[gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Howdy,

I ordered a m.2 stick and a enclosure as I posted on another thread.  I
want some people to look at this and see if I should return it.  The
title says 1TB but I got a 480GB stick.  If I look down at the smaller
print, it says 480GB.  Thing is, I went by the title.  I wanted a 1TB
m.2 nvme stick and the title gave me the info to know it would fit and
was the size I wanted.  I might add, I searched Amazon for a 1tb stick,
not a 480GB stick.  I wouldn't expect a wrong item to show up so close
to the top so Amazon was confused too.  Here is a link. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DQSX3Z76

I was really wanting a 1TB stick.  Would I be wrong to want to return
this given the title is so misleading as to the size?  Price wise, it
isn't a bad deal for the size.  Given some info posted by someone in the
other thread, I'll likely replace this with a Samsung and just hang on
to it for a backup in case I need one later or something.  Part of me
says keep it, order what I really want, the Samsung, and keep this for a
backup since the price for what I got is reasonable.  After all, I
didn't pay the 1TB price.  Other part of me says this is misleading and
not what I wanted.  Returning is a hassle and could even cost me a fee
tho.  It isn't a Prime deal.

Thoughts?  What would you do?  The 480GB is likely big enough for now. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Jack]

On 2025.02.24 13:58, Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I ordered a m.2 stick and a enclosure as I posted on another thread.   
> I
> want some people to look at this and see if I should return it.  The
> title says 1TB but I got a 480GB stick.  If I look down at the smaller
> print, it says 480GB.  Thing is, I went by the title.  I wanted a 1TB
> m.2 nvme stick and the title gave me the info to know it would fit and
> was the size I wanted.  I might add, I searched Amazon for a 1tb  
> stick,
> not a 480GB stick.  I wouldn't expect a wrong item to show up so close
> to the top so Amazon was confused too.  Here is a link. 
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DQSX3Z76
> 
> I was really wanting a 1TB stick.  Would I be wrong to want to return
> this given the title is so misleading as to the size?  Price wise, it
> isn't a bad deal for the size.  Given some info posted by someone in  
> the
> other thread, I'll likely replace this with a Samsung and just hang on
> to it for a backup in case I need one later or something.  Part of me
> says keep it, order what I really want, the Samsung, and keep this  
> for a
> backup since the price for what I got is reasonable.  After all, I
> didn't pay the 1TB price.  Other part of me says this is misleading  
> and
> not what I wanted.  Returning is a hassle and could even cost me a fee
> tho.  It isn't a Prime deal.
> 
> Thoughts?  What would you do?  The 480GB is likely big enough for  
> now. 
> 
> Dale
Although the title pretty clearly says 1TB, right below that, under  
Product Details, it also pretty clearly says 480GB.  My first reaction  
to that was to look for somewhere to select between different available  
sizes, but I don't see that.  I do see some of the descriptions include  
"...and capacities up to 2TB" which does imply more than one size  
available for the model.  If you look at the comparison section lower  
down on the page, the five shown are 480 GB, 1000 GB, 1 TB, 1024 GB,  
and 1 TB.  I wonder why they compare it with 4 other 1TB devices, if  
they didn't also somehow think it was 1TB.  I would definitely call  
this misleading marketing, and would try to return it.  I also note it  
is sold by a third party, not by Amazon, and I have no idea how that  
might affect your chances of them taking it back, although if  
necessary, Amazon might also have something to say about it.

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 11:58 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> Thoughts?  What would you do?  The 480GB is likely big enough for now.
>

Bad title at Amazon. I'd return it myself.

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 1:58 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  I wouldn't expect a wrong item to show up so close
> to the top so Amazon was confused too.  Here is a link.
>
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DQSX3Z76
>
> I was really wanting a 1TB stick.  Would I be wrong to want to return
> this given the title is so misleading as to the size?  Price wise, it
> isn't a bad deal for the size.

I would be absolutely SHOCKED if Amazon didn't let you return this,
with free shipping and so on, since the listing is inaccurate.  Sure,
there is conflicting info on the page as was pointed out, but the
headline says 1TB.  It looks like a marketplace item so they might ask
you to go through the store that sold it first, but if they didn't
make it right I'm guessing Amazon would.  I mean, if they didn't I bet
it wouldn't take more than an email to the right person to have a
really embarrassing post on social media by somebody with a lot of
followers.

That said, it is entirely up to you whether you consider it still
worth it for the price paid and decide to keep it.  Certainly there is
nothing immoral about asking for a refund when you were confused by
the obviously incorrect headline.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Jack wrote:
> On 2025.02.24 13:58, Dale wrote:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> I ordered a m.2 stick and a enclosure as I posted on another thread.  I
>> want some people to look at this and see if I should return it.  The
>> title says 1TB but I got a 480GB stick.  If I look down at the smaller
>> print, it says 480GB.  Thing is, I went by the title.  I wanted a 1TB
>> m.2 nvme stick and the title gave me the info to know it would fit and
>> was the size I wanted.  I might add, I searched Amazon for a 1tb stick,
>> not a 480GB stick.  I wouldn't expect a wrong item to show up so close
>> to the top so Amazon was confused too.  Here is a link. 
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DQSX3Z76
>>
>> I was really wanting a 1TB stick.  Would I be wrong to want to return
>> this given the title is so misleading as to the size?  Price wise, it
>> isn't a bad deal for the size.  Given some info posted by someone in the
>> other thread, I'll likely replace this with a Samsung and just hang on
>> to it for a backup in case I need one later or something.  Part of me
>> says keep it, order what I really want, the Samsung, and keep this for a
>> backup since the price for what I got is reasonable.  After all, I
>> didn't pay the 1TB price.  Other part of me says this is misleading and
>> not what I wanted.  Returning is a hassle and could even cost me a fee
>> tho.  It isn't a Prime deal.
>>
>> Thoughts?  What would you do?  The 480GB is likely big enough for now. 
>>
>> Dale
> Although the title pretty clearly says 1TB, right below that, under
> Product Details, it also pretty clearly says 480GB.  My first reaction
> to that was to look for somewhere to select between different
> available sizes, but I don't see that.  I do see some of the
> descriptions include "...and capacities up to 2TB" which does imply
> more than one size available for the model.  If you look at the
> comparison section lower down on the page, the five shown are 480 GB,
> 1000 GB, 1 TB, 1024 GB, and 1 TB.  I wonder why they compare it with 4
> other 1TB devices, if they didn't also somehow think it was 1TB.  I
> would definitely call this misleading marketing, and would try to
> return it.  I also note it is sold by a third party, not by Amazon,
> and I have no idea how that might affect your chances of them taking
> it back, although if necessary, Amazon might also have something to
> say about it.
>
>


That's my thinking.  To be fair, it could just be a mistake when they
set up the listing.  The title was just wrong for this product.  I
certainly want to notify the seller, Crucial, to the mistake.  They
should fix it.  Until today, the item was sold out but I guess they got
some more in overnight or this morning.  I tend to go by the title.  I
expect that to be the most accurate thing because that is what searches
and everything else goes by.  I've seen this on Ebay before too.  When I
saw a discrepancy on Ebay, the title was almost always correct and other
info was wrong.  In this case tho, it is the title that is wrong. 

