Thoughts on Integral NVMe?

[ftahir192]

On 3/26/2020 at 1:37 PM, NewMaxx said:

The tool is ideally used before you partition the drive and requires a temporary driver - this driver is for the drive's storage controller and not the drive itself, check my translated readme, but also only use the driver for identification and uninstall it after. 

The card is coming tomorrow so hopefully I can build it and do some tests soon.

 

In hindsight now, I probably should have got a 2tb ssd but can always buy another NVMe drive down the line (RDR2 for example is 150GB!!!). Do you know if these types of cards have any issue of the drive is say, 90% full? What's a good capacity to keep it at?

[NewMaxx]

Ideally you would leave at least 10% free, yes, although it's not absolutely necessary.

[ftahir192]

On 4/1/2020 at 1:11 PM, NewMaxx said:

Ideally you would leave at least 10% free, yes, although it's not absolutely necessary.

Just got this and looks like it's using a layout different to the one pictured in sellers website. I've attached pictures. Unable to run the tool yet as the GPU hasn't come for this pc and no onboard graphics..

 

Not sure if I should return or just roll with it.

 

 

[NewMaxx]

Looks like the original/old version (which has full DRAM). Which is good - looks okay to me.

[ftahir192]

54 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

Looks like the original/old version (which has full DRAM). Which is good - looks okay to me.

Oh, I read somewhere that the new layout is double-sided. That's good to hear!

[NewMaxx]

Yes, the new version is usually single-sided with four NAND packages on top.

 

I can see H5AN4G8G (DDR4) for DRAM on the back (and another covered one on the front) which is 4Gb  = 512MB, x2 = 1GB, the proper amount. Can also make out "G55AIV" at the end of the flash which is BiCS3/64L as used in the original drives. I'd call that a win. You can check the firmware revision with CrystalDiskInfo.

[ftahir192]

1 hour ago, NewMaxx said:

Yes, the new version is usually single-sided with four NAND packages on top.

 

I can see H5AN4G8G (DDR4) for DRAM on the back (and another covered one on the front) which is 4Gb  = 512MB, x2 = 1GB, the proper amount. Can also make out "G55AIV" at the end of the flash which is BiCS3/64L as used in the original drives. I'd call that a win. You can check the firmware revision with CrystalDiskInfo.

https://gyazo.com/8af3404ae353762cef58193ef8f311c2

 

Looks like it's not quite the latest. Is it worth updating to 12.3? I assume I'd lose my data

[NewMaxx]

12.2 is fine, I think there's actually newer revisions than that (several more actually - I believe 2x.x for the new layout). I believe updating is usually non-destructive on these but you can't assume. I wouldn't worry about firmware unless you have issues though, I never update my drives to be honest.

[ftahir192]

23 minutes ago, NewMaxx said:

12.2 is fine, I think there's actually newer revisions than that (several more actually - I believe 2x.x for the new layout). I believe updating is usually non-destructive on these but you can't assume. I wouldn't worry about firmware unless you have issues though, I never update my drives to be honest.

Neither on any of my old ssd's. Why fix something that's not broken