Slow(ish) boot up from M.2 drive...

Hello,

I recently fitted an Adata SX8200Pro M.2 drive in my Dell Optiplex. The main C drive is a Liteon SSD. I’ve used Casper to create a bootable clone of the C to the M.2 (the E drive) and by changing the boot up order in the BIOS the Optiplex boots from the M.2 drive. However whereas I expected a quicker boot the actual boot up time is very similar to the C drive.

For normal computer use that does not involve shifting large amounts of data I wouldn’t be expecting a big speed increase but I ‘did’ expect a quicker boot... I’ve checked the M.2 drive using CrystalDiscMk6 and the drive is pretty fast.

Anyone with any ideas why?

Thanks.

Thanks Plankton.

Perhaps I should have mentioned the M.2 is a PCIe. My system disc (the C) failed a couple of weeks ago so my present system disc is only a few days old and has very little installed, the OS and a handful of programmes.

I know some people don't like clones but they've been my preferred means of backup for years. Drive fails - into the BIOS to change the order of boot and bingo - I'm back on the air! Horses for courses as they say.

Thanks for your input again.

Thanks Plankton.

From the OptiPlex Manual:-

One M.2 PCIe SSD
M.2 PCIe 256 GB Solid State Drive Class 4

M.2 is just a connector that uses PCIe fast lake.
You can attach to it a WiFi card, a SATA SSD or a AHCI or NVMe drive.
It seams your drive is not a NVMe but a SATA SSD on the M.2 slot, so it will have about same speed of a normal 2.5" SATA disk connected to a SATA port.
I have a fast AHCI PCIe card. It's very fast on the benchmark test (1950R / 600W), but I can't see the difference from a 2.5" SSD on daily use (same boot times etc)

Thanks for your inputs.

>>> It seams your drive is not a NVMe but a SATA SSD on the M.2 slot, so it will have about same speed of a normal 2.5" SATA disk connected to a SATA port. <<<

I think I'm right in saying the key ways on the NVMe and SATA M.2 drives are different. My drive is an Adata M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3x4 SSD and only has one slot or key way in the end which plugs into the socket which would confirm it’s an NVMe?

All the buzzwords confuse me but I ‘think’ I’m right...

I’ve run CrystalDisk and the figures seem to confirm the drive is pretty fast.

I thought I could copy the pretty graphics but somehow they’ve been changed to text, the figures should still be apparent though. I’ve included figures from both the SATA SSD and the M.2 drives for comparison.
Firstly the SATA SSD :-

CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 559.282 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 495.998 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 402.687 MB/s [ 98312.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 318.797 MB/s [ 77831.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 224.856 MB/s [ 54896.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 205.829 MB/s [ 50251.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 40.306 MB/s [ 9840.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 84.491 MB/s [ 20627.7 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 25.6% (60.8/237.9 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2019/09/12 9:42:16
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 18362] (x64)

Then the M.2 drive:-

CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 3151.428 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1188.912 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 839.288 MB/s [ 204904.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 664.673 MB/s [ 162273.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 330.610 MB/s [ 80715.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 299.724 MB/s [ 73174.8 IOPS]

The time it took the M.2 drive to clone my C drive would suggest it's very fast - I'm just intrigued why the PC does not boot up any faster...

Thanks for your help - and your patience!

As I wrote on my previous post, a M.2 is just a slot. What you put in the slot will be treated differently depending on the hardware stick.
Basically, there are two types of M.2 SSD:
- SATA SSD. It uses the PCIe lane but it's treated by the MB as SATA and the speeds are limited to 600 MB/s. Windows uses SATA drivers.
- NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) it is much faster. Windows use a dedicated driver, related to the controller it use.

By the CrystalDiskMark, your disk is a NVMe but as I wrote before, on daily use, it's hard to notice the difference from a regular 2.5" SATA SSD.