At least I know if I want to return it, I have someone else who thinks I
should be able to as well.  Given it is their mistake in the listing, I
shouldn't have to pay any fees or shipping.  If the title was correct,
most likely Amazon wouldn't have listed it in my search results given it
is the wrong size and I wouldn't have ordered it seeing it is not what I
want even if Amazon messed up and listed it.  

I'm am certainly going to notify the seller so they can fix the title
but I'm leaning toward keeping it.  If it was Prime and returns were
free, I'd still likely keep it.  It's not like I'm getting cheated on
the price.  If I paid the price for a 1TB stick, I'd be returning and
making noises about any fees.  It's just not the 1TB I wanted.  Besides,
I could use two of these things, one to transfer stuff from my cell
phone and my sis-n-law's phone too.  I think this will do that.  I did a
duck search, I think exfat for the file system works.  Then I could buy
another enclosure and a Samsung stick to use to back up files I really
don't trust USB sticks with.  Currently, I have three sticks with the
same info I think.  Hopefully at least one will work.  I'm also hoping
that in the event of a fire, the m.2 stick will have a better chance of
surviving the heat in my fire safe.  Maybe. 

Open to different thoughts from others.  Just seeing what my options are. 

Thanks. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 1:58 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>  I wouldn't expect a wrong item to show up so close
>> to the top so Amazon was confused too.  Here is a link.
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DQSX3Z76
>>
>> I was really wanting a 1TB stick.  Would I be wrong to want to return
>> this given the title is so misleading as to the size?  Price wise, it
>> isn't a bad deal for the size.
> I would be absolutely SHOCKED if Amazon didn't let you return this,
> with free shipping and so on, since the listing is inaccurate.  Sure,
> there is conflicting info on the page as was pointed out, but the
> headline says 1TB.  It looks like a marketplace item so they might ask
> you to go through the store that sold it first, but if they didn't
> make it right I'm guessing Amazon would.  I mean, if they didn't I bet
> it wouldn't take more than an email to the right person to have a
> really embarrassing post on social media by somebody with a lot of
> followers.
>
> That said, it is entirely up to you whether you consider it still
> worth it for the price paid and decide to keep it.  Certainly there is
> nothing immoral about asking for a refund when you were confused by
> the obviously incorrect headline.
>


I think the price is fair enough for the size.  I'm thinking about using
this to transfer data from cell phones.  This one would be large enough
to hold my phone data and my sis-n-law's phone data as well.  Likely
several times over.  Basically, I could use the thing.  I just don't
like the confusion of it is all.  The title of the listing should always
be correct. 

I'm still thinking on this. 

Thanks to all for any thoughts. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 2:53 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think the price is fair enough for the size.  I'm thinking about using
> this to transfer data from cell phones.  This one would be large enough
> to hold my phone data and my sis-n-law's phone data as well.  Likely
> several times over.  Basically, I could use the thing.  I just don't
> like the confusion of it is all.  The title of the listing should always
> be correct.

If you're just looking for static storage you can get a USB3 thumb
drive for half that price.  The reason to use an M.2 NVMe is
performance.  If you want a 1TB drive then get a 1TB drive, and I'd
suggest getting one with a good reputation.  It isn't like they're
convenient to swap out.

If you just want someplace to store files you rarely access then get a
USB3 thumb drive - way more convenient.  It won't have the same kind
of IOPS but it will store files just fine.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[eric]

On 2/24/25 11:58, Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
> 
> I ordered a m.2 stick and a enclosure as I posted on another thread.  I
> want some people to look at this and see if I should return it.  The
> title says 1TB but I got a 480GB stick.  If I look down at the smaller
> print, it says 480GB.  Thing is, I went by the title.  I wanted a 1TB
> m.2 nvme stick and the title gave me the info to know it would fit and
> was the size I wanted.  I might add, I searched Amazon for a 1tb stick,
> not a 480GB stick.  I wouldn't expect a wrong item to show up so close
> to the top so Amazon was confused too.  Here is a link.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DQSX3Z76
> 
> I was really wanting a 1TB stick.  Would I be wrong to want to return
> this given the title is so misleading as to the size?  Price wise, it
> isn't a bad deal for the size.  Given some info posted by someone in the
> other thread, I'll likely replace this with a Samsung and just hang on
> to it for a backup in case I need one later or something.  Part of me
> says keep it, order what I really want, the Samsung, and keep this for a
> backup since the price for what I got is reasonable.  After all, I
> didn't pay the 1TB price.  Other part of me says this is misleading and
> not what I wanted.  Returning is a hassle and could even cost me a fee
> tho.  It isn't a Prime deal.
> 
> Thoughts?  What would you do?  The 480GB is likely big enough for now.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-)
> 

If it was me, I would return it. If the title is deceptive, there may be 
other problems with the product.

When I click on the link, Amazon offers similar products of 1 TB NVMe 
M.2 drives for a few dollars more with the links provided below. One is 
$14 more and the other is $5 more. I can not comment on how good they 
are as I don't have any experience with these types of drives.


https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2280-Internal-SNV2S-1000G/dp/B0BBWH1R8H


https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-NVMe-Gen3x4-SP001TBP34A60M28/dp/B07ZGJVTZK

Eric

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Mark Knecht]

On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 1:03 PM eric <eriic1@cox.net> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> If it was me, I would return it. If the title is deceptive, there may be
> other problems with the product.
>
> When I click on the link, Amazon offers similar products of 1 TB NVMe
> M.2 drives for a few dollars more with the links provided below. One is
> $14 more and the other is $5 more. I can not comment on how good they
> are as I don't have any experience with these types of drives.
>
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2280-Internal-SNV2S-1000G/dp/B0BBWH1R8H
>
>
> https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-NVMe-Gen3x4-SP001TBP34A60M28/dp/B07ZGJVTZK
>
> Eric

If Dale cares to search them out there are websites that compare M.2
SSDs for performance.

