NVMe: was Building a Linux Computer?

[Steve Litt]

Ugh!

If I can't boot off it, I can't really use it. My use case is one
non-spinning drive to host /, while other, spinning drives hold my huge
partitions like /home, /d, /s, and /scratch. Having all executables
and /etc based config come off a non-spinning drive speeds things up
immensely, but I have to boot off that drive. Unless I did some weird
stuff like putting /boot on a spinning drive and ubertweaking grub or
UEFI.

I assume the new mobos with built in NVIe can easily boot NVIe. Perhaps
I'll wait til the next mobo purchase.

SteveT


On Tue, 22 May 2018 15:29:46 -0700
Brian Cluff <brian at snaptek.com> wrote:

> On an older system while you can add a PCI card to the system, in a
> lot of cases you won't be able to boot off of it without motherboard 
> support.  You can get around that by keeping a spinning drive or a
> small ssd or USB crive that actually boots the system and then
> immediately hands over to the root partition on the NVMe letting you
> have your cake and eat it too.
> 
> While a pure PCIe based card  is quite expensive, you can get a PCI
> card that will give you an M.2 slot for around $13 and up.  The nice
> thing about getting the adapter, other than saving some money, is
> that most new motherboards are shipping with one or more NVMe m.2
> slots, so you will be able to carry your drive over to a new computer
> when you decide to upgrade.
> 
> Brian Cluff
> 
> On 05/22/2018 02:50 PM, Stephen Partington wrote:
> > there are a few ways to get an NVMe drive in your system. M.2 PCIe 
> > based drive. you can also buy a PCIe card to mount one as well as a 
> > PCIe card that is integrated. There is also a U.2 which was aimed
> > more towards Server architecture.
> >
> > a x1 slot has a single direction BW of 2.5 Gbps/200MBps and x4 slot 
> > can move 1 Gbps/800MBps
> >
> > so most NVMe based m.2 drives are wired to 2 or 4 lanes. In your
> > case a 4x PCIe slot would be a great deal of performance even over
> > the normal SATA bandwidth.
> >
> > the PCIe cards do have a fair amount of cost added to them.
> >
> > On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 2:30 PM, Steve Litt
> > <slitt at troubleshooters.com <mailto:slitt at troubleshooters.com>>
> > wrote:
> >
> >     On Tue, 22 May 2018 13:57:29 -0700
> >     Brian Cluff <brian at snaptek.com <mailto:brian at snaptek.com>>
> > wrote: 
> >     > For me, I would get a system that can use a NVMe.  They are  
> >     about the  
> >     > same price as an SSD, but make and SSD look extremely slow.  
> >
> >     This is the first I've heard of NVMe. I just read
> >     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express
> >     <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express> , and now have some
> >     questions:
> >
> >     1) Can I replace the spinning platter 2.5" hard disk in my 5
> > year old laptop with an NVMe device? My research tells me an NVMe
> > must plug into a PCIe slot rather than a SATA slot.
> >
> >     2) Do you fstrim NVMe-hosted partitions the same way you do for
> > SSD?
> >
> >     3) When you install an NVMe card in a PCIe slot, what device
> > name shows
> >        up? Is it sd-whatever, or something else?
> >
> >     4) If my desktop has a free PCIe slot, does that mean I can
> > plug in an NVIe drive and use it?
> >
> >     Thanks,
> >
> >     SteveT
> >
> >     Steve Litt
> >     June 2018 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
 
SteveT

Steve Litt 
June 2018 featured book: Twenty Eight Tales of Troubleshooting
http://www.troubleshooters.com/28