Are PCI based SSDs difficult to move around/recover from/work with?

[commissarmo]

I'm considering a PCI based SSD (or an m.2 possibly, but I prefer PCI). My concern with these has always been difficulty of manipulating the drive outside the host system.

So e.g. when I want to move my SSD/HDDs around I just take them out of one machine and use a SATA connection or a USB 'toaster' and they can be connected to anything, USB, etc. I've frequently had to recover things from RAID arrays, and dead drives this way.

with PCI based SSDs I'm concerned that I won't be able to do this so easily. I would need to plug the drive into a motherboard, which wouldn't as swappable, and I'm not sure whether the OS would just immediately recognize the volume (as it does with a USB/DATA interface for example, any SATA drive looks like a USB drive). I have no experience with pci ssds whatsoever.

1. Am I missing something here?

2. or is this a legitimate concern?

 

[Chicano]

Expansion slot based SSDs are not meant to be used as external/removable drives... the PCIe or PCI slots tend to lose grip after repeated extraction and insertion and the gold pins on the card also tend to strip off.

Expansion cards have better odds of being recognized than SATA or USB drives so that part shouldn't be a problem.. the only concern should be expansion slot and SSD card wear and the related high cost.


Take a look at these much better options (iMHO)

Portable External Solid State Drive Guide [Best of 2016]
http://www.storagetechguide.com/?p=317

 

[commissarmo]

Expansion slot based SSDs are not meant to be used as external/removable drives... the PCIe or PCI slots tend to lose grip after repeated extraction and insertion and the gold pins on the card also tend to strip off.

Expansion cards have better odds of being recognized than SATA or USB drives so that part shouldn't be a problem.. the only concern should be expansion slot and SSD card wear and the related high cost.


Take a look at these much better options (iMHO)

Portable External Solid State Drive Guide [Best of 2016]
http://www.storagetechguide.com/?p=317

Hey thanks, I was mostly concerned not about repeatedly removing them (though you make the point that this would be a bad idea), but about basically what happens if the drive fails, and I need to run recovery operations on it?

I assume I can just plug it into any machine (do I need drivers? I assume I need to restart the OS? I've never plugged in a PCI card while the OS was running will it recognize the device in the same way that a plug and play USB drive would be?)

I suppose my fears are all related to having to "work" on the drive should something fail.

Also, when they first came out many of the PCI adds were embedded RAID arrays, which I don't like given previous RAID issues, Im assuming the newer ones are not RAID.

 

[Chicano]

Well, I have yet to experience a SSD failure to know fhe answer... but online information says SSDs don't give warnings like HDDs, they are said to "work now - and then they don’t"... and that Recovery software can't recover data if they don't work as most HDDs still do after they have failed... So, the most you can do is check them regularly with Monitoring and Optimization tools, and hope to anticipate imminent failure.
http://mashtips.com/ssd-performance-recover-tools/


SSDs don't need drivers... they are Plug & Play and should work like any HDD.


You should never plug in a PCI/PCIe card on a running system.. the risk of damage is to high for both card and motherboard.


I admit I don’t know much about RAID but... what I understand from the article on Solid state drive (SSD) RAID, is that for ideal SSD RAID performance a computer needs an optimal combination of components... and I doubt PCI interface is fast enough.

Check PCI speed comparisons
https://www.naplestech.com/shopcart/bus_speeds.asp#gsc.tab=0