There are a lot of types of flash memory and they can have VASTLY
different speeds. When
I put together this machine 4 years ago I asked the guys to put in a
second 1TB M.2 drive. I
went cheap with a Crucial. The machine is dual boot with Windows on
the SSST, Kubuntu
on the Crucial.

mark@science2:~$ lspci | grep SSD
04:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Micron/Crucial Technology P2
[Nick P2] / P3 / P3 Plus NVMe PC
Ie SSD (DRAM-less) (rev 01)
05:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Solid State Storage Technology
Corporation CL1-3D256-Q11 NVMe
SSD M.2 (rev 03)
mark@science2:~$

Benchmarking later showed the Crucial to be much slower than the SSST.
The cost wasn't
actually that much less, so 'my bad...'

It sounds like not a problem for Dale's 'copy cell phone data' application

Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 2:53 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I think the price is fair enough for the size.  I'm thinking about using
>> this to transfer data from cell phones.  This one would be large enough
>> to hold my phone data and my sis-n-law's phone data as well.  Likely
>> several times over.  Basically, I could use the thing.  I just don't
>> like the confusion of it is all.  The title of the listing should always
>> be correct.
> If you're just looking for static storage you can get a USB3 thumb
> drive for half that price.  The reason to use an M.2 NVMe is
> performance.  If you want a 1TB drive then get a 1TB drive, and I'd
> suggest getting one with a good reputation.  It isn't like they're
> convenient to swap out.
>
> If you just want someplace to store files you rarely access then get a
> USB3 thumb drive - way more convenient.  It won't have the same kind
> of IOPS but it will store files just fine.
>


I have a few Sandisk USB sticks.  They should be OK.  At least one of
them should be ready even if there is a fire and my fire safe is put to
the test.  One thing about the m.2, it is different.  In a worst case
situation, it may prove very worthwhile to have.  Keep in mind, I put
little stuff like this in fire bags inside the safe.  I've read where it
can provide more protection than just the fire safe itself.  I just wish
I had one for the 5 hard drive cage.  That thing is a little large. 
LOL  Thing is, the USB sticks are hanging on hooks inside the fire safe
door.  I need to put them in a pouch with other stuff as well. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 1:03 PM eric <eriic1@cox.net> wrote:
> <SNIP>
>> If it was me, I would return it. If the title is deceptive, there may be
>> other problems with the product.
>>
>> When I click on the link, Amazon offers similar products of 1 TB NVMe
>> M.2 drives for a few dollars more with the links provided below. One is
>> $14 more and the other is $5 more. I can not comment on how good they
>> are as I don't have any experience with these types of drives.
>>
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2280-Internal-SNV2S-1000G/dp/B0BBWH1R8H
>>
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-NVMe-Gen3x4-SP001TBP34A60M28/dp/B07ZGJVTZK
>>
>> Eric
> If Dale cares to search them out there are websites that compare M.2
> SSDs for performance.
>
> There are a lot of types of flash memory and they can have VASTLY
> different speeds. When
> I put together this machine 4 years ago I asked the guys to put in a
> second 1TB M.2 drive. I
> went cheap with a Crucial. The machine is dual boot with Windows on
> the SSST, Kubuntu
> on the Crucial.
>
> mark@science2:~$ lspci | grep SSD
> 04:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Micron/Crucial Technology P2
> [Nick P2] / P3 / P3 Plus NVMe PC
> Ie SSD (DRAM-less) (rev 01)
> 05:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Solid State Storage Technology
> Corporation CL1-3D256-Q11 NVMe
> SSD M.2 (rev 03)
> mark@science2:~$
>
> Benchmarking later showed the Crucial to be much slower than the SSST.
> The cost wasn't
> actually that much less, so 'my bad...'
>
> It sounds like not a problem for Dale's 'copy cell phone data' application
>
> Mark
>
>


I'll admit, I may create a encrypted partition on the thing with some
videos as a backup.  If for example a hard drive goes bad, or is going
bad, I can power the drives down and just watch videos on the m.2
stick.  Speed isn't a real big deal.  I just want it to work.  Oh, I'd
be more worried about the USB speed myself.  I'm not sure what version
of 3 my mobo has but I suspect the bandwidth will max out on the USB
before the m.2 does. 

I did reach out to the seller.  I thought I was buying from Crucial
itself but turns out it was someone else.  I eventually found a way to
contact them.  I told them about the misleading title and that I would
likely keep the stick anyway.  So far, I got it in the enclosure and
connected.  It shows up just like a SATA drive does.  Now to format. 

I have a Samsung Android phone.  My sis-n-law has a Iphone thing, Apple
type.  What file system is best for both of these to work?  I read exFAT
but other sites say something else.  Anyone else own one of these and
know for sure what works?  For both would be nice. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2907 bytes --]

Am Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 01:02:31PM -0700 schrieb eric:

> When I click on the link, Amazon offers similar products of 1 TB NVMe M.2
> drives for a few dollars more with the links provided below. One is $14 more
> and the other is $5 more. I can not comment on how good they are as I don't
> have any experience with these types of drives.
> 
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2280-Internal-SNV2S-1000G/dp/B0BBWH1R8H
> 
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-NVMe-Gen3x4-SP001TBP34A60M28/dp/B07ZGJVTZK

I admit I am a tech snob: While I don’t buy the most powerful stuff, I 
wouldn’t want the low-end leftovers either. I tend to choose a good 
middle-way between budget and quality. Quality not only means that it 
reaches certain speeds and IOPS, but that it has a good amount of warranty, 
both in years and in write volume. For example, the middle-tier SSDs have 
five years of warranty (at least here on ye Olde Continent). So just going 
by the price is something I would only do if money is truly tight and the 
item is needed urgently. Raw speed is not everything, and you never know 
what you might use the SSD for at a later date.

Therefore, I don’t recommend relying on just the price and on Amazon 
descriptions. Amazon is the Wild West of tech resale; descriptions are 
unreliable, inaccurate, out-of-date. I always prefer a price/product 
comparison site which offers filtering for all kinds of technical 
properties, or actual tech reviews (and not just articles that repeat what’s 
on the package).

In my PC hardware forum at computerbase.de, some of the most-often 
recommended budget NVMes these days are the Kioxia Exceria and the Lexar 
NM790 series. They offer good performance, TLC flash and a warranty of 5 
years and good TBW values. The Crucial E100 and Kingston NV2 for comparison 
only have 3 years and low TBWs.

