M.2 / NGFF, can work in full AHCI Sata emulation right?

[AbRASiON]

If I buy an M.2 drive for the future, you can still use it with plain old AHCI drivers yeah?
If I recall some articles I read, to run them at full speed in the new proper mode, you need Windows 8 or higher, special drivers (not IDE or AHCI or RAID) and so on?

I plan to run Windows 7 for the time being and infact do a disk to disk clone (Acronis) from an AHCI drive to an M.2 in AHCI mode, anyone know if it'll boot?

EDIT: I read another thread here and it's all a bit ambiguous if it'll boot or not and if it'll be at full speed or not (I actually don't care, first preference is actually stability under Windows 7)

 

[AbRASiON]

Update, hopefully google indexes this for others.
I was hoping with Z97 chipsets that M.2 was ready for primetime, definitely not.
Just read 2 great articles on it, what a mess.


Drives run SUPER hot.
The Asus board I was looking at only has a x2 slot, so I could go from 550MB/s to maybe 800MB/s.
Bootability seems,... inconsistent.
New stuff is being worked on to address over heating M.2 cards, probably suggest the next round of motherboards from the manufacturers to not have bad speeds (apparently on 1 AsRock board has a beast M.2 socket on it for full speed)

Overall, seems like Z97 not quite ready if you've got a beast GPU, want a beefier chipset with more lanes, better cards with better cooling, better BIOS support - so I'll cash in on M.2 perhaps in 18 months.

Here's the 2 articles - good site / writeup by someone clearly on the ball.
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Overview-of-M-2-SSDs-586/
http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Samsung-XP941-Plextor-PX-G256-M6e-M-2-Qualification-575/

Hope this helps someone else out considering this. Wait till end of 2015 and the new intel boards (broadwell? and the new corresponding chipset)

 

[Burner27]

I am running a 128GB Plextor M6e as my OS drive. it hovers around 49c mostly. I don't do any large file copying with it as that wasn't the point of getting it. My case has adequate airflow. Probably could be better. I am not sorry I bought the drive.

 

[AbRASiON]

Well the Asus board I want only does 800MB regardless, next gen M.2 boards with new chipsets will likely solve that.

 

[Burner27]

Well the Asus board I want only does 800MB regardless, next gen M.2 boards with new chipsets will likely solve that.

Seems like you will be constantly waiting for the 'next big thing' then.

 

[Revolution 11]

Sometimes waiting for the next thing is productive if you are in the transition period for substantially different tech. The M.2 interface and NVME drives are significantly faster than SATA SSDs and waiting a year could mean the difference between you buying one drive and buying two drives. Definitely important if you are building SFF PCs.

I remember in the 90's, my dad bought PCs every 6 years. Waiting a extra year to get a new Pentium III or jumping straight away to a Pentium 2 makes a huge difference for the next six years. CPUs have entered the realm of "good enough" and don't make those sorts of jumps anymore but solid-state storage is still progressing fast enough to merit a wait, if not year-to-year innovations.

 

[Burner27]

Sometimes waiting for the next thing is productive if you are in the transition period for substantially different tech. The M.2 interface and NVME drives are significantly faster than SATA SSDs and waiting a year could mean the difference between you buying one drive and buying two drives. Definitely important if you are building SFF PCs.

I remember in the 90's, my dad bought PCs every 6 years. Waiting a extra year to get a new Pentium III or jumping straight away to a Pentium 2 makes a huge difference for the next six years. CPUs have entered the realm of "good enough" and don't make those sorts of jumps anymore but solid-state storage is still progressing fast enough to merit a wait, if not year-to-year innovations.

Agreed, but sometimes waiting for the 'next big thing' in technology doesn't provide a measurable difference in performance from the last gen. A 30% real-world perceivable difference in performance would be justifiable to upgrade to. Anything less seems like a waste of money. But to each their own.

 

[AbRASiON]

Seems like you will be constantly waiting for the 'next big thing' then.

No, seems like I'm making a rational decision based on the numbers. I've been upgrading PC's since my 286, eventually you learn the bleediing edge is an expensive place to be, for very little benefit.

 

[Revolution 11]

Agreed, but sometimes waiting for the 'next big thing' in technology doesn't provide a measurable difference in performance from the last gen. A 30% real-world perceivable difference in performance would be justifiable to upgrade to. Anything less seems like a waste of money. But to each their own.

I will tell you that I am waiting for at least the $0.20 per GB point in SSDs before I jump in. The reason is that I have at least 1TB of data that needs to be on my main system SSD. Boot time and Windows loading times are good enough for me but certain programs still feel very slow and the SSD will help. But I don't want multiple SSDs just because I could not fit the data into one and my budget is limited.

Perhaps by the time $0.20 per GB is reached, NVME SSDs on a PCI-E or M.2 interface will be more common. For me, that lets me kill 2 birds with one stone since I can have cheaper drives and/or drives up to 4 times faster than the current SATA drives. If the NVME SSDs are very expensive, I will have to stick with the SATA drives.

 

[AbRASiON]

I will tell you that I am waiting for at least the $0.20 per GB point in SSDs before I jump in. The reason is that I have at least 1TB of data that needs to be on my main system SSD. Boot time and Windows loading times are good enough for me but certain programs still feel very slow and the SSD will help. But I don't want multiple SSDs just because I could not fit the data into one and my budget is limited.

Perhaps by the time $0.20 per GB is reached, NVME SSDs on a PCI-E or M.2 interface will be more common. For me, that lets me kill 2 birds with one stone since I can have cheaper drives and/or drives up to 4 times faster than the current SATA drives. If the NVME SSDs are very expensive, I will have to stick with the SATA drives.

Personally, I think that's ridiculous, it's like cutting off your nose, to spite your face.
If you're willing to endure an awful HDD now, then why not put 700mb of the data on a platter HDD and at least use a 256gb SSD in the meantime for Windows and basic apps.

The difference an SSD makes is huge to a system, I HATE using systems without an SSD.
However, the difference from an SSD to an M.2 SSD is likely not big, hence me not buying an overheating component only 20% faster. I'll wait.

 

[Revolution 11]

It's all about the budget in that I don't really have one, especially for upgrades. And moving old data around and reinstalling programs is such a pain. Since I have never experienced a SSD, I can't really tell the drawbacks.

I will definitely try out a SSD in 5 years or whenever I get a new PC. Sooner if I buy a laptop.

EDIT: About that 1 TB, not all of it is data I will use often. But it is organized nicely into lists of folders, all labelled and sorted. I don't want to separate that data. And I definitely don't want some of that data to come up fast and then I get PO because the rest is cold and slow on spinning platters. Discrepancy in speed is important too.

I certainly have more data that is video and music, that does not matter too much. My priority data itself is 1 TB so I need a affordable 1TB SSD less than $200. Quite a wait for me....

 

[AbRASiON]

Well I'll say one thing, if you manage to skip all the way to m.2, you'll definitely notice a huge difference.

 

[Revolution 11]

If M.2 is standard in 4 years and available at the same low storage prices as SATA SSDs are today, I will definitely jump on it.

 

[Burner27]

No, seems like I'm making a rational decision based on the numbers. I've been upgrading PC's since my 286, eventually you learn the bleediing edge is an expensive place to be, for very little benefit.

I said 'waiting for next big thing', not buying. I am sure you will look at the reviews and do whatever budgeting you need to do to see if it worth it to you. I had different reasons for upgrading to an m.2 drive and the temperature was not a concern the way i am using it.