From nobody Wed Jul 31 14:18:01 2024 X-Original-To: freebsd-arm@mlmmj.nyi.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2610:1c1:1:606c::19:1]) by mlmmj.nyi.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4WYvMf2tDdz5Rygf for ; Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:18:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from 4250.82.44c4b0004c27ad3.2f0d22728746513044f8825a1947398d@email-od.com) Received: from s1-b0c6.socketlabs.email-od.com (s1-b0c6.socketlabs.email-od.com [142.0.176.198]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 4WYvMf16xHz4h0j for ; Wed, 31 Jul 2024 14:18:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from 4250.82.44c4b0004c27ad3.2f0d22728746513044f8825a1947398d@email-od.com) Authentication-Results: mx1.freebsd.org; none DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=email-od.com;i=@email-od.com;s=dkim; c=relaxed/relaxed; q=dns/txt; t=1722435502; x=1725027502; h=content-transfer-encoding:content-type:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:message-id:subject:cc:to:from:date:x-thread-info:subject:to:from:cc:reply-to; bh=x9YMbxkXy9/XhoX6wdVjD2Ml7YAp/ztI2/pIkcdvzDU=; b=dNycOJM+StIF91GOGVy9HRwkez7nR772EHA0fmRPkTipdANlqt6WJIBEvYYXF8U0RVn57ognZa3iPkHIelseNo8mg6FJ5Ty/DvDPUjU5iSGlMbfHpZDbLe5DqZ/yBEC63te854dZthUJqIT1duDw59ghHnTxZYM9ri4J7GC3Rxg= X-Thread-Info: NDI1MC4xMi40NGM0YjAwMDRjMjdhZDMuZnJlZWJzZC1hcm09ZnJlZWJzZC5vcmc= x-xsSpam: eyJTY29yZSI6MCwiRGV0YWlscyI6IltdIn0= Received: from [192.168.63.251] (helo=steve.lan.sohara.org) by smtp.lan.sohara.org with smtp (Exim 4.97.1 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1sZA9R-00000000ICS-3b0Z; Wed, 31 Jul 2024 15:18:01 +0100 Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2024 15:18:01 +0100 From: Steve O'Hara-Smith To: Nuno Teixeira Cc: FreeBSD ARM List Subject: Re: M.2 storage expansion for RPI 4 (and maybe other boards) Message-Id: <20240731151801.9e00f0eeae06979a2d11a93d@sohara.org> In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.7.0 (GTK+ 2.24.33; amd64-portbld-freebsd14.0) X-Clacks-Overhead: "GNU Terry Pratchett" List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to ARM processors List-Archive: https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-arm List-Help: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: Sender: owner-freebsd-arm@FreeBSD.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Spamd-Bar: ---- X-Rspamd-Pre-Result: action=no action; module=replies; Message is reply to one we originated X-Spamd-Result: default: False [-4.00 / 15.00]; REPLY(-4.00)[]; ASN(0.00)[asn:7381, ipnet:142.0.176.0/22, country:US] X-Rspamd-Queue-Id: 4WYvMf16xHz4h0j On Wed, 31 Jul 2024 13:39:48 +0100 Nuno Teixeira wrote: > Hello all, > > From bsdnow I've read about a M.2 expansion board that I'm looking for. > ( https://www.bsdnow.tv/569?utm_source=bsdweekly ) > > The board is https://geekworm.com/products/x862 that it is compatible with > M.2 NGFF SATA SSDs only, not compatible with NVMe M.2 SSDs, so disk should > be choosed carefully. M2 SATA is just SATA in a different package it is no faster than any other SATA drive and seems to be on the way out. It was mostly about making laptop drives smaller. I would avoid it IIWY. M2 NVME over PCI-e OTOH is capable of blisteringly fast speeds, the PCI-e 3 ones serving my /home mirror hit nearly 3GB/s and they're considered slow ones - fast ones claim over 7GB/s (yes bytes not bits). > Currently using a USB3 external SSD disk, should I expect a great > performance improvement? Probably not with M2-SATA - USB-3 is pretty quick. M2 NVME OTOH will beat anything else by a very healthy margin. Things to watch for - PCI-e level and number of lanes needed - make sure the latter matches your slots. The speed will be determined by the lowest PCI-e level and the number of lanes. Most M2-NVME drives require four lanes. - Four slot M2 NVME PCI-e x16 cards usually require a sixteen lane slot with bifurcation support to four sets of four lanes. The ones that don't cram everything down four lanes. - Some M2 slots on motherboards are only single lane - it seems strange to think of 7-800MB/s as slow but that's how it struck me when I met one. -- Steve O'Hara-Smith