NVME performance.

So I bought a 1TB nvme drive and put it in usb 3.1 drive caddy.

Been doing some tests. NVME is nominally rated for up to 2400 MB/s but best I can get is aroung 800 MB/s but that is clearly due to power of my laptop, and I am ok with that speed.

However, when I copy (using file explorer) a lot of small files, speed drops dramatically to 30 MB/s.

Again I know this is crappy windows copy performance.

I use robocopy for same with multithreading, I get around 600 MB/s.

Forget poxy emoticons, round corners etc - when is MS going to sort out a simple task like copying files at a decent speed.

I think Fred from Bedrock chiseled out the copy algorithms!

@cereberus -

To really appreciate it you need a true USB 3.2 Gen 2 port.
However, there is overhead.

Otherwise do you have a free PCIe x4, x8 or x16 slot available?

If you do, use this - I have it myself and it screams:

We make parts for IT & A/V professionals that connect, convert, extend, split & switch

x4 PCI Express to M.2 PCIe (NVMe) SSD Adapter - Part #PEX4M2E1

Uses the full PCIe x4 bandwidth and you will get almost full rated SSD transfer speed!

HTH,

Megahertz said:

A NVMe transfer rate is in B/s (bytes per second)
USB transfer rate is in b/s (bits per second)
A usb 3.1 drive is theoretically 10G / 8 or 1250M B/s

800 MB/s is quite good

Specification	Signaling Rate/Lane	Number of Lanes	Aggregate Bandwidth
USB 3.2 Gen 1×1	5 Gbps (SuperSpeed)	1	5 Gbps
USB 3.2 Gen 2×1	10 Gbps (SuperSpeed+)	1	10 Gbps
USB 3.2 Gen 1×2	5 Gbps (SuperSpeed)	2	10 Gbps
USB 3.2 Gen 2×2	10 Gbps (SuperSpeed+)	2	20 Gbps

You are correct - I forgot the USB port was bottleneck - I looked up numbers on a site that mixed b and B
Re. above it is confusing with relabelling of usb standards. According to my pc specs I have usb 3.1 gen 1 (now called usb 3.2 gen 1) which I understand would be limited to 5 Gbps (625 MB/s) but figure shows figures up to 800 MB/s.

I think you are right and I am getting 10 Gbps (implying I have a gen 2 device). so yeah real 800 MB/s out of theoretical 1250 MB/s is pretty good for usb ports.

Incidentally, I did same test on my NVME internal secondary drive, and I got 1950 MB/s top speed (compared with 2400 MB/S) which is pretty impressive.

Nonetheless, the performance of small files is dreadful - that has nothing to do with nvme drive or usb port.

I get great performance using robocopy with multiple threads. Without multi-threading robocopy is just as poor as standard file explorer copy.

Why on earth can't MS improve the normal copy function to use multithreading (ok guessing here a bit but it is not as if they have not already done it with robocopy!)

Compumind said:

@cereberus -

To really appreciate it you need a true USB 3.2 Gen 2 port.
However, there is overhead.

Otherwise do you have a free PCIe x4, x8 or x16 slot available?

If you do, use this - I have it myself and it screams:

We make parts for IT & A/V professionals that connect, convert, extend, split & switch

x4 PCI Express to M.2 PCIe (NVMe) SSD Adapter - Part #PEX4M2E1

Uses the full PCIe x4 bandwidth and you will get almost full rated SSD transfer speed!

HTH,

Unfortunately no as a laptop, but hey my main purpose for the external drive is for Macrium Reflect backups, and a C drive backup to usb nvme takes exactly same time (3 minutes) plus or minus a few seconds as backing up to internal drive.

I create backup on internal nvme and copying it to usb nvme takes 1.5 minutes (450 MB/s) even using file explorer.

So for my needs, speeds are still pretty awesome even when compared with older SSD I used to use - ps what is an HDD LOL.

cereberus said:

Unfortunately no as a laptop...

Arrgh!

Compumind said:

Arrgh!

Still not bad for a laptop

cereberus said:

Still not bad for a laptop

Agreed!