Where are all the M.2 SSD's!?

The Samsung XP941 is about the only M.2 worth a damn, and that's hard to come by in any flavor, and still quite high cost. The Plextor M6e is pretty much no where to be found. There a few SATA M.2 drives around, but nothing worth salt really. It's supposed to be the new form factor, why the dearth in product? Not to mention that largest size available is 512GB.

I want to upgrade the SSD to something larger in my Samsung Ativ Book 9 from the stock 128GB but there's nothing available at a reasonable cost.

 

Some of the Samsung notebook owners who needed an M.2 tried the Transcend drives and there have been no complaints about the performance and the idle power consumption has been OK. Crucial also make some M.2 drives but it can be more challenging to tame their idle power consumption.

However, pricing tends to be higher than for mSATA in spite of the drives being basically the same components arranged on different shaped boards. If / when Samsung introduce an EVO M.2 (see here) then that might add a bit more competition to the market.

I'll be holding off from getting a notebook with M.2 until 1TB drives are on the shelves.

John

 

I just need a bit more than the 128GB stock drive in my Samsung. I don't plan on loading it up with a lot of stuff. For some reason I was thinking it was M.2 PCIe in the Samsung, but it's M.2 SATA, which is fine too.

I did read on the power consumption of the Crucial's which is why I have not considered them so far. I have heard Transcend drives are just subpar performers in all areas, but I guess that doesn't matter so much with a netbook like the Samsung Ativ Book 9 Plus.

 

Soon HTWingNut, soon.
SM951 from Samsung has my attention. You need PCIe controller, HM97 chipset or third party controller to harvest its power. But even on M2 through SATA it should be fastest out there. Plus you get speed upgrade when you get a notebook with HM97.

There are some shops selling the drive already, but they are mostly out of stock. Some pop up on ebay every now and then so keep an eye on that site.
Samsung just started mass production so availbility will increase soon. Samsung just started with more production because notebooks with Broadwell are about to hit the market and they support PCIe because they have 9 series chipset.

https://www.google.no/search?redir_esc=&client=ms-android-lge&hl=nb-NO&safe=images&oe=utf-8&q=sm951%20samsung&source=android-browser-type&qsubts=1420832120880&devloc=0

 

M.2 SSDs won't fit in my Alienware 18 right? it needs a different kind of port heh?

 

man. was thinking of getting 8278-s. now the 9772. was thinking of going ahead and getting the xp941 as part of my configuration as it would be covered under warranty because from some mentions i've read that thing gets hot hot hot. blistering performance though. sadly, no hardware encryption and don't know if it is compatible with samsung magician.

i'm actually happy with msata speeds. everything is just so snappy with ssd technology. i think i'm just going to get samsung 850 pro 512's. it's been confirmed there will be 850 evo msata's but no confirmation for 850 pro msata. would be really sad. there still isn't a msata that ticks all my needs except the 850 evo msata but i'd rather have the msata pro if i get 2 2.5" 850 pro 512's. know what i mean?

 

XP941 only gets hot hot hot if you're doing huge sequential data transfers, like dozens of GB's of very large files. I'm not saying it's ideal, but it's a rare occurrence, and if it isn't then best to get a 2.5" SSD for such transfers. For an OS/app/game drive, it will serve just fine.

 

but no hardware encryption. and i would be doing occasional large transfers when i encode video or music and then transfer to the storage drives.

 

Samsung is currently mass producing their new successor to the XP941, it's called the SM951 and reaches speeds of over 2GB/s read and 1,5GB/s write. Also gonna be the same sizes as XP941, 128, 256 and 512GB. The prices we dont know about yet, but there was a dude on eBay pulling this new SSD from Lenovo laptops and selling them. I cant find him anymore. But the prices were around 241$ for the 256GB version and 481$ for the 512GB version. I think the eBay dude was pulling them from Lenovo Thinkpad Carbon X1 3rd Gen.

 

Only if the mobo can supply the drive with enough pcie lanes.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Yes, it will need a PCIe-lane 3.0 for these speeds, if you use it in PCIE-lane 2.0 the speeds are around 1.6gb read and 1.4gb write I think

 

The number of lanes available matters too - x4 vs. x2 is a huge difference - basically half of rated speeds.

 

Indeed, no doubt about these Samsung M2 SSD's were made for the x4 lanes

 

who cares about sequential performance? seriously the 951 might be a tad better on paper than the XP941, but both are imho still worthless cuz they dont bring significantly higher small file size / 4KB performance to the table than high-end 2.5" drives. id wait until the M.2 form factor has REALLY been maxxed out, in my book that would mean:

sequential transfer speeds of 2GB/s read AND write
4K IOPS of 200.000+
no 100C+ temps even under heavy workloads
idle consumption in the range of few mW
nvme instead of ahci compatibility

my take on the current situation: wait half a year, THEN well get some very interesting drives indeed:



just one example please look at those IOPS numbers!

 

jaybee83, I agree with your post, on principle, but to answer your question about who cares about sequential performance?... It's not important until it is.


For workflows that require a fast storage subsystem - the highest sequential performance is just one aspect of achieving that goal - I certainly wouldn't want it sacrificed (too greatly) to achieve higher IOPS at smaller file sizes.