M.2 vs NVMe What's The Difference Exactly?

hi welcome to home tech adventure on this channel I give advice and tips on home computers and related equipment many times like today I try to make things that seem a little difficult easier to understand did you know that saying MDOT 2 vs. nvme is a bit like saying Apple vs MacBook stay tuned for the full explanation [Music] MDOT two drives can come in a variety of forms and the name of the form tells you the size a 20 280 m dot 2 is 22 millimeters by 80 millimeters long at least they made that part easy to understand MDOT 2 is an interface standard that can use many different connection and communication protocols such as SATA nvme PCIe and AHCI so the title of this video m2 versus nvme would be better stated as m dot 2 SATA vs m dot 2 nvme or to be more actually exactly precise it would be m dot 2 AHCI SATA vs m dot 2 and vm e PCIe yeah we'll get into the details of all of those different things in just a moment some m dot 2 drives use the SATA connection all use the latest SATA 3 version that's capable of 6 gigabits per second these drives communicate with the computer over the AHCI or advanced host controller interface other m dot 2 drives use the PCIe connection it is possible for some of the drives to use a HCI to communicate with the computer through the PCIe connection a HCI was written for slow hard disks the ahci connection does not take full advantage of the speed available with an SSD so this is not a preferred method to do it almost all m dot 2 drives currently use the nvme or non-volatile memory express protocol to communicate with the computer this protocol was written specifically for SSDs and does take advantage of the speed and parallel operations available to make it for a faster interface therefore an m dot to drive using a HCI we be slower than an equivalent Drive using nvme you can see the relative speeds of the various m2 interconnection types in this table pcie 3.0 times two means two lanes of pcie 3.0 so pcie 3.0 times four would be twice as fast because it uses twice as many lanes SSDs cannot always take advantage of the extra speed offered by a given connection this is especially true of the PCI 4.0 by four connection let's look at some actual MDOT 2 modules and slots but first could you please press the like button on this video also share this with other people that might want to know this information if you like please subscribe because that really helps out the channel to get more subscribers and you can see more of these videos and I really do want you to comment below ask me questions tell me things and stories that you've had experience with on the MDOT two topic let me give you a bit of a history so you can understand things a little bit better starting with this two-and-a-half inch SATA SSD this is the form factor that was similar to the hard disks of the day when they first came out and you can see as technology matured that you don't need the entire two-and-a-half inch area for the little teeny tiny SSD that's inside so manufacturers figured out well boy we're wasting a whole bunch of space can't we just make a form factor that's a little bit smaller the first thing they came up with was this this is an M SATA driver micro SATA and actually it has the same interconnection as this and everything it does have this one happens to be a smaller one 64 gigabyte wears this is a 250 gigabyte but still it is the same type of connection and same type of interface just a different form factor now this small little one normally lives on this particular little teeny circuit board it just slides in like this there's two little screws that I have that I'll put in there and it actually is connected through this little case to a USB and it works very fast it's a real good option if you need a really fast USB Drive and can afford just a little bit extra space it's much faster than most USB drives now the m-dot 2's came along and you can see this is an MDOT 2 and this is the micro SATA so it is a totally different form factor and this these notches I'm not sure about the notches here but the notches on the m2 this is the M and the B notches and that's typical of a SATA Drive pretty much if you see an M gonna be notch it's probably a SATA Drive it's possible it's something else but almost always if it's got the two notches it's a SATA Drive now that this SATA Drive is actually the exact same drive as this one right here that was in the two and a half inch case and I mean exact it's the same manufacturer it's the same size both to Samsung's both 250 gigabytes both SATA connection these would have the exact same performance just connected up differently now if we look at the nvme drive I have here this is also 250 gigabyte this is also made by Samsung but you can see it only has one notch for the most part if you find an MDOT to drive like this with one notch it's going to be an nvme drive again these can vary though so do your research on the particular drive that you're looking at this one actually says nvm you right there so it makes it really easy to figure out but those are two different forms let's look at the slots that the MDOT 2 drives go in I picked this one for an example because it actually has 2 m dot 2 slots the one high one and one low one and the low one and you can see it says Wi-Fi it's made for a Wi-Fi module this is actually a 20 to 30 module 22 millimeter by 30 millimeter module and if I remove it let me just get this little screw out so you can see this has two two little notches and this would be an e key and I think it's a beak here in iki and 1/8 he that's definitely different than the other one and it's made to fit in this little Wi-Fi MDOT 2 slot so m dot 2 can be used for various things the designers who built this particular computer made it to work only with nvme drives it will not work with a SATA drive so if we take our nvme drive here and we wiggle it in there it goes and you push it down you just put in the little screw Oh got it missed messed up on my screwdriver there if we just put in the little screw there we go we have a properly installed MDOT to drive what should you buy if you're looking at an MDOT 2 and your computer is compatible with the nvme protocol I would absolutely buy an nvme drive it really does make sense and in today's market the price isn't that much different from a SATA drive D SATA am twos were a transitional technology and they will be fading away in the next few years having said that though the MDOT two Sada's are still useful I have a home theater PC and the m2 Drive that you saw that was a SATA Drive that I was showing you earlier is the one that's from that home theater PC it provides plenty of performance for that particular PC and if you're doing just ordinary office tasks surfing the web watching movies online l or maybe even gaming the m dot 2 SATA drives should be just fine or even a 2 and a half inch seder remember they have the same performance generally for newer systems I would buy an m2 nvme pcie 3.0 x 4 drive it that's the one that makes the most sense in this current market as of the filming this video now if I was on a real budget or perhaps maybe for some lower power consumption with a light laptop I might choose a MDOT to PCIe nvme did I say that right no okay let's start over again MDOT to nvme PCIe to pull okay let me one last time this is really complicated to say okay one last time so I buy an m2 and the m-e pcie 3.0 buy to drive to save a little bit of money or for lower power consumption some of those are very low power consumption PCIe 4.0 by four drives have been available for a while now the performance gained by that is not right now worth the extra money however the drives have been coming down and cost and they will continue to come down and cost as the technology matures already there's been a few drives where I would actually really consider it because the cost is low enough that it competes with the pcie 3.0 by four drives so look for those PCIe 4.0 drives in the future larger SSDs are faster if you look at a one terabyte drive and compare it to the exact same model of drive in 512 gigabyte size the one terabyte size will be faster than the 512 gigabyte size you should look at these specs before buying an m2 SSD the random read and write performance specs are more important than the sequential read and write performance specs for most ordinary computer uses also queue depth is important q1 means that one operation is requested of the disk at one time this is very typical of most people's computer use q 32 would mean that 32 operations are pending for the SSD at one time this is very unlikely to occur with most people's computer use so it's not as important so when you're looking at these specs look at the smallest queue number that you can find for the 4k random read and write or other random read and write spec that they give on the drive also just to note IAP s-- IOPS means input/output operations per second and that's how they judge these particular speeds higher is better of course sequential read and write performance is only really important if you are transferring very large files think gigabytes in size on a regular basis I recommend that you read reviews for SSDs before or you buy two sites that I really like our tech power up comm and PC Mag comm both are linked in the description I think both do a good job of reviewing the m2 SSDs why don't you continue your adventure here and watch one of the other videos I have listed and as always remember to have fun on your own home tech adventure [Music]

Channel: Home Tech Adventure

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Id: s8rADv_h8XI

Length: 13min 4sec (784 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 22 2019