[SOLVED] SSD basics: NVMe vs SATA vs USB

[hd_scania]

For NVMe SSD’s, NVMe itself is their protocol, M.2 is their form factor, finally PCIe is their interface ...
But for SATA SSD’s, what does SATA mean, between their protocol, their form factor, or their interface?
Hence same with SATA, how about USB?

 

[cdrkf]

For NVMe SSD’s, NVMe itself is their protocol, M.2 is their form factor, finally PCIe is their interface ...
But for SATA SSD’s, what does SATA mean, between their protocol, their form factor, or their interface?
And the same with SATA, how about USB?

So Sata is 'serial ATA' - it's been around for years and is the connection hard drives used. SATA had several version, the original spec was 150 mb/sec, then Sata 2 at 300 and the latest form is Sata 3 at 600 MB/Sec. Typically Sata drives are in the 2.5 inch form factor drives (that mount into the case into a drive bay) and connect to a Sata port on the motherboard using a cable. There are also some M2 form factor drives that connect to the system using Sata and as such will be limited to 600 MB/Sec transfers. This means that a Sata based ssd is quite a bit slower than a PCIe drive in sequential reads and writes. That is the type of operation used for say copying large files and so on. That said, a good quality Sata SSD can still perform really well - as the biggest factor for general performance of a drive is the maximum operations per second the drive can perform (usually rated in IOPS). That is why in many tests a good Sata SSD and a fast M2 NVME drive produce similar results (e.g. for game loading tests, boot times and so on). That said NVME drives don't usually cost much more these days so it's probably better to go with one for your primary drive.

With regard to USB, this is the Universal Serial Bus and is used for external devices.

 

[SkyNetRising]

For NVMe SSD’s, NVMe itself is their protocol, M.2 is their form factor, finally PCIe is their interface ...
But for SATA SSD’s, what does SATA mean, between their protocol, their form factor, or their interface?
Hence same with SATA, how about USB?

	Protocol	Form factor	Interface
NVME SSD	NVME	M.2	PCIE
SATA SSD/HDD	SATA	M.2 and 2.5" and 3.5"	SATA
USB drive	USB	N/A	USB (SATA to USB or M.2 to USB adapter being used)

 

[hd_scania]

Thanks!
But no, mecha drives could be excluded here, just focus on SSD’s, and there aren’t 3.5’’ SSD’s,

 

[hd_scania]

It’s good with my modded charts below

SSD type​	Protocol​	Form factor​	Interface​
NVMe​	NVMe​	M.2 with a single key​	PCIe​
SATA​	SATA​	M.2 with two keys; or 2.5"; or 3.5’’ in 90.9TiB capacity​	SATA​
USB​	USB​	Unneeded​	USB; SATA or M.2 to USB adapter being used​

 

[SkyNetRising]

But no, mecha drives could be excluded here, just focus on SSD’s, and there aren’t 3.5’’ SSD’s,

There are 3.5" SSD models also. Somewhat exotic, but they exist.

Nimbus Data squeezes 100TB into a 3.5-inch SSD

The largest capacity solid state drive made to date

www.datacenterdynamics.com

 

[hd_scania]

But keep in mind which it’s in an 90.9TiB (100TB) capacity, which is extremely unlikely on laptops or NAS’es, though is still normal for workstations

 

[USAFRet]

But keep in mind which it’s in an 90.9TiB (100TB) capacity, which is extremely unlikely on laptops or NAS’es, though is still normal for workstations

The NAS in my living room currently has ~51TB accessible space.
While that 100TB is "large"....it wasn't so long ago that 1TB was "large".

 

[hd_scania]

The NAS in my living room currently has ~51TB accessible space.
While that 100TB is "large"....it wasn't so long ago that 1TB was "large".

For nowadays standard even 4.54TiB (5TB) is already ‘‘tiny’’, my currently total external SSD’s + mecha drives are just 4.18TiB
So that the most nowadays unused laptops have just been shipped with extremely tiny SSD’s, too usually under 476GiB
You need to instead order a Samsung PRO 980 (or at least 981 series) NVMe SSD in 931GiB (1TB) or 1.82TiB (2TB), based on your own need
For NAS’es, you would look after EiB SSD’s yes, 1024⁶ and 2⁶⁰ bytes, as a server for public use this isn’t even ‘‘large’’ at all