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Patch reliability is unclear, but widespread attacks make patching prudent. Go ahead and patch, but watch out for potential problems. |
We just got two new workstations and opened one of them up and went… uh… where’s the hard drive? I had to call the vendor I bought them from and a
[See the full post at: So I opened up an HP and where’s the hard drive?]
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I do know that one can’t image a “normal” SSD and restore it to this drive style.
The backup and restore / clone process is actually the same, but an additional step may be required to install drivers prior to the clone and the original disk must be EFI boot.
cheers, Paul
Who knew. ?
When buying a PC you don’t read the hardware specifications before putting an order ?
I am sure NVMe SSD has been listed as storage. 🙂
Imaging an HDD/SSD and restoring to M2.NVMe SSD and vice versa is simple and is done all the time.
Enough RAM, right physical size, within budget, order. Nothing else required for workstations.
cheers, Paul
Because I trust the vendor I buy from. I tell him ram/needs/video cards/size of hard drive but not specific type of hard drive. He then gets me the best deal.
Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher
I’ve been sticking with regular SSDs in my builds. They are much easier to swap out if needed than an NVME drive. Since my workstation is left on 24/7, I don’t worry about boot speed (same goes for the HTPC hooked up to my television). The applications that I run are RAM dependent and an NVME does not address that bottleneck.
I’ve been sticking with regular SSDs in my builds. They are much easier to swap out if needed than an NVME drive.
As times change, the form factor and interface type that is in most common use will change, so it’s best to refer to them specifically, rather than using a term like “regular.” At one point, the 2.5″ format was the most common, but now it’s M.2 on recent hardware.
SATA SSDs come in 2.5″ (laptop hard drive) form factor and in M.2 (and some others, but those are not seen as often as the other two).
The M.2 format (likely 2280) is what is shown in the picture, along with a gigantic heat sink.”2280″ means the card is 22mm wide by 80mm long. That’s the most common for SSDs, but they may also come in other sizes. Wifi cards are also commonly packaged in M.2, and these are quite a bit smaller, often 22×30 (2230). Some boards only have a provision for a single size of M.2, while others have multiple screw holes to hold down the opposite end, so more than one length of card can be used in the slot (with 2280 usually the longest).
NVMe SSDs are not available in 2.5″, and are usually packaged in M.2 2280.
It can be a bit confusing, but both SATA and NVMe SSDs can be found in M.2 form, so you can’t assume that a M.2 SSD is NVMe. You also can’t assume that a M.2 SSD slot in a PC means that it takes NVMe! You’ve got to read the documentation, look it up somewhere, or contact the manufacturer of the board or laptop to know what the specifications of the slot are, and you’ve got to match the SSD to that.
Some M.2 SSD slots can accept a SATA or a NVMe SSD, but not all. The M.2 slot in my Acer Swift is strictly a SATA slot… others have tried to put an NVMe drive in there and it didn’t work. On the other hand, my Dell G3 came with a low-spec (slow, by SSD standards) SATA SSD, which I replaced with an NVMe drive, and it works nicely.
There is a visual clue that will often (but not always) tell you which kind of M.2 SSD you are looking at. Each card edge has at least one gap in it, and the configuration of the gap or gaps (called the keying) is usually different on SATA and NVMe drives. SATA drives usually have two gaps (B and M), while NVMe SSDs are usually M keyed (one gap). Here’s a link with more info. I have seen some exceptions, though, so it’s best to go on specs for the model number in question.
Which one is easier to swap depends on the application. My Dell G3 laptop has a M.2 SSD slot and a 2.5″ HDD slot, both right there in plain sight when the bottom cover of the laptop is removed, and it’s easier to swap the M.2– one screw and it’s out. Or, at least that’s how it used to be until I added the factory-style heat spreader (a non-finned heat sink) to the NVMe drive, as Dell would have from the factory if mine came with a NVMe. Now it takes three screws!
