I recently had to borrow my father’s Dell Latitude laptop because I had a work emergency come up while I was at his house and had no other computer. I could not believe how slow it was. I found it to be unusable. I literally could not perform the one single task I had to do because it was just taking so long. When I looked at the system info I saw that it was actually not a terrible computer. It had a 9th Gen Intel i5 processor, which isn’t all that old considering the 13th Gen i5 just came out. It had a nice screen and keyboard, Windows 10 Pro, and 8Gbs of DDR4 RAM.

I assumed that 8Gb of RAM simply couldn’t cut it anymore, although, I have used other computers with 8Gbs of RAM that are still capable of handling everyday tasks no problem. So for fathers’ day I bought a 16Gb stick of Crucial RAM and decided I would update my old man’s laptop so he wouldn’t have to wait 8 minutes for his laptop to turn on and then spend 20 minutes getting a browser to open and load gmail. When I popped the back off his Latitude 3500 I discovered that it had room for two slots of RAM! With this pleasant surprise I decided to keep the the old 8Gb stick in and add this 16Gb stick to bring the total to 24GB of RAM!

To get to the point, this is when I discovered how much a slow HDD hard drive can affect a machine. This laptop has a 1TB old school HDD and it is soooo sooo slow. When I backed that dinosaur up before upgrading it it took almost 15 minutes to transfer <5GB and that was using a Samsung SSD external drive and USB 3.2 USB C cable, which can normally get read/write speeds of up to 1,050/1,000 MB/s. This HDD was chugging along at about 12Mbps.

So dad is now getting a second gift…and SSD hard drive. When I went to buy one I discovered there have been some major advancements in the last decade. I had no idea what 3D NAND or NVMe meant. So I had to do a bit of research and this is what I learned.

 M.2

First off, M.2 has replaced mSata back in 2012. The M.2 form factor is smaller and allowed for laptops to get sleeker and slimmer as a result.

The M.2 form factor is small and rectangular in shape, almost like a piece of gum. Sizes can vary, with possible widths of 12, 16, 22, or 30 millimeters, but they’re generally 22 millimeters wide. Lengths can also vary, coming in 16, 26, 30, 38, 42, 60, 80, or 110 millimeters. Motherboards will accommodate a variety of lengths for an M.2 module to allow for flexibility, while the width is more fixed.

Interfaces [SATA v. PCIe]

 Next I had to understand SSD interfaces. These are the various ways of connecting the drive to the computer.

In general PC building terms, an interface connects two or more separate components to exchange data or information. The SATA and PCIe interfaces are the physical connections that transmit data from the memory storage to the computer. SATA and PCIe aren’t the only available interfaces for SSDs, although they are now the most common.

SATA was launched in 2003, bringing massive advancements to computing and memory storage. In the image below, you can see how a SATA interface connects to your motherboard. The original SATA interface was designed for hard drives, but when SSDs came on the market, they adopted the same interface so users could easily upgrade their storage drives.

PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) is a newer interface that features a smaller physical footprint, meaning it takes up less space in your computer, as seen in the image below. The real advantage of the PCIe interface over SATA is the ability to transmit data on up to four lanes, whereas SATA only has one. When combined with an NVMe SSD, which we’ll discuss shortly, PCIe SSD read/write speeds increase even more than SATA.

PCIe vs SATA

The implementation of multiple lanes for the PCIe connection is one of the most essential features. PCIe uses four lanes for storage devices, resulting in data exchange that is four times faster than a SATA connection, which only has one lane. This provides faster read and write speeds, as seen in the table below -—- meaning faster gameplay, smoother multitasking and a more responsive computer.

What is NVMe?

We know that if you have a SATA interface, you’ll need to connect a SATA SSD if you’re looking to upgrade your memory, but what if you have PCIe?

NVMe (NVM Express™, or Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a protocol designed specifically to work with flash memory using the PCIe interface. NVMe was created to take advantage of the parallel nature of solid state drives.

NVMe SSDs combined with a PCIe interface create unrivaled read and write speeds. However, you can also get PCIe compatible SSDs that are non-NVMe.

NVMe performance

Combining the NVMe SSD and the PCIe connection results in read and write speeds that are four times faster than a SATA interface/SSD.

NVMe complements the parallel structure of contemporary CPUs, platforms, and applications. These parallel structures allow for more commands to flow simultaneously. NVMe uses an optimized path to issue commands and complete input/output, and it supports parallel operation with up to 64,000 commands within a single I/O queue and 64,000 possible queues. Older protocols such as SCSI are serial in nature, with a limited number of commands in a single queue.

The Hard Part–Compatibility

Compatibility is kinda important when choosing the SSD. It can be surprisingly challenging to tell the difference between PCIe and SATA connections by just looking at the slot on the motherboard.

Then I discovered something amazing that saved my ass. I strongly recommend you go ahead and use the Crucial® Advisor™ or System Scanner to find compatible parts. Crucial offers these tools that make it simple by showing you exactly what items will be compatible with your computer and you don’t need to know anything about your computer’s setup.

