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From: Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>
To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Qustions re Dell M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives under Gentoo
Date: Fri, 28 May 2021 16:04:05 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YLEUdbtU+LPEY+Nx@ACM> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YLAJg0W6JdoykbwI@waltdnes.org>

Hello, Walter.

On Thu, May 27, 2021 at 17:05:07 -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   It was nice to have a newer "hot backup" (XPS8940) to switch over to
> quickly when an older machine started locking up occasionally.  Now I
> need a "hot backup" for the newer machine that I ordered last October.
> Dell Inspirons seem to top out at 12 gigs ram, so I'm looking for an XPS
> model in order to get more ram as the bloating of linux continues.  All
> current XPS models seem to have 256G or 512G M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State
> drives in the base configuration.  Questions...

> * do NVMe drives function well under Gentoo (driver issues, etc)?

Yes.  Without reservation.  You need to enable NVMe in the kernel, and
there is a user-level program for doing things to them (like checking
number of reads/writes).  There is no great problem setting up a boot
loader, any more than for any other sort of drive.

> * how long do they hold up (wear and tear)?

I've had a pair of Samsung 500Gb nvmes in RAID-1 in my 4 year old
machine since it was new.  As yet I've had no problems with them.  In
fact, the machine has never known spinning rust.

> * can I simply disable them if I run into problems?

If you've got something to fall back onto, yes.

>   If someone can suggest an alternate supplier to Dell, that ships to
> greater Toronto, at similar prices, I'd be willing to take a look at
> them.

I can't comment at all on that.  I built my machine from components.
The only slightly tricky bit was finding a PCIe card to hold the second
NVMe drive.

> -- 
> Walter Dnes <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
> I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).


      parent reply	other threads:[~2021-05-28 16:04 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 19+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-05-27 21:05 [gentoo-user] Qustions re Dell M.2 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives under Gentoo Walter Dnes
2021-05-27 21:24 ` Michael
2021-05-27 21:35 ` Alarig Le Lay
2021-05-27 22:47   ` Walter Dnes
2021-05-27 23:00     ` Grant Taylor
2021-05-28  2:09     ` [gentoo-user] " Grant Edwards
2021-06-01  6:27   ` [gentoo-user] " J. Roeleveld
2021-05-27 22:09 ` Grant Taylor
2021-05-27 23:45 ` thelma
2021-05-28  0:11 ` thelma
2021-05-28 13:13   ` Walter Dnes
2021-05-28 14:16     ` thelma
2021-05-28 14:36       ` thelma
2021-05-28 16:17       ` Walter Dnes
2021-06-02 20:52         ` antlists
2021-06-03  0:19           ` William Kenworthy
2021-05-28 21:27     ` Walter Dnes
2021-05-28  2:17 ` [gentoo-user] " Grant Edwards
2021-05-28 16:04 ` Alan Mackenzie [this message]

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