# SATA SSD vs M.2 SSD



## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

Alright guys since atm the current momement SSDs prices aren’t as crazy as they use to be at launch I’ve decided to finally change my mechanical drives to SSDs for boot and storage drive. I’m currently looking at 1TB sizes but trying to stay under $150 USD and SATA SSDs seem to be a lot cheaper than m.2 variants a bit I don’t want to be sacrificing. Which would you guys recommend and what particular drive ?

Thank you for any advance.


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## kastriot (Nov 12, 2018)

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-MX500-NAND-SATA-Internal/dp/B077SF8KMG


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## thebluebumblebee (Nov 12, 2018)

You do realize that there are:
SATA SSD's
SATA M.2 SSD's
and
NVME M.2 SSD's

The latter can be up to 3 times faster than a SATA SSD.


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

thebluebumblebee said:


> You do realize that there are:
> SATA SSD's
> SATA M.2 SSD's
> and
> ...


I’m looking at ones that say M.2 (B+M)


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## cucker tarlson (Nov 12, 2018)

thebluebumblebee said:


> You do realize that there are:
> SATA SSD's
> SATA M.2 SSD's
> and
> ...


in nothing but synthetics.

boot times







installation times












to see noticeable difference between a sata ssd and nvme ssd, you really need a top of the line nvme drive in the first place. unless you can afford a quality nvme drive of the same capacity, go with traditional sata drive. you're better off with a 1TB 860 EVO than with a 500GB 970 EVO. And before you buy,check for reiews that test the drive at at least 75% full. Look what happens to a crappy entry level drive like bx500 at 80% full

https://www.purepc.pl/pamieci_masow...l_bx500_tansza_wersja_crucial_mx500?page=0,16

it gets absolutely crushed, loses half its performance.

stick to 860 EVO or MX 500, you may wanna take a look at sandisk Ultra 3D or WD Blue 3D as well, but 860 EVO/MX 500 would be my first choices. NVME drives are not worth it, even if they drop to sata SSD prices, sata ssds will get cheaper as well. I'll stick to sata ssds until a completely new technology shows up and can half the real world perfromance numbers of sata ssds. Until then, paying a hefty premium for a nvme ssd that's gonna be 10-20% faster in real world tasks over already very fast sata ssd drives is not worth it. I was buying a ssd myself recently, and I was wondering if 960 evo is worth twice the price of 860 evo. I took a performance test off a trusted tech site,but I analyzed only: copying small files,unpacking archives,installation times and loading times - the things that I usually do on my PC that take time. It turned out once you removed synthetic tests and copying huge (several gigabyte) files at once, the difference is only 14% in favor of 960 evo, with the biggest one in favour of 960 at 20% for some installation times. NVME is really delivering its performance in sequential transfers, if you're not going to move big (~10GB or bigger) files often,you just don't need it. You may take a look at cheaper options,like sx8200 which costs less than 960 evo and is closer to sata ssds price range, but the difference in real world tasks will shrink even further from mere 14% it was on a samsung drive.And remember that you'll probably need a good heatsink to deliver that performance increase consistently.


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## spectatorx (Nov 12, 2018)

Are you sure you want to go with ssd for storage? Be aware in case of failure there is literally no way to recover any data from failed ssd, even such expert labs as ontrack do not give warranty of recovering any data from failed solid state drive. Unless you plan to store on them some data which is not much important or can be downloaded from their cloud services like for example games. Recovering data from hdds is fairly simple and in most cases can be done at home, in the worst cases labs like ontrack also will be able to easily recover data.


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## cucker tarlson (Nov 12, 2018)

spectatorx said:


> Are you sure you want to go with ssd for storage? Be aware in case of failure there is literally no way to recover any data from failed ssd, even such expert labs as ontrack do not give warranty of recovering any data from failed solid state drive. Unless you plan to store on them some data which is not much important or can be downloaded from their cloud services like for example games. Recovering data from hdds is fairly simple and in most cases can be done at home, in the worst cases labs like ontrack also will be able to easily recover data.


also, for storage HDDs will do fine. Unless he means storing huge amounts of random data that he will often access.


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

spectatorx said:


> Are you sure you want to go with ssd for storage? Be aware in case of failure there is literally no way to recover any data from failed ssd, even such expert labs as ontrack do not give warranty of recovering any data from failed solid state drive. Unless you plan to store on them some data which is not much important or can be downloaded from their cloud services like for example games. Recovering data from hdds is fairly simple and in most cases can be done at home, in the worst cases labs like ontrack also will be able to easily recover data.


