Any thoughts about cheap storage upgrades?

Seems my laptop caught Covid and I need to reinstall Win.10. Again.

I'm really getting sick of redoing Windows all the time and would like to do a dualboot with Linux being my main OS. Currently my machine isn't really configured to best do that.

What I'm currently running is an Acer NitroBE with a 128GB M2 sata and a 1TB HDD. What I'm trying to decide what would be the best improvement for the money. Should I just replace my HDD with a 2.5" SSD, or keep the HDD and upgrade my current M2 drive to a much bigger one?
I'd think doing the M2 upgrade would be better, since in theory my laptop does support PCIe3x4 (or what ever the faster interface is called), but from what I've read over on Acer's site it can be rather dodgy whether it really will work (folks have been having trouble getting their M2 recognized as a boot drive - possibly a Samsung issue). Based on that fact however it doesn't seem like there would be any benefit in upgrading to a bigger M2 sata over a 2.5".
I absolutely want to keep this on the cheap (~$100), considering my laptop is old and probably should be due for replacement sooner rather than later.

 

Well, on the cheap would make me want to recommend a SATA SSD. However, getting an nvme drive may be cheaper in the long run as a lot of new laptops don't even have slots for 2.5" drives. But, you could always repurpose the 2.5" SSD into an external drive, so I say go for that.

Sent from my Pixel 3a using Tapatalk

 

For 100$ if you are in the US you can buy a Sabrent Rocket 1TB m.2 NVMe SSD.

 

@Token CDN HDD is stealing your battery life and arguably too fragile to be tossed around in a laptop. Unless you're using the laptop sitting safely at a desk at all times, HDD has no place in it. If you want to get an NVME SSD, good m.2 SATA to 2.5" SATA adapter that will allow to use your existing m.2 SATA in 2.5" bay costs $4-something.

 

You do make a good point about laptops moving away from 2.5". I was looking at one the other day which had the option to exchange the 2.5" for a bigger battery. I'd absolutely take the bigger battery.

Sadly, I'm in Canada and those go for a fair bit more. The cheapest option on Amazon Canada is ~$130 USD - which I would consider, but the price climbs to $200. At least the higher end models like those could be repurposed later when I get a new machine.

The HDD was Acer's idea, it was the only drive when I purchased. I got a stupid cheap deal on the 128GB m2 right after I bought it, so I stuffed that in for OS purposes. Had the laptop for a few years now (4 or 5) and haven't had a single HDD issue. It really surprises me since my old MSi seemed to eat HDDs.

I did toy with the idea of installing Win10 on the HDD since it's going to be a backup, only used for stuff not Linux compatible. But I still use my old MSi (mostly for a music server) and even though it's HDD is 7200rpm it annoys me to no end using it due to the slow load times - been spoiled by SSD

 

I would opt for the bigger internal SSD/NVME since you can get a 1TB for under $150 with a 5 year warranty and 1700 TBW life span.

I recently picked up a PNY XLR8 CS3030 for ~$86 w/ an Amex MR discount of 40% by using 1 MR point during checkout. Retail was $130 w/o the discount though on Amazon. The drive preforms pretty well after you upgrade the firmware to 12.3 from whatever shipped with it.

It compares with the BPX Pro very closely but the price went up on the BPX to $150 from what I got 2 of them awhile back for ~$110/ea.

If the laptop though only supports SATA and not NVME then you're looking at similar prices w/ 1/3 of the speeds since SATA only supports 500-550MB/s vs NVME up to 3200MB/s. There are SATA options though that aren't too bad in price for the 1TB size as well.

I would opt for the WD Blue @ $105 on the SATA side of things

 

Right now the recently released SK Hynix Gold P31 is pretty much the best PCIE 3.0 drive right now performance wise under various conditions like full drive etc and power draw wise, across many metrics and is quite competitive with others pricing wise ~$130-135 as well.

 

The only "issue" with going PCIe is will it work as a boot drive? On the Acer forums may people were having problems getting Samsung 970s(?) to even be recognized as boot. The laptop does have PCIe3x4, so you'd think it'd work, but… Acer. I'd absolutely have to make sure to buy from Amazon so I could return if needed.
SK Hynix doesn't seem to be available here in Canada.

 

Turn off secure boot for starters and potentially switch from UEFI to Legacy and after an install of the OS convert it to UEFI if you so desire. Disable Intel RST as well if it's turned on...doesn't do anything for a single drive anyway.

Most of the boot issues are how the BIOS is setup

 

Another thing I've been reading which was me wondering is plenty of reports of nvme drives speed throttling due to heat. Bad enough having to deal with CPU throttling…

 

I've used a few different drives and sure heat can be an issue depending on what you have them installed in. Some external enclosures hit throttling temps pretty quickly whether from the material they were made from or the controller they used.

My desktop is using a PM961, my laptop has 2 drives BXP Pro / PNY XLR8 and the all run fine for day to day tasks ~ 27-30 degrees..... The only time they really get toasty though is if I'm moving huge data for sustained periods of time like a drive copy and they'll jump to ~60 degrees or so. I switched enclosures though to a RTL9210 Plugable and that's acting pretty nicely with the drives as far as temps go.

Some of the J Micron / ASMedia enclosures though got pretty toasty even w/o a load on the drive.

If you pop open your laptop to do work pull the heat sink off and clean the exhaust fins of any debris and that should help as well. If the drive is running hot check for firmware updates as Phison E12 controllers tend to ship with old firmware and using v 12.3 fixes most of those issues and the speeds of the drive hit marketing literature after the flash.

Lastly you can get heat sink pads for the drive as well fairly cheaply if it's still an issue.

 

I wouldn’t worry about it, they are designed to adjust performance based on the thermal situation. It’s normal. You can’t expect an nvme drive to sustain 2.5-3.5 Gbps without any heat ouput... They’ll still be faster than SATA drives even in throttled states, unless you have a really bad model.


As for the booting from nVME issue, try to disable secure boot, I don’t think EFI has anything to do with the issue.

It could also be an issue with a specific drive series not working with that model, I know the 970 EVO Plus for example had issues for those making Hackintosh builds a while back for example while the 970 EVO worked.

Another option is a Crucial MX500 SATA drive, it has power loss protection as well, granted not as important on a laptop. I would avoid the very cheap DRAMless SSDs though.

 

This is going to be an unpopular opinion but i think you should keep the HDD but upgrade your current SSD to a bigger drive preferably to a NVMe SSD. Since your HDD is being used a data drive it wont affect performance much at all unless you've programs installed on it. If you want you can also replace your HDD with a 1TB 2.5 SATA SSD since most of them are under $100 these days.