Removing the 2.5″ isn’t hard either, but it requires several screws, disconnecting a very delicate-looking ribbon cable, and then more screws to remove the adapter from the drive.
In a desktop, it could easily be that the M.2 slot is deep in there and blocked by other stuff, but if I had an M.2 slot on the board, I’d definitely use it unless I already had the SSD on hand.
I would only buy a M.2 SSD now. It’s more versatile, so if you wanted to use it in another computer (maybe one you have not bought yet), you can do so, and if it is a SATA SSD intended for use in a computer that only has 2.5″ slots, you can get an inexpensive adapter for that. I am using such an adapter for the slowish SSD I removed from the Dell G3. It’s now in my desktop PC, which has no M.2 slot at all, so 2.5″ is the only option.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
The ‘HP Support’ channel on YouTube features what appears to be a similar heatsink setup. However, judging by the key/socket design, the drive in the video is a M.2 SATA rather than a M.2 NVME. In the past, HP have also included silicone thermal pads within the heatsink, for NVME drives
Remove and Replace the M.2 Solid State Drive | HP Z4 G4 Workstation | HP
NVMe SSDs are beautiful.
I’ve got two HP ones (1TB and 2TB) in my home workstation, one Mushkin with hardware Opal TC encryption in my ThinkPad. 2x-3x the speed of a 2.5″ SATA SSD if you use the right models (TLC, not QLC, with cache, not cacheless); all of them are based off of Silicon Motion controllers. Running direct off the PCIe bus leads to amazing throughput, since standard SATA is more limited and SSDs can go faster.
You can clone them to other SSDs, but only if you’re using the same boot method (EFI or Legacy). Also note: I’ve sometimes found issues after a Windows 10 clone where the drives didn’t get lettered correctly due to a letter in use. That required some DISKPART use to get things back in order.
Once you go NVMe, you’ll never go back.
We are SysAdmins.
We walk in the wiring closets no others will enter.
We stand on the bridge, and no malware may pass.
We engage in support, we do not retreat.
We live for the LAN.
We die for the LAN.
Hi All,
We knew about the NVME drives for years thanks to this guy on the web. He does many “How to” videos.
Gigabyte TRX40 Designare Problems and Solutions Deep Dive with Endoscope OtoScope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZiIgZP1ujE
Go to 8 minutes in and he talks about a special screwdriver you need to remove the NVME drive.
Hope this helps you in the future.
It can be a bit confusing, but both SATA and NVMe SSDs can be found in M.2 form, so you can’t assume that a M.2 SSD is NVMe. You also can’t assume that a M.2 SSD slot in a PC means that it takes NVMe! …
Some M.2 SSD slots can accept a SATA or a NVMe SSD, but not all.
OMG my head is spinning. How difficult and complicated can they make it? Is it really so hard to design things such that if it looks like an X port, then it will accept anything with a Y connector, and if it has a Y connector then it automatically just works on any X port?
Some serious application of the KISS principle is badly needed.
If you think that’s confusing, try sorting our the latest standards for USB 3.2 categories and Thunderbolt Type C ports.
They could do that, but it would reduce the versatility of the M.2 slot. They’re thinking of the needs of OEMs who put M.2 slots on boards that they will populate at the factory, so there’s no question about what works in what… until you decide to upgrade it. If M.2 was either-or, it would not have been possible to remove the SATA SSD my G3 came with and replace it with NVMe! If they wanted to have both capabilities, it would require two distinct slots, which takes up more room (already at a premium in a laptop).
Once you realize the form factor of the M.2 doesn’t tell you the electrical characteristics of the card that goes in it, it starts to be just like a lot of other things, like which RAM modules (DIMM/SoDIMM usually) work in which PCs. It may physically fit in the slot, but some chipsets only like certain types or speeds of RAM, and there are sometimes different voltage specs too. At least with SSDs, it’s either NVMe or SSD (Edit: though there are 2-lane and 4-lane NVMe SSDs!)
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
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