What dose a SSD do and is there a difference between a m.2 SSD and a SATA SSD?

[leaky84]

I don't really know anything about SSDs and just tryna figure out what they good for

[TetraSky]

SATA SSD is limited to SATA's speed.

M2 SSD are PCI-e based and can go a lot faster than the 600mbps of SATA.

[Rysters Tech]

Just now, TetraSky said:

SATA SSD is limited to SATA's speed.

M2 SSD are PCI-e based and can go a lot faster than 600mbps.

i apologize, but you missed a key point! 1. not all m.2 ssd's are nvme'quite a few of them are sata interface, just using the m.2 form factor. As far as performance difference, despite all of what you hear about oh these new gen4 drives are a must for gamers!. SATA drives will do perfectly fine, the only reason to go nvme is if your motherboard already has the m.2 nvme slot and the nvme drive is the same price. nvme ssd's for home users dont justify the price, but if the nvme is priced same as sata, go for nvme if the motherboard has it.  As for brand, samsung is the way to go for capacities 500gb or above, but if you are on a shoestring budget, a kingston a400 240gb is not the fastest ssd, but it runs circles around hard drives for a 30 dollar price, cheaper than the cheapest new hard drive.

[YoungBlade]

M.2 is just a form factor. There are SATA M.2 drives and NVMe M.2 drives. The NVMe M.2 drives use the PCI Express bus instead of SATA, and this allows them to reach much higher speeds.

 

For the average person, a SATA SSD is plenty fast enough, as the main performance advantage for SSDs is in the random read/write performance and access times. This allows for a system to be much snappier and more responsive when doing basic tasks like browsing files and opening programs.

 

The faster speeds of NVMe drives are mostly beneficial for large file transfers and working with very large pieces of data, like during video editing. However, if you're going to buy an M.2 drive, you might as well get an NVMe one, because SATA M.2 drives aren't much cheaper. SATA 2.5" drives, the same form factor as old laptop hard drives, are more versatile, as they can be used to replace hard drives in older systems that use SATA, and are generally cheaper per GB as they don't need to be as compact.

[4PcBuilder]

M.2 is much faster like 5-10x faster since pcie is much faster connector than data.

[An0maly_76]

Also noteworthy is that M.2s usually require a proprietary socket on the system board. PCIe riser cards are available to use them without an M.2 motherboard, but I suspect performance suffers, if ever so slightly.  If I'm understanding others correctly, an NVMe can be used in a PCIe slot, but an M.2 cannot. Your options range as follows:

 

HDD (Hard Disk Drive) Available in higher capacities, but slower than SSD / SSHD / NVMe / M.2

SSD (Solid State Drive) Faster than HDD, but capacities aren't as high. Apart from NVME / M.2, will be based on a typical HDD form factor.

SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive) Exactly what it sounds like, a combination of an SSD and HDD. Not too familiar with the finer points of these.

NVME - PCIe-based SSD, can be used in PCIe slot. Like standard SSD, faster than HDD, but capacities are limited.

M.2 - Special version of NVME installed in special sockets on the motherboard, save space and do not have to use PCIe slots. FAST, but capacities are limited.

 

My current rig's original primary storage was a 2TB SATA3 HDD. I discovered the board supported M.2 and installed one. Boot time alone decreased 57%.

Edited March 3, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised

[Kronion]

18 minutes ago, 4PcBuilder said:

M.2 is much faster like 5-10x faster since pcie is much faster connector than data.

 

As already stated above, it's not M.2 that's faster, it's NVMe in connection with PCIe.

 

M.2 drives can also work via a (legacy) SATA connection, like this one for example, which is actually offered in both 2.5 and M.2 form factors: https://www.kingston.com/unitedstates/en/ssd/a400-solid-state-drive

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

44 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

M.2 is just a form factor. There are SATA M.2 drives and NVMe M.2 drives. The NVMe M.2 drives use the PCI Express bus instead of SATA, and this allows them to reach much higher speeds.

Not just speed as in bandwidth though, speed as in lower latency and able to do more operations per second which means accessing small files is quicker than over SATA.

This doesn't make much difference today in most scenarios, but in the future once games can rely on NVMe being there it could make a huge difference in moving large assets between storage and RAM/VRAM.

