# NVMe?



## inkjunkie (Dec 18, 2019)

My wife came home from her sewing group the other day with a box of PC stuff. I have no idea about the tail of how/why this happened. Most of the stuff in the box in box was older stuff...or in questionable shape. But there was a new in the box Samsung 970EVO Plus, the 1T one. 
I just got my PC up & running. The MB, an ASUS TUF Gaming X570, supports the NVME drives. I am using an AMD Ryzen 5 3600x processor with 32g of Corsair DDR4 RAM. No over clocking, just the RAM is set at 3200MHz. My C: drive is a Western Digital Blue 1 T SSD. My images are stored on various drives, buy the are all SATA III, 7200 RPM units. Have a case full of 120mm fans, one got very noisy so I ended up pulling moving them around so I could install a liquid cooling set up on the CPU. 
So...my question is...will going with the NVMe drive speed things up any? Like I said, I just got the machine up and running, I don't even have everything installed yet. The NVMe drive was free...and is still in the factory sealed box.....


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## Linwood Ferguson (Dec 18, 2019)

The NVMe drives are MUCH faster if your motherboard supports them; generally there's a M.2 and U.2 option, maybe others.  Make sure the option is native, and not some kind of SATA bridge or you end up net about the same; the drive portion of NVMe is the same speed as SSD, it's the interface that is faster.  And there are several form factor issues (i.e. not just connector but card length).

The question depends on where you put it.  I'd suggest the system drive, as it is likely the busiest if you are already using SSD, and also the place where you may most likely have parallel operations (you cannot keep either one busy with single streamed stuff from any normal application).   Also check if your MB supports it as a system/boot drive.

You could also do something like putting your preview cache, temp, ACR cache, etc. on that -- less trouble to add like that, nothing much to move around.  But not sure you will get nearly as much benefit that way.

Definitely a worthwhile piece of gear.  Mine is Intel, but all my SSD's are Samsung variants, good stuff.


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## PhilBurton (Dec 19, 2019)

Ferguson said:


> The NVMe drives are MUCH faster if your motherboard supports them; generally there's a M.2 and U.2 option, maybe others.  Make sure the option is native, and not some kind of SATA bridge or you end up net about the same; the drive portion of NVMe is the same speed as SSD, it's the interface that is faster.  And there are several form factor issues (i.e. not just connector but card length).
> 
> The question depends on where you put it.  I'd suggest the system drive, as it is likely the busiest if you are already using SSD, and also the place where you may most likely have parallel operations (you cannot keep either one busy with single streamed stuff from any normal application).   Also check if your MB supports it as a system/boot drive.
> 
> ...


Seconding what Ferguson said.  Unless you want to do a fresh Windows install, you will need a utility to migrate your C: drive contents to the new Samsung SSD.  Generally speaking, Samsung provides one with their SSDs.

If you don't already partition your disk drive into separate programs/Windows and data partitions, now would be a good time to do so.  Ask follow-up questions if needed.

Phil


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## Linwood Ferguson (Dec 19, 2019)

PhilBurton said:


> If you don't already partition your disk drive into separate programs/Windows and data partitions, now would be a good time to do so.  Ask follow-up questions if needed.


Or not... This is one of those things like "should I use a filter for lens protection" which you will find is a bit of a religious argument.  I'm a strong opponent of partitioning a single drive into os/data.  It's a tradeoff, like filters.


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## PhilBurton (Dec 19, 2019)

Ferguson said:


> Or not... This is one of those things like "should I use a filter for lens protection" which you will find is a bit of a religious argument.  I'm a strong opponent of partitioning a single drive into os/data.  It's a tradeoff, like filters.


Ferguson,

The main reason for doing this partitioning is that WHEN Windows fails, not IF, you haven't lost your data.  A secondary reason is that it is easier to do a clean install of Windows without having to worry about your data.

Phil


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## clee01l (Dec 19, 2019)

PhilBurton said:


> Ferguson,
> 
> The main reason for doing this partitioning is that WHEN Windows fails, not IF, you haven't lost your data. A secondary reason is that it is easier to do a clean install of Windows without having to worry about your data.
> 
> Phil



I’ve never needed a clean install of Windows. So this is a mute point if you know what you are doing to keep Windows running efficiently.

When you Disk Drive eventually fails, you lose all partitions (System and Data)

Partitions are only required when you need multiple Operating systems. Partitioning CAN decrease performance when you have two active partitions and need to frequently R/W to both forcing the R/W heads to switch between partitions Does Partitioning a Hard Drive Affect Performance? Get Answer!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Philippe Coudé du Foresto (Dec 20, 2019)

Cletus, another reason to separate OS and data partitions is to avoid to saturate the OS partition with data. If you have only one partition, and for some reason, the data fill it, your OS won't be able to start. With a dedicated partition to the OS, you guarantee that the OS won't be affected by too much data.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Dec 22, 2019)

I really should not have brought this up, as it is kind of a religious argument and filled with lots of myths and half truths as well as a lot of truths.  Now that both sides have been heard from, and with apologies for sort of starting it, can I suggest it is likely not helpful to the OP's original question to debate this here, at least unless the OP asks further.


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