According to this two years old computerbase review, the NV2 *may* have good 
part, but may not just as well. It’s one of those component lottery series, 
for both the controller and the NAND flash:
https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/storage/kingston-nv2-ssd-test.82579/
(put it into google translate, if you’re interested to read it)

My above argumentation is what I mean by being a tech snob. It should work 
fine in a USB enclosure with light loads, but I find it too low-end as a 
system drive just to save a few bucks.
In April 2022 I bought a Samsung Evo 970 Plus a system drive. It’s not 
high-end by any means (and it wasn’t back when I bought it), but good 
middle-class. It’s only PCIe 3.0, but I wouldn’t notice a difference between 
3.0 and 4.0 anyways. I wouldn’t even between SATA and slow PCIe.

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

Give me your passport, and I tell you who you are.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2112 bytes --]

Am Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 02:44:56PM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> I'll admit, I may create a encrypted partition on the thing with some
> videos as a backup.  If for example a hard drive goes bad, or is going
> bad, I can power the drives down and just watch videos on the m.2
> stick.  Speed isn't a real big deal.  I just want it to work.  Oh, I'd
> be more worried about the USB speed myself.  I'm not sure what version
> of 3 my mobo has but I suspect the bandwidth will max out on the USB
> before the m.2 does. 

You suspect correctly.

The USB 3 family starts at 5 Gbps. All but the cheapest boards have at least 
one 10 Gbps USB, either as USB-A or USB-C. Some at the back, some as a new 
internal connector for a USB-C socket at the case front. Still rare are USBs 
with 20 Gbps. But I think your board was quite a good model, no? I tried to 
find it out by perusing old threads, but they are a bit confusing at times.^^

I found mentions of Asus Prime X670-P and of Asus B550 Plus. The former has 
a 20 Gbps socket, the latter only provides 10 Gbps.


> I did reach out to the seller.  I thought I was buying from Crucial
> itself but turns out it was someone else.  I eventually found a way to
> contact them.  I told them about the misleading title and that I would
> likely keep the stick anyway.  So far, I got it in the enclosure and
> connected.  It shows up just like a SATA drive does.  Now to format. 
> 
> I have a Samsung Android phone.  My sis-n-law has a Iphone thing, Apple
> type.  What file system is best for both of these to work?  I read exFAT
> but other sites say something else.

You need a common denominator. ExFat is a good candidate, methinks, as it 
won’t give any issues with file permissions. Since I’ve never held an iOS 
device in my hands, I have no idea about what FS they support. But the 
answer should be just a short DuckDuck away. :)

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

What is this that roareth thus?  Can it be a motor bus?

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

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Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 02:44:56PM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>
>> I'll admit, I may create a encrypted partition on the thing with some
>> videos as a backup.  If for example a hard drive goes bad, or is going
>> bad, I can power the drives down and just watch videos on the m.2
>> stick.  Speed isn't a real big deal.  I just want it to work.  Oh, I'd
>> be more worried about the USB speed myself.  I'm not sure what version
>> of 3 my mobo has but I suspect the bandwidth will max out on the USB
>> before the m.2 does. 
> You suspect correctly.
>
> The USB 3 family starts at 5 Gbps. All but the cheapest boards have at least 
> one 10 Gbps USB, either as USB-A or USB-C. Some at the back, some as a new 
> internal connector for a USB-C socket at the case front. Still rare are USBs 
> with 20 Gbps. But I think your board was quite a good model, no? I tried to 
> find it out by perusing old threads, but they are a bit confusing at times.^^
>
> I found mentions of Asus Prime X670-P and of Asus B550 Plus. The former has 
> a 20 Gbps socket, the latter only provides 10 Gbps.
>

I started out with the X670 I think but ended up with the B550.  The
B550 had more PCI slots. I needed expansion options.  The AM5 mobo just
don't have it.


>> I did reach out to the seller.  I thought I was buying from Crucial
>> itself but turns out it was someone else.  I eventually found a way to
>> contact them.  I told them about the misleading title and that I would
>> likely keep the stick anyway.  So far, I got it in the enclosure and
>> connected.  It shows up just like a SATA drive does.  Now to format. 
>>
>> I have a Samsung Android phone.  My sis-n-law has a Iphone thing, Apple
>> type.  What file system is best for both of these to work?  I read exFAT
>> but other sites say something else.
> You need a common denominator. ExFat is a good candidate, methinks, as it 
> won’t give any issues with file permissions. Since I’ve never held an iOS 
> device in my hands, I have no idea about what FS they support. But the 
> answer should be just a short DuckDuck away. :)
>

I was sitting here thinking on which file system to try first.  Then it
hit me.  I didn't know if this would work or not, but I figured it
wouldn't hurt to try.  I just took the m.2 stick thingy and plugged it
into my phone.  It popped up and said something about not being ready to
access and did I want to format it.  Well, geeee, why would I want
that????  ROFL  I clicked yes and a couple seconds later, it was done. 
Then came the hard part, the real hard part.  I tried a dozen or more
apps to backup stuff like pictures and such to the m.2 stick.  None of
them would work right.  It was annoying as heck.  I might add, restore
options are hard to find too.  Anyway, I found this thing called File
Manager plus.  I used it to copy the picture directory and then paste it
on the m.2 stick.  My Samsung S9 phone is likely USB 1, maybe 2.  Still,
it was pretty fast.  Took 15 or 20 minutes.  I have quite a few pics. 

For those interested, this is the mount info, which should include file
system info. 


/dev/sdk1 on /run/media/dale/4730-DF8F type fuseblk


If I recall correctly, fuse thingy is for NTFS.  I think anyway.  Maybe
that will help someone in the future if they need to do this for a
friend or something. 

Oh, copying from m.2 stick to my puter hard drive, seconds.  I used the
type C USB port which is likely the fastest and it hit close to
300MBs/sec.  Keep in mind, this is pictures with a few videos.  Small
files tend to be slower.  Still, pretty good.  A lot better than USB 1.0
days. 

For those curious, this is the enclosure I bought. 