Its the same reason I think once games move entirely to current-gen consoles only, we'll see a sudden jump in asset quality as you are no longer limited by what's in VRAM now and things can be moved in a lot faster.

Like any jump in tech were in a chicken and egg situation.  Nobody wants to optimise for this because not enough people have it, but not enough people have it because its not necessary yet.

[Kronion]

41 minutes ago, An0maly_76 said:

If I'm understanding others correctly, an NVMe can be used in a PCIe slot, but an M.2 cannot.

Not quite. M.2 drives for the most part are NVMe drives (except when they're not - see above).

There's no such thing as "an NVMe", since NVMe is referring to the interface specification, not the cards themselves. The cards can be of multiple form factors, including - but not limited to - slot-in cards and M.2 drives. The other form factors (U.2 for example) are mostly irrelevant to home users.

[RollyShed]

3 hours ago, leaky84 said:

I don't really know anything about SSDs and just tryna figure out what they good for

An SSD (solid state disk) is basically the same size and shape as a 2-1/2" hard disk that you find in laptops. The connectors are the same and the same as the connector in a desktop computer.

 

NOTE - disks 25+ years and older used a different connector.

 

An SSD is about x10 fast than a spinning disk.

 

The talk about "M.2, NVMe and PCIe." is about a card of a totally different shape. Some laptops have SSD and M2. The M2 connector has 1 or 2 slots in it, depending on the type. One of them is called a SATA connection, why I don't know as it leads to confusion. SATA is also the cable type connection to a hard disk or an SSD.

 

When I do a system installation in a laptop (actually any computer) I suggest that the owner buy an SSD and I do the installation on to that. Their old disk can be connected via a SATA to USB cable and the files and folder copied over to the new disk. The old disk can then remain as a backup and left on the shelf.

[ApolloX75]

10 minutes ago, RollyShed said:

An SSD (solid state disk) is basically the same size and shape as a 2-1/2" hard disk that you find in laptops. The connectors are the same and the same as the connector in a desktop computer.

 

NOTE - disks 25+ years and older used a different connector.

 

An SSD is about x10 fast than a spinning disk.

 

The talk about "M.2, NVMe and PCIe." is about a card of a totally different shape. Some laptops have SSD and M2. The M2 connector has 1 or 2 slots in it, depending on the type. One of them is called a SATA connection, why I don't know as it leads to confusion. SATA is also the cable type connection to a hard disk or an SSD.

 

When I do a system installation in a laptop (actually any computer) I suggest that the owner buy an SSD and I do the installation on to that. Their old disk can be connected via a SATA to USB cable and the files and folder copied over to the new disk. The old disk can then remain as a backup and left on the shelf.

I'm having trouble forming a response to this post. You're not wrong per se, just a little frazzled maybe.

 

SSDs can be a simple 2.5" form factor SATA interface drive, yes, or it can also be an M.2 form factor drive. They exist in many different connection, interface and form types from SATA to PCIE and others in between. SSD is a very loose term nowadays. M.2 can be found on motherboards almost all the time now, especially high end, and in many laptops or even the upcoming Steam Deck.

 

Also there's really no way to quantify that an SSD is "about 10x faster than a spinning disk." Yes they are incredibly quick, as there's no moving parts, no seek times, no head to move back and forth and best of all no fragmentation. So yeah, they're faster, but not all SSDs are created equal so using a blanket "they're all 10x faster" statement is just... I dunno a little grating. And any SATA SSDs are still limited to the generation of SATA they belong in. Pretty much any SSD made now is going to be SATA III which maxes out at 600MB/s but you can still find some cheap ones that are a SATA II interface. And I probably have a few SATA I drives lying around somewhere.

 

SATA is an interface, not just a "cable type connection" for a drive, it's a whole complex method of sending and receiving data. Just like M.2 or PCIE is an interface. It's a way to interconnect many different things. Just like PCIE isn't just your PCIE slots on your board, it's much more complex than you would think.