Id still have a backups of everything on mechanical drives in case that happens. Plus I’ll also have a backup 3TB HDD for additional storage



cucker tarlson said:


> also, for storage HDDs will do fine. Unless he means storing huge amounts of random data that he will often access.


OS, Files, and large games. Basically everything



I’m currently looking at the Western Digital Blue 1TB m.2 SSD


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## cucker tarlson (Nov 12, 2018)

Durvelle27 said:


> Id still have a backups of everything on mechanical drives in case that happens. Plus I’ll also have a backup 3TB HDD for additional storage
> 
> 
> OS, Files, and large games. Basically everything
> ...


how much space do you need for it all ?


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

cucker tarlson said:


> how much space do you need for it all ?


Hmmmm maybe around 3.5TB


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## cucker tarlson (Nov 12, 2018)

1TB drives are the sweet sport for perf/price, you can really stuff a lot of data that you frequently access on a one terabyte drive.


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

cucker tarlson said:


> 1TB drives are the sweet sport for perf/price, you can really stuff a lot of data that you frequently access on a one terabyte drive.


Like mentioned above I’m looking at the Western Digital Blue 1TB m.2 for around $129


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## cucker tarlson (Nov 12, 2018)

check the name,get WDS100T2B0A not WDS100T1B0A,the older revision is planar TLC and it sucks. The new one is on toshiba's 64-layed bics 3D tlc and it's a good drive.

sorry,if you're looking at m.2 sata that'd be WDS100T2B0B and the old one is WDS100T1B0B


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

cucker tarlson said:


> check the name,get WDS100T2B0A not WDS100T1B0A,the older revision is planar TLC and it sucks. The new one is on toshiba's 64-layed bics 3D tlc and it's a good drive.
> 
> sorry,if you're looking at m.2 sata that'd be WDS100T2B0B and the old one is WDS100T1B0B


Not sure which one it is


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## Gorstak (Nov 12, 2018)

Basically, you purchase an ssd for faster access time which in turn results with faster copying of files and generally, better responsivenes. Normal sata3 ssd's have over 400 MB/s r/w and you should really think what kind of data you will be copying. The M.2 and nvme m.2 drives usually copy small files with almost the same speed as regular sata3 ssd's, but they are faster a lot if you copy huge files. Basically, if you want to copy a blueray movie from one place to another, like 40GB movie or more, and you intend to do such things a lot, go for m.2 nvme or even pcie drives. They are a lot faster then regular sata3 ssd's. If you don't copy huge files constantly, save your money and buy a regular sata3 ssd. If you ignore copying of huge files, there is practically no difference in everyday work between them. What you will experience sitting behind your device is the same for all newer ssd's. I would only worry about price and scour the net for bad reviews if any, as some drives tend to die more often then others. ADATA SU800 is a decent bang for buck, but Samsung has the lead role in ssd theatre. I don't know what you intend to put on it, but I assume it's your OS, apps and games, and you should make sure drive is never full over 80% of it's capacity, as they all tend to slow down drastically if that happens. I've had a patriot hellfire m.2 240gb drive, and filled it to 98% percent, and it's speed went from 240% faster then samsung 850 evo to 106% and kept declining. And this is after I used it's software to wipe the drive. HDD's don't have such issues, and you can get a 3TB Toshiba P300, a relatively new edition of drives, for about 80$, and sacrifice a few seconds of waiting to do stuff for a lot higher capacity and much lower price then what you intend to buy, without worrying about anything. The only thing that might really take a while to load on it, are games made in unity, and you might suffer an extra few seconds of waiting for photoshop to open. In turn, you can install at least 20 games more then you would on ssd.


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

Gorstak said:


> Basically, you purchase an ssd for faster access time which in turn results with faster copying of files and generally, better responsivenes. Normal sata3 ssd's have over 400 MB/s r/w and you should really think what kind of data you will be copying. The M.2 and nvme m.2 drives usually copy small files with almost the same speed as regular sata3 ssd's, but they are faster a lot if you copy huge files. Basically, if you want to copy a blueray movie from one place to another, like 40GB movie or more, and you intend to do such things a lot, go for m.2 nvme or even pcie drives. They are a lot faster then regular sata3 ssd's. If you don't copy huge files constantly, save your money and buy a regular sata3 ssd. If you ignore copying of huge files, there is practically no difference in everyday work between them. What you will experience sitting behind your device is the same for all newer ssd's. I would only worry about price and scour the net for bad reviews if any, as some drives tend to die more often then others. ADATA SU800 is a decent bang for buck, but Samsung has the lead role in ssd theatre. I don't know what you intend to put on it, but I assume it's your OS, apps and games, and you should make sure drive is never full over 80% of it's capacity, as they all tend to slow down drastically if that happens. I've had a patriot hellfire m.2 240gb drive, and filled it to 98% percent, and it's speed went from 240% faster then samsung 850 evo to 106% and kept declining. And this is after I used it's software to wipe the drive. HDD's don't have such issues, and you can get a 3TB Toshiba P300, a relatively new edition of drives, for about 80$, and sacrifice a few seconds of waiting to do stuff for a lot higher capacity and much lower price then what you intend to buy, without worrying about anything. The only thing that might really take a while to load on it, are games made in unity, and you might suffer an extra few seconds of waiting for photoshop to open. In turn, you can install at least 20 games more then you would on ssd.


