i'm looking for reliable and fast ssd drive, that will use as my system drive (windows 10).
what should i be looking for?
(500gb is enough)
should i buy usb3 drive or m.2 drive connected via usb3 enclosure? will that be giving me some advantage?
So, a lot would depend upon what USB interface you use. A standard USB 3 connection is a 5Mbps connection. That comes down to a max of about 640MB/sec. Most SATA based SSD's max out around 550MB/sec.....so they can just about fully saturate the USB 3 bus.
The newer spec is USB 3.1 Gen 2. This uses a 10Gbps lane. So, 10,000 bits per second/8 bites to a byte = 1,250MB/sec. You will typically only get 75-80% with USB overhead, so about 1,000MB/sec.
The absolute fastest USB spec today is USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. That uses a pair of 10Gbps lanes, so maxed at 20Gbps. If you do the math 20,000/8 = 2,500 megabytes per second. USB with overhead usually gets about 75-80% of max theoretical speeds, so 2500 x .80 = ~2,000 megabytes per second.
To get the max out of an external NVMe it really needs to be connected via Thunderbolt.
So, to reiterate
Standard Hard Drive via USB 3 is about 170MB/sec
Standard Sata SSD via USB 3.2 Gen 1 is about 500MB/sec
An NVMe via USB 3.2 Gen 2 is about 1000MB/sec
An NVMe via USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 would tap out around 2000MB/sec
The biggest advantage to an SSD is ultra low random access time. You get pretty much the same speed regardless if it's SATA, or NVMe....so the advantage here is the same.
Some M.2 enclosures will accept only NVMe drives. Be careful about that.
I'm using a 500 gb WD SN550 NVMe with a TDBT enclosure. Very happy with it, but it's not a system drive.....data only. It's faster through the USB type C port, but not by much....maybe 10 percent.
About 55 bucks for the drive and 24 for the enclosure.
Just to avoid any confusion... here's the full explanation:
What’s the difference between USB 3.1 Gen 1, Gen 2 and USB 3.2?
my objective to to run win10 from en external drive, and when i plug it off, it will boot from the m.2 NVMe drive which is onboard.
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Thanks for all answers.
my MB is: Z390 GAMING X (rev. 1.0) Key Features | Motherboard - GIGABYTE Global
i don't see any usb 3.2 support here, am i right?
So what will be the best option to external drive on my pc?
I've never found a bootable USB drive with Windows installed to be of much use, not like building a Bootable USB thumb drive from a version of Linux with its USB Image Writer and using an .iso download for the Source [I carry that drive in my pocket when I'm out and about working with clients]. Windows seems to have issues running itself and programs from removable devices. Also, removing a booted drive still requires rebooting the computer, Linux warns to remove the drive then hit Enter to Shutdown or Restart.
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