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Questions tagged [nvme]

NVMe is a communications interface/protocol developed specially for SSDs.

Communication with mass storage has often changed. From MFM and ESDI to SCSI, P-ATA, SAS, SATA or even directly attached to the PCI-e bus. The standard used in most recent computers often was SATA. SATA is fast enough for classic harddrives but has a relative high overhead. This does not matter much for hardrives which still have to reposition their heads, which takes significant time.

Solid state storage however has no such need and the current SATA/AHCI protocol limits it needlessly.

NVMe is designed to take advantage of the new solid state drive technology, resulting in improved performance.

In oder to boot from a NVMe SSD you need firmware (e.g. BIOS or UEFI) which understands the protocol. Without this you can still use the drive as long as you have the driver for your OS, but you cannot boot from it.

376 questions
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Can you connect an M.2 SATA to an M.2 NVMe port?

As people already know they are physically compatible, you can plug an M.2 SATA (aka M+B key) into an M.2 NVMe (M key). My question is will it work?
unom
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What 68-pin connector is this on my 2.5" solid state drive?

I have a Samsung PM983 2.5" SSD drive but I have never seen a connector like this. Would like to use it but unsure of what I need to connect. Can anyone assist?
Eddie Dunn
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Why is NVMe better than ATA?

SATA M.2 SSDs use SATA on the physical layer and ATA as software protocol for data transmission. NVMe M.2 SSDs use PCIe on the physical layer and NVMe as software protocol for data transmission. I was told that in this question. Of course PCIe is…
zomega
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How to securely erase an NVMe SSD

It's generally accepted that SSDs cannot be securely wiped by writing patterns to the drive, due to features such as wear leveling and over-provisioning, and that the most secure way to wipe a modern SSD is using the ATA Secure Erase firmware…
Hashim Aziz
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Adaptor from NVMe M.2 SSD to SATA?

I am trying to upgrade the storage: The existing storage is a 256GB SSD, model Samsung PM871b M.2 2280, installed on an adaptor to SATA, and I guess it is Next Gen Form Factor. I purchased a 1TB SSD in NVMe M.2, model Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus NVMe…
James
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SSD with write cache buffer flushing turned on is way slower in AS SSD but not CDM

When running a benchmark using the program AS SSD on an NVMe drive, When the second checkbox seen in the image below is unchecked, the drive gets terrible write performance in AS SSD (see first benchmark screenshot below), but not in CrystalDiskMark…
g491
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Are external M.2 NGFF controllers compatible with M.2 NVMe drives?

Are there M.2 controllers, that do not support NVMe? I am trying to understand, if an external M.2 USB controller will work with the M.2 NVMe drives I have. The drive spec says "Supports M.2 (NGFF) drive of any capacity". Does that mean it is not…
Kjensen
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Booting NVMe drive with a bootloader

I'd like to use an NVMe drive paired with a PCIe adapter as main system disk. Unfortunately, I have a mainboard (X79) whose BIOS does not support booting NVMe drives. I was wondering if I can install the system (either Windows or Linux) on the NVMe…
MadHatter
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Why does the nvme ssd transfer speed get decrease while transfering large data?

My laptop has PCIe NVMe 512GB M.2 SSD. And when I transfer data under 7 GB it gives me transfer speed from around 400 MB/s to 500 MB/s. But when I transfer large data like 35GB its speed get decrease upto 50MB/s and sometime it gives 25 MB/s. So I…
user7761585
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Understanding M.2 protocols

(Some things I say in this question are false. Don't forget to read the accepted answer.) First I want to say that there is no SATA software protocol for data transmission. SATA CD drives, SATA HDDs and SATA SSDs use SCSI as software protocol. Many…
zomega
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How to check NVMe ssd with smartctl?

How do you check the health of an NVMe ssd using smartctl on Ubuntu? My laptop, which has a NVMe solid state drive, has been crashing somewhat frequently recently with strange disk read errors. Fortunately, rebooting has temporarily resolved the…
Cerin
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Confusion: What's the difference between SATA, NVMe, M.2, and PCIe?

What's the difference between SATA, mSATA, eSATA, SATA Express, SATA III, NVMe, M.2, and PCIe? I have looked for the answer, and while many website explain the difference between some of these terms, there is none that clearly explains the relation…
user1153411
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Why do NVMe enclosures constantly heat up even when no I/O process is happening?

I was trying out different external Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C enclosures for a 2TB Samsung EvoPlus NVMe SSD. My goal is to achieve high write/read speed but in a portable package, for the workflows specific to my needs. A common problem with all these…
vach
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Looking for smartctl NVMe log error explanation (0xa013 0x8004 and 0x9016 0x8004)

For my 1TB NVMe smartctl -a /dev/nvme0n1 first reported this: Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 256 entries) Num ErrCount SQId CmdId Status PELoc LBA NSID VS 0 129 0 0xa013 0x8004 0x000 0 0 …
Artem S. Tashkinov
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Increasing “number of Error Log entries” on a NVMe SSD

smartd(8) on my laptop alerted me about increase in “number of Error Log entries” on /dev/nvme0 for about 8 each day. The output of smartctl -a /dev/nvme0 looks as follows: smartctl 7.2 2020-12-30 r5155 [x86_64-linux-6.4.0-060400rc4-generic] (local…
Incnis Mrsi
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