NVMe: was Building a Linux Computer?

Stephen Partington cryptworks at gmail.com
Tue May 22 15:50:43 MST 2018


you can still do that, just create a /boot on the spinner

On Tue, May 22, 2018 at 3:37 PM, Steve Litt <slitt at troubleshooters.com>
wrote:

> 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
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------
> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>



-- 
A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from
rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.

Stephen
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.phxlinux.org/pipermail/plug-discuss/attachments/20180522/c4bb037d/attachment.html>


More information about the PLUG-discuss mailing list