 

And disks "25+ years and older" did use different connectors, yes. Serial, which was incredibly slow by todays standards. Then IDE or PATA as it's commonly referred to now, which was a parallel connection interface that allowed multiple streams of data to be sent and received, but not at the same time. And these PATA drives were around a lot more recently than you think, since the common IDE connector only disappeared from motherboards around 2009. There was also SCSI (or Scuzzy as we liked to say) which were, well I guess you could call them the SSDs of a bygone era. SCSI drives were still mechanical drives but usually spun at much higher speeds and could transfer data significantly quicker than even a "mighty" UDMA 133 drive. SATA effectively killed SCSI and eventually murdered PATA too. All for the best honestly it is a superior connection interface in almost every way, one of the reasons happens to be that it can send and receive at the same time with no data loss, however it doesn't do multiple streams like parallel did, just one at a time.

 

M.2 is really just the next natural direct connection evolution.

 

Again I'm not trying to attack you, I just think you've got some facts twisted around a bit and muddied the waters so to speak. I could probably delve more in depth, but I'm sure even I've gotten some things wrong or backwards in this post as it's been literally a decade since I've even had to think about PATA or SCSI or the differences between them and SATA as we've really gotten so used to it just existing.

 

/end wall of text I guess. Sorry, but not sorry?

[RollyShed]

50 minutes ago, ApolloX75 said:

Also there's really no way to quantify that an SSD is "about 10x faster than a spinning disk." ..... So yeah, they're faster, but not all SSDs are created equal so using a blanket "they're all 10x faster" statement is just... I dunno a little grating.

Grating(?), "all faster"? No, I never said "all", I said "about" = roughly, a good deal quicker but no way "all x10 faster."

 

The OP seemed confused about what was what. An SSD uses SATA connection - start point?

 

M2 with a completely different form-factor is another thing altogether.

 

So the questions are -

1.) SSD and what it is.

2.) SSD versus M2

3.) M2 types.

[Alex Atkin UK]

Indeed, a SATA SSD for a large file will be just over 2x the speed of a high-end HDD, assuming that file is reading/writing from/to the HDD in one continuous chunk, not scattered all over the disk.  However for lots of small files, or if your HDD is highly fragmented, it can be many times faster.

The important thing is that a HDD has to move the head around the drive to reach the files or free space which can be scattered all over the disk, this takes time.  An SSD on the other had has near-instant access to any part of the storage so can sustain better speeds, especially when reading, it doesn't matter where the data is located.  This is largely why games load quicker from SSD, rather than the actual RAW data speed.  An SSD limited to read only as fast as a HDD will still be faster, due to those delays on HDDs.

We've already seen this before SSDs with SD cards and USB sticks (which by definition ARE SSDs, its just we tend not to refer to them as such) as in some cases they too will be faster than a HDD to read back, despite often being much slower than a HDD in actual RAW speed.  See the Steam Deck for example which seems to cope fine with games on SD cards.

[cmndr]

Generally speaking nvme SSDs are the fastest, though there's surely exceptions. Also, as long as you have an SSD that's "not bad" performance differences usually aren't noticeable. It's probably worth spending 5% more to get a drive that's "not bad" it's almost never worth spending 50% more though. These days nvme drives cost about as much as SATA drives.

 

 

An SSD is a solid state disk. The disk part is a misnomer.

Essentially it's an array of microchips (usually NAND) that stores data, a controller and sometimes some RAM on a circuit board. Some SSDs use 3D-Xpoint dies instead of NAND. 3D-Xpoint is generally faster than NAND and is more reliable/has better endurance but it's much more expensive (about 10x).

SSDs store data (in blocks) across multiple chips and they can do many operations at once, compared to a harddrive which can only do one operation at a time and which have a LARGE time delay going from one operation to another.



M.2 is a form factor. M.2 SSDs come in 2 main flavors, SATA and nvme.

SATA - a protocol from 2003 that is useful for sending data from harddrives. SATA drives are most common in the 2.5" form factor similar to laptop harddrives.

nvme - nvme is closer to pcie in terms of how it handles operations and it's faster, lower latency and allows for more simultaneous commands. nvme drives are sometimes available as PCIe add in cards or in the U.2 form factor.

 

[kokosnh]

the question is to vague.
Just watch some video on it. 

Just some basic one for starters.

Ps. Everyone forgets the existence of SATA express M.2/PCIe SSDs (it's a rabbit hole, but it exist). 
Do list it existance, and just add to not bother with it. 

For the rest 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/io/pci-express/phy-interface-pci-express-sata-usb30-architectures-3-1.html