For everyday computing and lightly gaming I have two drives which I can't make up my mind on. The first SSD drive that I have is M.2. The second drive I have is a SSD. Now is it better to put the OS on the SSD and all other stuff on the M2 or the other way around. I would love to keep everything on the M.2, but then comes the part of it going out on me.
Dan
Not enough info provided. You haven't filled out your specs, so we know little about your hardware.
Typically, the NVMe would be the faster drive and probably where you'd want to put Windows and applications.
But........................other unknown considerations come into play. Maybe your NVMe is too small to hold Windows and all applications. Maybe your SSD is particularly fast. Maybe your motherboard does not support booting from an NVMe drive. Maybe your data will fit on only 1 of the 2 drives. And so on.
M.2 SSDs are capable of attaining high data transfer speeds, but it all hinges on the type of storage interface used. A SATA-based M.2 SSD is limited by SATA's maximum limit of 600 MB/s (megabytes per second). An M.2 SSD that supports PCIe enables specification that reach speeds of up to 4 GB/s (megabytes per second).
All depends on whether M2 is Sata or PCI Express NVMe. If Sata it's a toss up.
The Sabrent Rocket NVMe is among the faster NVMe drives and should easily be faster than the Sandisk SATA.
I'd run benchmarks on both to confirm. And confirm you can boot from NVMe.
But, there's a good chance you won't be able to tell the difference in actual practice.
M.2 is simply an interface so it would depend on the m.2 drive - SATA or PCIe (NVMe). If NVMe drive, that would definitely be faster than either an m.2 SATA or standard SATA port drive.
With that, I'd put the OS on the NVMe drive, and your games on the other drive. With regards to gaming there's really no gains to be had from putting them on the faster SSD drive over the OS.
All that said, it would help to know if the m.2 SSD is NVMe or SATA drive? Also, does your board support booting off an NVMe drive, and thus would help to know what board you have?
Nothing's guaranteed which is why you should always have backups of your most critical data.
Let us know.
PCIe (NVMe) is the drive I'm talking about and as you know it.
Also, does your board support booting off an NVMe drive, and thus would help to know what board you have? Again, you know it doesn't, with all the conversations we have had.
But that's okay with the slaps, I can take it, as God said "Love Everyone".
I was just asking for peoples personal experiences.
May you and your family have a good Happy New Years and let me be the first to say "Have A Happy Easter". :)
I'm not sure a Z77 motherboard supports booting off an NVMe drive so the OS would have to go on the SATA drive, and you'd have to use the MVMe drive as a data drive.
Full NVMe support possible for older Intel Chipsets!
That said, you might check for BIOS updates to see if there's support for NVMe drives. Also, like anything else there may be exceptions; however being this is an HP board, I highly doubt you'll be able to boot off the NVMe drive.
As for "personal experience", my main system (Z390) features 2 NVMe drives - one of which is the OS drive (aka boot drive); my backup system (Z270) also features an NVMe drive OS boot drive. My Z170 board also booted off an NVMe drive.
Will, my z220 motherboard doesn't allow me to, but with a little help, I got a NVMe drive to boot. In fact, I'm using it right now. Now if you would like proof of this, please look at the attachment or better yet, a picture is worth a 1,000 words right?
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