M.2 SSD for Upgrading a Laptop

[TechTippee]

Hello TechTippers,

 

I'm looking to breathe some new life into my old laptop. And what better way than to get the OS off the hard drive? It has an open m.2 2280 slot, so that's the type of drive I shall be using.

 

My question is as follows: Is it worth going NVME? If so/if not, should I be concerned about cache? I'm finding conflicting information on this on the web/these forums, so any help would would be appreciated.

[Haraikomono]

50 minutes ago, TechTippee said:

Hello TechTippers,

 

I'm looking to breathe some new life into my old laptop. And what better way than to get the OS of the hard drive? It has an open m.2 2280 slot, so that's the type of drive I shall be using.

 

My question is as follows: Is it worth going NVME? If so/if not, should I be concerned about cache? I'm finding conflicting information on this on the web/these forums, so any help would would be appreciated.

in terms of improvement in loading times, you wont feel much of a difference compared to normal 2,5" ssds,

but in case of copying/moving stuff around there will be an substantial difference

[TechTippee]

3 minutes ago, Haraikomono said:

in terms of improvement in loading times, you wont feel much of a difference compared to normal 2,5" ssds,

but in case of copying/moving stuff around there will be an substantial difference

All I care about is not taking literally 5-15 minutes for my computer to stop thrashing the hard drive so the computer is usable. Any ssd will do that for me, so I'm going with a form factor I have the mount point for (an m.2).

 

I just need to know if a $20 sata m.2 drive with no cache is worth the purchase, or if I should ante up for a sata with dram cache, or still further for an NVME drive.

[Haraikomono]

7 hours ago, TechTippee said:

All I care about is not taking literally 5-15 minutes for my computer to stop thrashing the hard drive so the computer is usable. Any ssd will do that for me, so I'm going with a form factor I have the mount point for (an m.2).

 

I just need to know if a $20 sata m.2 drive with no cache is worth the purchase, or if I should ante up for a sata with dram cache, or still further for an NVME drive.

sure, then id definetly go for one with dram since the price isnt really that much different

[Ydfhlx]

On 4/19/2021 at 5:17 AM, TechTippee said:

Hello TechTippers,

 

I'm looking to breathe some new life into my old laptop. And what better way than to get the OS of the hard drive? It has an open m.2 2280 slot, so that's the type of drive I shall be using.

 

My question is as follows: Is it worth going NVME? If so/if not, should I be concerned about cache? I'm finding conflicting information on this on the web/these forums, so any help would would be appreciated.

If that's an old laptop you won't be using daily then NVMe is not worth it at all over 2.5" SATA SSD - if you have enough physical space in it to fit a second 2.5" (probably not) or if you don't need as much storage to fill a single 2.5" SSD.

 

Regarding DRAM - some people say yes, some peoeple say not, however I am yet to find an actual youtuber/reviewer that will say they are anything else than waste of sand. Exception is HMB - Host Memory Buffer, essentially a DRAM moved to system RAM. But it's only availble on a few NVMe drives, and not as good.

[TechTippee]

On 4/20/2021 at 4:30 PM, Ydfhlx said:

If that's an old laptop you won't be using daily then NVMe is not worth it at all over 2.5" SATA SSD - if you have enough physical space in it to fit a second 2.5" (probably not) or if you don't need as much storage to fill a single 2.5" SSD.

As described above, you are correct: I do not have the physical space for a 2.5" drive. I do have an M.2 slot, however, so that's the form factor I'm using.

On 4/20/2021 at 4:30 PM, Ydfhlx said:

Regarding DRAM - some people say yes, some peoeple say not, however I am yet to find an actual youtuber/reviewer that will say they are anything else than waste of sand. Exception is HMB - Host Memory Buffer, essentially a DRAM moved to system RAM. But it's only availble on a few NVMe drives.

Good to know, since a DRAM-less drive can be had for $20, while one with DRAM hovers around $50. Though now that I think of it, I feel like there was a TechQuickie a while back that suggests DRAM is important for a boot drive (my intended use case).