M.2 versus 2.5 SDD for storage

dg27 · Mar 20, 2018

I'd like like to add a PCIe M.2 SSD to my Dell Studio XPS 9100 (Win 7 Pro, i7 960 @ 3.20 GHz, 24 GB Triple-Channel DDR3).

I really don't know much about these drives but would like to add one as a data drive.

Internally I have a Samsung 840 Pro SSD boot, 2 WD CB 2 TB data drives, plus two optical drives (which I do need). So I am out of SATA ports.

I am a heavy Pro Tools (music software) user. Pro Tools project files must reside on a fast, preferably internal drive. I'd like to improve Pro Tools performance by having all of those files (currently ~75 GB) on a separate SSD. A 250 GB SSD would be plenty.

I was considering adding a card like this:

StarTech.com PEX4M2E1 M.2 Adapter – x4 PCIe 3.0 NVMe – Low Profile

and an M.2 drive like this:

Samsung 960 EVO Series - 250GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V6E250BW)

Would it be smarter to just put in a PCIe SATA card and use a 2.5 SSD?

rhysiam · Mar 21, 2018

Your plan should work be pretty straightforward as long as you are aware of the following:
1) You're best to buy a drive that has an NVMe driver for Windows 7 (Windows 7 does *not* support NVMe drives out of the box. Samsung drives have a Win7 NVMe driver, so they're a good option)
2) It's much easier if you do *not* need to use the NVMe drive as your boot drive (there are hacks/workarounds if you want to install Win7 on an NVMe drive, but it's not entirely straightforward)
3) Make sure you have a free x4 PCIe slot (a x16 slot works fine too). I believe that's based on the X58 chipset, which should provide you plenty of slots and lanes, so unless you're running loads of add-in cards (graphics, sound, network card, etc) you should have at least one x4 (or greater) slot free. But just check.
4) Be aware that your PC only supports PCIe 2.0 rather than the 3.0 of modern NVMe drives. It's backwards compatible, so no major issues, but the max theoretical bandwidth will be ~2GB/s. That's probably more than enough and likely faster than most 250GB drives anyway, but worth bearing in mind.

You could, as you raise, add a SATA card and use a SATA device. If that's significantly cheaper then it's certainly a good option. Does your workload really push a SATA SSD to 100% load for sustained periods? If not, the NVMe drive is going to offer little if any advantage. However the NVMe drives are theoretically faster and will just drop into a future M.2 slot should you ever upgrade. I'm also not a big fan of those cheap SATA controllers. At least the PCIe to NVMe M.2 adapter is simply routing wires... there's no performance hit (beyond your PCIe 2 slot limitation) and basically no reliability concerns.

You can make a case either way. I'd only go the SATA option if it's significantly cheaper, money was a key factor and I had no real upgrade plans.

dg27 · Mar 21, 2018

Thanks for detailed response!

Pro Tools is resource hog and it's well known that you can hit bottlenecks. I tend to close all other programs when I'm using it.

I just thought getting the files PT uses off a traditional HDD might help.

You've given me a good starting point.

Thanks again.

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M.2 versus 2.5 SDD for storage

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