Thunderbolt-M.2-SATAExpress What is and is'nt

[amerifax]

I'm looking for speed! Cost is not a factor when wanting to get to the real facts. Generally I use a Raid0 and SSd's. I also use Seagate 6T drives for storage and backups.
What is on the way out and what is the fastest? How do they compare?

Bob

 

[Valantar]

What are you planning to use it for? Thunderbolt is an external standard, and is thus not really comparable to the other two. Sure, it's fast (more or less external PCIe), but requires an external chassis and adapters for whatever you attach. M.2 is a form factor, nothing more, and can accomodate both SATA and PCIe SSDs (and PCIe can be both PCIe 2.0 x2 or x4, or PCIe 3.0 x4). The latter is the fastest storage solution available as of now. You should also factor in the arrival of NVMe SSDs - PCIe-connected drives that ditch the old AHCI standard for a newer, faster connection that is more suited for IOPS.

Depending on your usage, the two fastest drive out there (outside of enterprise solutions) are Samsungs SM-951 (m.2 form factor, hard to find, but possible to get, AHCI-based (an NVMe version is coming)) and Intels SSD 750 (NVMe PCIe add-in card or 2.5" with SFF-8639 connector). These are both blazingly fast, but perform differently in different workloads. The Samsung is more tuned to consumer workloads, while the Intel has an enterprise-derived controller, and is thus better suited for enterprise-like workloads.

 

[amerifax]

Thank you for the well detailed comparison. I was told Thunderbolt II was the fastest for Video Editing. I will have to rethink this.
Bob

 

[amerifax]

>>Valantar<<
My files site on 4 6tb hard drives. I am loading, 50 to 75 files during trhew work day. The files are 8mb to 5gb. They are, for the most part, *.tif files.
When loaded they are verified, renamed and converted to *.jpg files and saved. Boring day but that's what I do.
Most editing is done with the use of a Macro program, Macro Express, and Dragon for speech recognition.
My system is a Asus Rampage IV Extreme 64 bit with 64 memory and the Intel Core i7-5960X So as you see I'm very serious about the storage and system speed. But strage with the best way to go.
Bob