If you have the option of multiple M.2 slots where at least one supports PCIe, it’s worth considering your secondary slot for an SSD upgrade. When combined with an NVMe SSD, PCIe will result in faster read and write times.

PCI Express SSD

These are SSDs that come in the form of PCI Express expansion cards and are ideal for motherboards that don’t support the M.2 form factor. Other reasons for PCIe Storage can be:

• You don’t want to use your chipset PCIe Lanes for your fast storage
• You want to RAID NVMe Drives to make them even faster or more reliable
• You don’t have room to mount your M.2 Drives because they are too tall
• All your M.2 Slots are already used, but you require even more M.2 Drives

An interesting alternative, especially for that last option that we would recommend to most users in this scenario would be using an M.2 PCIe Adapter.

Tiers of SSD Performance

First up, your standard SATA SSDs cap out at around ~550 MB/s in sequential read and write speeds. This is pretty good, mind- that’s about half a gigabyte per second!

That is the best-case scenario for SATA SSDs, though- and not all SSDs are made equal.

Secondly, your NVMe Gen 3 SSDs! These cap out at around 3.5 GB/s in sequential read and write speeds, and start at around 1.5 GB/s in sequential read and write speeds!

Finally, Gen 4 NVMe SSDs are like the mega ultra top notch shit.NVMe Gen 4 SSDs are like NVMe Gen 3 SSDs, but, …more. Specifically, these cap out at around 7 GB/s at the time of writing!

Gen 4 are actually too much for most people. Unless you have some specific use case you don’t need 7GB/s for editing word docs and checking emails. In my research I learned that PlayStation 5 requires NVMe Gen 4 SSDs with a speed of at least 5.5 GB/s for internal storage upgrades though, so I guess that’s one use case where average people might need to buy Gen 4.

There may yet be room for improvement with this and the upcoming NVMe Gen 5 (PCIe 5.0) standard. Crucial claims that the Gen 5 SSD they are developing now is 2x faster than Gen 4. But there’s actually a different issue that is coming up at this point. NVMe SSDs are getting so fast that they are beginning to require dedicated heatsinks to stay cool enough to keep operating at peak performance. So we all need to chill (literally if we’re using Gen 5 NVMe when it comes out).

I found the below chart on the on cgdirector.com and they have really great information and explain it very well with visuals like this graph below.

External SSD?

From what I’ve read it appears that if you are using USB 3.1 or 3.2 or or Thunderbolt connections then you can get speeds that are reasonably close to what you would get from an internal SSD hard drive.

USB

Almost every computer today has a USB connection, thus making it the ideal interface today when you use your drive on multiple computers or devices. The USB connector your device utilizes directly affects transfer speeds such as type A or type C. Obviously aging USB-A interfaces are slower than newer USB-C. The Crucial X8 portable SSD can reach the following transfer speeds using various connections.

Crucial Storage Executive

Crucial provides a tool that can be helpful for checking the speeds of your SSD’s and possibly speeding them up in some cases (I swear I’m not being paid by Crucial and I’m not some Crucial fanboy or something–they just sell cheap RAM and hard drives). Crucial Storage Executive is a free software tool that helps optimize the performance of your Crucial SSD. You can download it for free here.

If you have a Crucial internal or external hard drive you can use this program to update the firmware, which will make it faster and more reliable. Crucial also claims that if you use this program to enable their special caching that it can 10x your speeds but I haven’t tested this yet. Full features include:

• Enable the Momentum Cache feature and make many SSD operations up to 10x faster
• Download the latest firmware
• See how much storage you’ve used
• Monitor your SSD’s operating temperature and overall health
• Reset your SSD’s encryption password
• Verify your SSD’s model number for warranty claims
• Clear all data stored on the drive

TAKEAWAY: You want NVMe Not SATA

What kind of hard drive should I buy? Which kind of interface is best? How much faster is NVMe over SATA? Which option is the best one?

NVMe is a more efficient and faster method to access non-volatile memory, compared to the older SATA SSDs.

 NVMe drives provide write speeds as high as 3500MB/s for Gen 3 and 7000MB/s for Gen 4.

Gen 4 NVMe can provide speeds that are 7x faster than SATA SSDs and as much as 35x over spinning HDDs!

https://www.velocitymicro.com/blog/nvme-vs-m-2-vs-sata-whats-the-difference/

In 2023 SATA SSDs are now only marginally more expensive than HDDs so let’s clarify that no matter what we should all be using SSD’s. There is no reason anyone should be using a spinning drive anymore. If you want the fastest SSD then you should be getting an NVMe SSD. SATA technology is on its way out now and soon it won’t be an option at least not on any new builds.

You want NVMe.

Another Dimension?!?

I didn’t even get into the extra dimension that I learned about but it is worth mentioning that there is 3D SSD memory now! Yeah…I know.