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYLDM23M


It is pretty nice.  It is a sandwich type which I think is better than
the slide on types.  It comes with a cable that is USB type C with a
type A adapter attached to the cable in case you don't have a type C
plug.  The adapter is permanently attached so you can't lose it but it
is annoying at times.  I have a caliper that measures depth.  I measured
to see if the thermal pads would make good contact with the enclosure. 
The pads that came with it was a little to thin.  I added another piece
to make sure it made good thermal contact.  I think the piece I added
was 0.5mm thick.  It closes good but can tell it makes good contact with
the pads.  Idle, temp runs at 29C.  When copying larger videos to it for
at least a couple minutes, it rises to 33C and holds there.  That's not
bad at all.  Oh, it has like a little spring mounted ball that holds the
top shut.  When closed, it stays closed.  It actually takes some effort
to open it up.  It also has a small LED for power activity next to the
USB port.  On when powered and blinking for activity.  When I buy the
Samsung stick, I plan to get another adapter like this I think.  I have
another one that I might try.  It is different so easier to tell the two
apart. 

I'm glad I bought this.  It is also helping me to be more comfortable
with data storage and USB.  A long time ago, I had bad problems with
most storage connected to USB.  I only trusted USB for my camera and
such.  It seems USB has improved, a LOT. 

Thanks to all for the info and help.  This worked out pretty good. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

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Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 01:02:31PM -0700 schrieb eric:
>
>> When I click on the link, Amazon offers similar products of 1 TB NVMe M.2
>> drives for a few dollars more with the links provided below. One is $14 more
>> and the other is $5 more. I can not comment on how good they are as I don't
>> have any experience with these types of drives.
>>
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2280-Internal-SNV2S-1000G/dp/B0BBWH1R8H
>>
>>
>> https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-NVMe-Gen3x4-SP001TBP34A60M28/dp/B07ZGJVTZK
> I admit I am a tech snob: While I don’t buy the most powerful stuff, I 
> wouldn’t want the low-end leftovers either. I tend to choose a good 
> middle-way between budget and quality. Quality not only means that it 
> reaches certain speeds and IOPS, but that it has a good amount of warranty, 
> both in years and in write volume. For example, the middle-tier SSDs have 
> five years of warranty (at least here on ye Olde Continent). So just going 
> by the price is something I would only do if money is truly tight and the 
> item is needed urgently. Raw speed is not everything, and you never know 
> what you might use the SSD for at a later date.
>
> Therefore, I don’t recommend relying on just the price and on Amazon 
> descriptions. Amazon is the Wild West of tech resale; descriptions are 
> unreliable, inaccurate, out-of-date. I always prefer a price/product 
> comparison site which offers filtering for all kinds of technical 
> properties, or actual tech reviews (and not just articles that repeat what’s 
> on the package).
>
> In my PC hardware forum at computerbase.de, some of the most-often 
> recommended budget NVMes these days are the Kioxia Exceria and the Lexar 
> NM790 series. They offer good performance, TLC flash and a warranty of 5 
> years and good TBW values. The Crucial E100 and Kingston NV2 for comparison 
> only have 3 years and low TBWs.
>
> According to this two years old computerbase review, the NV2 *may* have good 
> part, but may not just as well. It’s one of those component lottery series, 
> for both the controller and the NAND flash:
> https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/storage/kingston-nv2-ssd-test.82579/
> (put it into google translate, if you’re interested to read it)
>
> My above argumentation is what I mean by being a tech snob. It should work 
> fine in a USB enclosure with light loads, but I find it too low-end as a 
> system drive just to save a few bucks.
> In April 2022 I bought a Samsung Evo 970 Plus a system drive. It’s not 
> high-end by any means (and it wasn’t back when I bought it), but good 
> middle-class. It’s only PCIe 3.0, but I wouldn’t notice a difference between 
> 3.0 and 4.0 anyways. I wouldn’t even between SATA and slow PCIe.
>

I'm kinda the same way.  I rarely buy the latest stuff.  To often, it is
just to pricey.  Drop down a little and save a lot of money and the
performance is almost as good.  I'm the same on this m.2 external
stick.  I don't need the very latest products.  Odds are, my USB is
going to be the bottleneck anyway.  My enclosure will likely do its job
for years.  Even the stick will be fine unless I build a new system with
USB 5.0 or whatever comes next. 

I've read Samsung is the most dependable for SSD stuff and good
performance wise as well.  I'm not saying others aren't good just that
Samsung is what others want to be.  The one in my main rig is performing
very well, especially since I have that massive cooler on it.  Speed
wise, this Crucial is fine.  I just hope it holds up ok.  It's not a
Samsung for sure.  It seems it has a shorter life span, maybe.  Time
will tell. 

If anyone knows of a brand that is better than Samsung say 990 series,
I'm open to the info.  Given they are all fast, dependability is the
biggest thing.  For the one I plan to store in my fire safe, it needs to
be able to sit a long while and not lose data.  I'm not sure how all
that works.  I just can't keep up with all the changes that happen
nowadays. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wols Lists]

On 25/02/2025 04:20, Dale wrote:
> 
> I'm kinda the same way.  I rarely buy the latest stuff.  To often, it is 
> just to pricey.  Drop down a little and save a lot of money and the 
> performance is almost as good.  I'm the same on this m.2 external 
> stick.  I don't need the very latest products.  Odds are, my USB is 
> going to be the bottleneck anyway.  My enclosure will likely do its job 
> for years.  Even the stick will be fine unless I build a new system with 
> USB 5.0 or whatever comes next.

Champagne or Coca-Cola?

New tech generally costs double the price for double the quantity, be it 
hard drive capacity, chip speed, whatever.

Older tech tends to be a similar price regardless of capacity, the bulk 
of the cost is in the packaging and transport.

Hence my name for the two price brackets :-)

Like you, I tend to look for the cheapest Champagne-price stuff I can 
find...

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wols Lists]

On 24/02/2025 18:58, Dale wrote:
> Thoughts?  What would you do?  The 480GB is likely big enough for now.

Dunno about your consumer protection laws, but over here

1) Inaccurate description? Automatic right of return for a couple of 
months. Opened or not!

2) Mail order? Automatic right of return in a resaleable condition for 
about 28 days.

As for return shipping, (1) is at the vendor's expense, (2) is at yours...

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 03:56:49 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:

[snip ...]

> I just took the m.2 stick thingy and plugged it
> into my phone.  It popped up and said something about not being ready to
> access and did I want to format it.  Well, geeee, why would I want
> that????  ROFL  I clicked yes and a couple seconds later, it was done.

What filesystem format was applied by the phone to the m.2 stick?