The plan was 

1TB SSD + 3TB HDD


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## Gorstak (Nov 12, 2018)

Well, I assume you install a lot of things then. If you only play 1 game at a time, store them on hdd, and buy a lower capacity ssd, and have only 1 game installed at a time. I personally don't need more then 120GB for all my software and a few games, but would recommend a 240GB just in case, so you don't accidentally fill it up. Maybe you are an extreme user and really need more, but you be the judge of that yourself.


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 12, 2018)

Gorstak said:


> Well, I assume you install a lot of things then. If you only play 1 game at a time, store them on hdd, and buy a lower capacity ssd, and have only 1 game installed at a time. I personally don't need more then 120GB for all my software and a few games, but would recommend a 240GB just in case, so you don't accidentally fill it up. Maybe you are an extreme user and really need more, but you be the judge of that yourself.


The smallest I’d consider is 512GB plus the 3TB HDD


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## Deleted member 67555 (Nov 13, 2018)

I use a fast NVME for my OS and Origin games, a slower but still faster than SATA WD Black NVME for Uplay and GoG (irony) and then a run of the mill Fast SSD for Steam.
Do I notice a difference? Yeah
Is it huge? For me it is
Does it really matter? No...not in the slightest.
LoL
But it really does...
SATA hits a wall at about 600r/w
You really want 1000r/w
4k 300+ r/w


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## John Naylor (Nov 13, 2018)

Two questions :

1.  What is your goal ?

Is it important that you have the best benchmarks, or

Is it important that the upgrade actually increase your productivity ?

2.  What will you be doing ?

If you are doing workstation like tasks such as video editing, animation or rendering, than by all means, get the fastest SSD you can afford for both the OS / Programs drive and a 2nd for a scratch drive.   If your tasks involve web browsing, office suites, even AutoCAD, ... aside from benchmarks and things you might do once in PC's lifetime or once a year then I wouldn't bother even thinking about it.  In almost every other instance, the PC storage system will be done doing what it's gotta do well before you are ready to make the next KB entry or mouse movement.



John Naylor said:


> Two questions :
> 
> 1.  What is your goal ?
> 
> ...


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 13, 2018)

John Naylor said:


> Two questions :
> 
> 1.  What is your goal ?
> 
> ...


1. Not looking for benchmark numbers. Just looking for decent loads times, decent read and write times for when I’m encoring or recording in gameplay. 

2. I’ll be doing editing, rendering, developing plus more


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## John Naylor (Nov 14, 2018)

2.  An SSD then is definitely warranted .... whether the better SSD benefits you will depend on % of workload spent doing things that benefit and how long they usually take.   A project that takes 90 seconds to complete, won't upset you to much if it takes 100 .... but if it takes 5 hours instead of 4.5 then you are losing a half hour of productivity


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 14, 2018)

John Naylor said:


> 2.  An SSD then is definitely warranted .... whether the better SSD benefits you will depend on % of workload spent doing things that benefit and how long they usually take.   A project that takes 90 seconds to complete, won't upset you to much if it takes 100 .... but if it takes 5 hours instead of 4.5 then you are losing a half hour of productivity


I don’t think I’ve ever had a task that took anywhere near that long


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## king of swag187 (Nov 15, 2018)

NVME (Not M.2 Sata IIRC or SATA) actually take marginally longer to initialize than a normal SATA SSD


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## Durvelle27 (Nov 15, 2018)

king of swag187 said:


> NVME (Not M.2 Sata IIRC or SATA) actually take marginally longer to initialize than a normal SATA SSD


Imaging


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## TheoneandonlyMrK (Nov 15, 2018)

I think nvme to be worth it for a productive user id say one of each minimum to be as effective as possible,nvne+sata ssd, imho,


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