If I get an M.2 Sata hard drive, can I make it any drive letter?

NeilF

NeilF

NeilF

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ie: I already have a regular SSD Sata, so can I plug in a new M.2 Sata hard drive into my motherboard, and treat that as say my X drive, and continue to boot of my old regular SSD Sata?

ie: Assume there's nothing super magical about the M.2 port and it forcing itself as the primary drive?
 
snips86x said:
Yeah, they're nasty if you have large CPU coolers.
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Having just read they're baically the same speed as a regula sata, unless you get the "full spec" versions, I might just go regular sata because of just that!

ps: Looking at Crucial MX500 or Samsung 860.
 
snips86x said:
What did you look at? NVMEs are considerably quicker than regular sata. Look at the Intel 660p mate, I have one and it superb!! They're 3 times quicker, if not 4 in some instances.
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chaparral said:
You want an NVME for speed

I have one of these and the speeds are amazing
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/sams...-3.0-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-23n-sa.html
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Yes, given I want a 2TB drive that could prove pricey compared to a regular 2TB Samsung/Crucial SSD?
 
snips86x said:
My only comment on this would be check out the Intel 660p, that 970 is overpriced in comparison to the 660p. You get more from the Intel and its a shame OcUK do not stock it.

Why not get the 1tb NVME and then a regular 1tb ssd?
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The goal is to put my D drive - a standard 1TB - which has all my games on, and which is full, onto a new 2TB SSD.

ie: Speed and loads of room for the future.

I tried Sandstorm on my regular hard drive and then on my C drive SSD, and the loading difference is astounding! And that's with a very old SSD too!

So the 2TB is more important than the speed of the SSD! But having looked that 660p is seemingly available in 2TB size for a similar price as the Samsung 860. And it has a 5yr warranty like the Samsung!

I wouldn't pay that much for it so would wait for a reduction/deal.
 
willhub said:
I've got the 660P 1TB coming got it for a hundred quid. A bit worried about endurance
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Well at least the 2TB one I'd be looking at is rated as twice the endurance as the 1TB. But as I'd only be using it as a games drive, and given many games are tens of GB big, is that an issue or not? ie: Loading up Rainbow Six Seige over and over which is around 65GB in total in disk install?

willhub said:
file transfers apparently goes below HDD speeds which is a bit cack but for most transfers and installs should be ok. For game loading it seems to be as fast as most NVMe's.
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That's surprising as I though it was suppose to be significantly faster than even SSDs?
 
This video review raises a few question marks about the 660p, indeed even questioning at times if its faster than the Samsung 850/860 SSD?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OffzVc7ZB-o

Some other reviews have shown as the drive gets full its speed even halves, to say even slower than a regular Crucial MX500...

It risks feeling a touch spit and gum?
 
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bremen1874 said:
It's a cost/performance compromise.

For your suggested use case, it doesn't really raise any serious question marks that I can see.

You've already said that the capacity matters more to you than the performance.
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True, but when you see the write speed plumit to less than a regular HD, it just feels like there's a lot of stuff going on filling caches and moving caches and using the storage space as a cache etc etc which makes me question reliability. ie: The more it's playing silly buggers to get good speeds the more there is to go wrong!? ie: When there's a powercut and its still moving cache around etc etc!

I'll keep looking...

If the non NVMe Samsung 860 wasn't £100 (50%) more I'd be onto that I suspect...
 
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willhub said:
I bought my 660P to make games load faster and I needed at least 1TB, hope it doesn't dissapoint.
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Well, will be interesting to hear your feedback. And if you're going to be moving a load of data onto it, sounds you needs to be prepared to wait once you get to say 100-150GB+. Watch the video here at 7m - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OffzVc7ZB-o&t=7m9s

Let us know how you get on :)
 
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willhub said:
Well I've just transferred over 148GB worth of data (3 game installs) from my Evo 970 to the 660P and it transferred at around 1.5GB/s until the last 16gb where it went down to 100mb/s. Not too shabby still a super quick transfer.
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Why are you moving from a Evo 970 to a 660P? Surely there's no realy speed difference to be had/noticed?

I've got 1TB to move - eek!
 
willhub said:
The 970 is boot drive and only half the size seperated it and half is for games but full so moved games off the SSD I had before into the 660p

Just move 100gb at a time you'll be done in about 5 mins if that lol
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Well let me know how you think the 660p compares to the 970 then when you come to use it in anger :)
 
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