> Then came the hard part, the real hard part.  I tried a dozen or more
> apps to backup stuff like pictures and such to the m.2 stick.  None of
> them would work right.  It was annoying as heck.  I might add, restore
> options are hard to find too.  Anyway, I found this thing called File
> Manager plus.  I used it to copy the picture directory and then paste it
> on the m.2 stick.  My Samsung S9 phone is likely USB 1, maybe 2.  Still,
> it was pretty fast.  Took 15 or 20 minutes.  I have quite a few pics. 

Depending on the phone OS and its file structure a restorable 'backup' may 
involve more than just the video, photo, music, or message files stored on the 
phone.  It may also include and require some phone database with associated 
metadata.  In addition, such backups may be encrypted.  As far as I can tell 
backups of an iPhone stored on a computer, rather than their iCloud service, 
may not include everything you would want to back up, e.g. emails, ebooks, 
etc.  Unlike when you back up your iPhone to an applemac, on a PC they expect 
you to use iTunes, which of course implies you'd use MsWindows for the task.


> For those interested, this is the mount info, which should include file
> system info. 
> 
> 
> /dev/sdk1 on /run/media/dale/4730-DF8F type fuseblk

Did the phone create a partition, or did it format the whole disk?

What is the filesystem it ended up with?


> If I recall correctly, fuse thingy is for NTFS.  I think anyway.

FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) is a framework deployed by the Linux kernel to 
expose a virtual filesystem for userspace interaction.  FUSE was used with 
ntfs-3g and exFAT, among many other filesystems, before NTFS and exFAT were 
included in the Linux kernel.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Michael wrote:
> On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 03:56:49 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
>
> [snip ...]
>
>> I just took the m.2 stick thingy and plugged it
>> into my phone.  It popped up and said something about not being ready to
>> access and did I want to format it.  Well, geeee, why would I want
>> that????  ROFL  I clicked yes and a couple seconds later, it was done.
> What filesystem format was applied by the phone to the m.2 stick?
>

I was poking around and it turned out to be exFAT.  It seems FUSE can be
more than one thing, file system wise.  I read a little on FUSE but it
was ages ago.


>> Then came the hard part, the real hard part.  I tried a dozen or more
>> apps to backup stuff like pictures and such to the m.2 stick.  None of
>> them would work right.  It was annoying as heck.  I might add, restore
>> options are hard to find too.  Anyway, I found this thing called File
>> Manager plus.  I used it to copy the picture directory and then paste it
>> on the m.2 stick.  My Samsung S9 phone is likely USB 1, maybe 2.  Still,
>> it was pretty fast.  Took 15 or 20 minutes.  I have quite a few pics. 
> Depending on the phone OS and its file structure a restorable 'backup' may 
> involve more than just the video, photo, music, or message files stored on the 
> phone.  It may also include and require some phone database with associated 
> metadata.  In addition, such backups may be encrypted.  As far as I can tell 
> backups of an iPhone stored on a computer, rather than their iCloud service, 
> may not include everything you would want to back up, e.g. emails, ebooks, 
> etc.  Unlike when you back up your iPhone to an applemac, on a PC they expect 
> you to use iTunes, which of course implies you'd use MsWindows for the task.
>

Yea, I suspect backing it up is easy enough, just make a copy.  Thing
is, some phones might allow reading but writing may not be allowed so no
matter the tool, one can't restore.  The biggest thing I wanted, media. 
I'd like to copy my contact list to tho.  May try to find it later on. 


>> For those interested, this is the mount info, which should include file
>> system info. 
>>
>>
>> /dev/sdk1 on /run/media/dale/4730-DF8F type fuseblk
> Did the phone create a partition, or did it format the whole disk?
>
> What is the filesystem it ended up with?
>

It created a single DOS partition and formatted the whole thing with
exFAT  It worked so that was fine with me. 


>> If I recall correctly, fuse thingy is for NTFS.  I think anyway.
> FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) is a framework deployed by the Linux kernel to 
> expose a virtual filesystem for userspace interaction.  FUSE was used with 
> ntfs-3g and exFAT, among many other filesystems, before NTFS and exFAT were 
> included in the Linux kernel.

Is using the FUSE the best way or should I change to something other
method?  It's rare but I try to keep it so I can access windoze type
file systems.  Sometimes I need to try to recover data from a failing
hard drive or something from a windoze machine.  So, when compiling a
new kernel, I always include all the windoze type file systems as well. 
Actually, I enable almost all file systems if I've ever heard of them. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Wols Lists wrote:
> On 24/02/2025 18:58, Dale wrote:
>> Thoughts?  What would you do?  The 480GB is likely big enough for now.
>
> Dunno about your consumer protection laws, but over here
>
> 1) Inaccurate description? Automatic right of return for a couple of
> months. Opened or not!
>
> 2) Mail order? Automatic right of return in a resaleable condition for
> about 28 days.
>
> As for return shipping, (1) is at the vendor's expense, (2) is at
> yours...
>
> Cheers,
> Wol
>
> .
>


I did look, Amazon had a return option for description not matching
item.  Odds are, I could have returned it.  Still, kinda glad I kept
it.  I got copies of my pictures.  After next weekend, there will be a
backup copy as well. 

I recall once when a internet friend lost her Grandma.  They were very
close.  She basically raised the girl.  Then she took care of her
Grandma when she got older.  When I read the Grandma died, I sent a
message to my friend to make several copies of all the pics and such she
took.  She had a LOT of them.  Later she sent me a note and said she
sent CDs with copies of the pics to several family members.  She also
dropped a copy in her safety deposit box.  She thanked me for mentioning
it because she had had a computer fail before and she lost pics.  It
never occurred to her to make copies.  Now, she had copies and couldn't
lose them plus she shared a lot of memories with other members of her
family, maybe friends too.  A lot of times people don't think about the
value of things on a hard drive.  At least not until something goes
wrong and they lose it.  Pictures and videos can be priceless and worth
a lot more than money can consider.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 11:00:08 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
> Michael wrote:
> > On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 03:56:49 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
> > 
> > [snip ...]
> > 
> >> I just took the m.2 stick thingy and plugged it
> >> into my phone.  It popped up and said something about not being ready to
> >> access and did I want to format it.  Well, geeee, why would I want
> >> that????  ROFL  I clicked yes and a couple seconds later, it was done.
> > 
> > What filesystem format was applied by the phone to the m.2 stick?
> 
> I was poking around and it turned out to be exFAT.  It seems FUSE can be
> more than one thing, file system wise.  I read a little on FUSE but it
> was ages ago.
> 
> >> Then came the hard part, the real hard part.  I tried a dozen or more
> >> apps to backup stuff like pictures and such to the m.2 stick.  None of
> >> them would work right.  It was annoying as heck.  I might add, restore
> >> options are hard to find too.  Anyway, I found this thing called File
> >> Manager plus.  I used it to copy the picture directory and then paste it
> >> on the m.2 stick.  My Samsung S9 phone is likely USB 1, maybe 2.  Still,
> >> it was pretty fast.  Took 15 or 20 minutes.  I have quite a few pics.
> > 
> > Depending on the phone OS and its file structure a restorable 'backup' may
> > involve more than just the video, photo, music, or message files stored on
> > the phone.  It may also include and require some phone database with
> > associated metadata.  In addition, such backups may be encrypted.  As far
> > as I can tell backups of an iPhone stored on a computer, rather than
> > their iCloud service, may not include everything you would want to back
> > up, e.g. emails, ebooks, etc.  Unlike when you back up your iPhone to an
> > applemac, on a PC they expect you to use iTunes, which of course implies
> > you'd use MsWindows for the task.
> Yea, I suspect backing it up is easy enough, just make a copy.  Thing
> is, some phones might allow reading but writing may not be allowed so no
> matter the tool, one can't restore.  The biggest thing I wanted, media. 
> I'd like to copy my contact list to tho.  May try to find it later on. 

