bundle.

Even better... they should just have made something like... SATA 9, and skipped M.2 altogether.

I mean... just what every motherboard needs... another HOT component. :/



Or... if they absolutely insist on having the ON the motherboard, mount them at the bottom, right above the front panel case connectors, on something like this...
Nowhere near the CPU, GPU, RAM or chipset.
Maybe even make the mother boards another 1.25" tall.

Long Dong Silver would be jealous.