Have you looked at kconnect?  It may offer functionality you want to use:

https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

You'll need to install an app on the phone.


> > Did the phone create a partition, or did it format the whole disk?
> > 
> > What is the filesystem it ended up with?
> 
> It created a single DOS partition and formatted the whole thing with
> exFAT  It worked so that was fine with me. 
[snip ...]

> Is using the FUSE the best way or should I change to something other
> method?

Until relatively recently MSWindows would only use FAT format for disks up to 
32GB.  Above this size it would use exFAT or NTFS.  Android devs may have 
opted for the exFAT format to allow compatibility with MSWindows OS, used by 
the majority of the PCs.

I expect Android would be capable of accessing any ext* fs, but perhaps 
ownership and access rights would introduce complications.  I don't have an 
Android phone available to experiment with, to know what fs would work over 
USB.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Howdy,

One more update.  I don't really need this right now but as usual, I'll
find a use for it.  I just ordered these. 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DHLFWBQ1  SAMSUNG 990 EVO Plus SSD 1TB, PCIe
Gen 4x4, Gen 5x2 M.2

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYLDM23M  FIDECO M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure, USB 3.2

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C232VDWP  Airfish 2 Pack Fireproof Money Bag

The last one is a fire bag I plan to put it into.  Figured I'd throw
that in too.  May make just enough difference to save the things.  I
started to get the PRO version but it was $20 or so more.  The speed was
a little faster but doubtful it would be of use for me.  I thought about
future use case but then figured I'd want a larger one or one with new
tech anyway, which might be the same price or cheaper.  Basically, I
likely wouldn't see any real benefit.  Took the best deal for me.  :-D

The enclosure is the same as previous one.  I'll put a colored sticker
on them with different colors so I can tell them apart.  Easy enough.  I
figure I will put some encrypted file systems on this one and store some
spare videos and such on it.  Maybe a plain file system with some
important files, like /root or something as well.  1TB will hold a lot. 

I'm glad I followed that other thread.  I feel a lot better about this
method of storage.  I'm also feeling better about USB and storage
itself.  I've been really nervous about that for a long time now.  It's
also pretty easy to copy media from my phone. 

Oh, I put up a bird feeder.  Those little hogs eat a full refill every
day, about 3lbs of seed.  I'm buying 20lb bags of bird seed at a time. 
You should see those things lined up waiting for a nibble.  O_O 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2025-02-25, Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:

> Champagne or Coca-Cola?
>
> New tech generally costs double the price for double the quantity, be it 
> hard drive capacity, chip speed, whatever.
>
> Older tech tends to be a similar price regardless of capacity, the bulk 
> of the cost is in the packaging and transport.
>
> Hence my name for the two price brackets :-)
>
> Like you, I tend to look for the cheapest Champagne-price stuff I can 
> find...

I tend to buy last year's Champagne (motherboards, CPUs, SSDs,
whatever). Sometimes even a bit older.

 1. Once there are one or two newer "Champagne" models out, the price
    of last year's tends to be pretty reasonable. And the performance
    difference is rarely significant.

 2. A year provides time for other people to find the bugs, for those
    bugs to get fixed, for howto documentation to get updated, and for
    hardware feature support to get finished up.

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Monday 24 February 2025 22:48:26 Greenwich Mean Time Frank Steinmetzger 
wrote:

> You need a common denominator. ExFat is a good candidate, methinks, as it
> won’t give any issues with file permissions. Since I’ve never held an iOS
> device in my hands, I have no idea about what FS they support. But the
> answer should be just a short DuckDuck away. :)

I tried exfat on a USB M.2 drive at the weekend. I tripped over soft links: I 
keep a plain copy of /etc with the other tar files for ease of use, and of 
course the run-level entries are all links.

Yes, permissions are fine, but special files are not - not soft links, anyway.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 7:26 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm glad I followed that other thread.  I feel a lot better about this
> method of storage.  I'm also feeling better about USB and storage
> itself.  I've been really nervous about that for a long time now.  It's
> also pretty easy to copy media from my phone.
>

There is nothing wrong with USB3 for storage - it is plenty fast for
hard drives, but agonizingly slow for NVMe.  I have 100TB of USB3 hard
drive storage working just fine on my Ceph cluster.

Really, I think you're paying a huge premium to buy an M.2 NVMe only
to put it in a USB3 enclosure.  If you can live with the latency of
USB3 then a decent quality USB3 flash drive is going to be WAY cheaper
and basically do the same job.  I only use USB3 M.2 enclosures for
utility/maintenance purposes, like imaging an OS drive or doing data
recovery.  If I'm buying an M.2 drive, it is because I intend to
mainly use it with 4x PCIe lanes all the way to the CPU.

If you do need NVMe then the next question becomes consumer vs
enterprise grade.  Those Samsung EVOs are fine for consumer devices -
if you're doing read-intensive work the latest gen ones can give you
incredible performance for gaming/OS/etc.  The gotcha is that they can
only handle short bursts of writes before they slow down, and they
have low endurance by enterprise standards.  They're good general
purpose devices.

For my Ceph cluster all my flash storage is enterprise grade, mainly
for the increased endurance and power loss protection, which gives you
very fast syncing behavior (safely).  That gets a lot more expensive
unless you buy used gear, which requires hunting around.

That said, there is nothing "wrong" with buying M.2 drives just to use
them exclusively USB3 enclosures.  I just think you're paying a big
premium for something that isn't really much better than a thumb
drive.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 7:26 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm glad I followed that other thread.  I feel a lot better about this
>> method of storage.  I'm also feeling better about USB and storage
>> itself.  I've been really nervous about that for a long time now.  It's
>> also pretty easy to copy media from my phone.
>>
> There is nothing wrong with USB3 for storage - it is plenty fast for
> hard drives, but agonizingly slow for NVMe.  I have 100TB of USB3 hard
> drive storage working just fine on my Ceph cluster.
>
> Really, I think you're paying a huge premium to buy an M.2 NVMe only
> to put it in a USB3 enclosure.  If you can live with the latency of
> USB3 then a decent quality USB3 flash drive is going to be WAY cheaper
> and basically do the same job.  I only use USB3 M.2 enclosures for
> utility/maintenance purposes, like imaging an OS drive or doing data
> recovery.  If I'm buying an M.2 drive, it is because I intend to
> mainly use it with 4x PCIe lanes all the way to the CPU.
>
> If you do need NVMe then the next question becomes consumer vs
> enterprise grade.  Those Samsung EVOs are fine for consumer devices -
> if you're doing read-intensive work the latest gen ones can give you
> incredible performance for gaming/OS/etc.  The gotcha is that they can
> only handle short bursts of writes before they slow down, and they
> have low endurance by enterprise standards.  They're good general
> purpose devices.
>
> For my Ceph cluster all my flash storage is enterprise grade, mainly
> for the increased endurance and power loss protection, which gives you
> very fast syncing behavior (safely).  That gets a lot more expensive
> unless you buy used gear, which requires hunting around.
>
> That said, there is nothing "wrong" with buying M.2 drives just to use
> them exclusively USB3 enclosures.  I just think you're paying a big
> premium for something that isn't really much better than a thumb
> drive.
>


I likely am paying a premium but this is also a learning experience,
plus getting media off my phone.  I plan to do the same for my
Sis-n-law's phone too.  She takes more pics than I do.  I'm a bit of a
hermit.  LOL  Those two things are things I've wanted to do a long time. 

Even tho the USB on my phone is slow, my puter USB isn't the fastest out
there either, it is pretty darn fast.  I suspect the biggest slow down
is the small file sizes.  I've watched rsync and such before.  Small
files are just slow to copy.  Still, I'm learning and actually find this
external m.2 over USB setup quite neat.  Also, very large storage space
compared to USB sticks.  The biggest USB stick I've ever bought, 128GB. 
I haven't used it yet.  It just sits on my desk. 

Remember that thread ages ago about a Raspberry Pi and a NAS box?  Those
used USB for the drives.  At the time, I didn't trust USB enough to even
think about spending that amount of money for storage that was over
USB.  Now, that could be a new idea.  One I could be comfy with.  I
could build a Raspberry Pi for a NAS box, a media center hooked to my TV
or some other things.  Like a torrent box maybe.  I've went from
wouldn't trust USB to trusting it a lot more.  That has some value. 

What will I get into next??  What will the next thread get me into?? 
There's progress. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

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Michael wrote:
> On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 11:00:08 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
>> Michael wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 03:56:49 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
>>>
>>> [snip ...]
>>>
>>>> I just took the m.2 stick thingy and plugged it
>>>> into my phone.  It popped up and said something about not being ready to
>>>> access and did I want to format it.  Well, geeee, why would I want
>>>> that????  ROFL  I clicked yes and a couple seconds later, it was done.
>>> What filesystem format was applied by the phone to the m.2 stick?
>> I was poking around and it turned out to be exFAT.  It seems FUSE can be
>> more than one thing, file system wise.  I read a little on FUSE but it
>> was ages ago.
>>
>>>> Then came the hard part, the real hard part.  I tried a dozen or more
>>>> apps to backup stuff like pictures and such to the m.2 stick.  None of
>>>> them would work right.  It was annoying as heck.  I might add, restore
>>>> options are hard to find too.  Anyway, I found this thing called File
>>>> Manager plus.  I used it to copy the picture directory and then paste it
>>>> on the m.2 stick.  My Samsung S9 phone is likely USB 1, maybe 2.  Still,
>>>> it was pretty fast.  Took 15 or 20 minutes.  I have quite a few pics.
>>> Depending on the phone OS and its file structure a restorable 'backup' may
>>> involve more than just the video, photo, music, or message files stored on
>>> the phone.  It may also include and require some phone database with
>>> associated metadata.  In addition, such backups may be encrypted.  As far
>>> as I can tell backups of an iPhone stored on a computer, rather than
>>> their iCloud service, may not include everything you would want to back
>>> up, e.g. emails, ebooks, etc.  Unlike when you back up your iPhone to an
>>> applemac, on a PC they expect you to use iTunes, which of course implies
>>> you'd use MsWindows for the task.
>> Yea, I suspect backing it up is easy enough, just make a copy.  Thing
>> is, some phones might allow reading but writing may not be allowed so no
>> matter the tool, one can't restore.  The biggest thing I wanted, media. 
>> I'd like to copy my contact list to tho.  May try to find it later on. 
> Have you looked at kconnect?  It may offer functionality you want to use:
>
> https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
>
> You'll need to install an app on the phone.
>

That is interesting.  I took a quick peek.  I need to look into that more. 


>>> Did the phone create a partition, or did it format the whole disk?
>>>
>>> What is the filesystem it ended up with?
>> It created a single DOS partition and formatted the whole thing with
>> exFAT  It worked so that was fine with me. 
> [snip ...]
>
>> Is using the FUSE the best way or should I change to something other
>> method?
> Until relatively recently MSWindows would only use FAT format for disks up to 
> 32GB.  Above this size it would use exFAT or NTFS.  Android devs may have 
> opted for the exFAT format to allow compatibility with MSWindows OS, used by 
> the majority of the PCs.
>
> I expect Android would be capable of accessing any ext* fs, but perhaps 
> ownership and access rights would introduce complications.  I don't have an 
> Android phone available to experiment with, to know what fs would work over 
> USB.


I was thinking more about the puter end of it.  I was able to copy the
files over USB pretty fast and it mounted with the little pop up
thingy.  Still, is FUSE the best way to handle this or should it be done
the same way as EXT4?  I don't recall enabling FUSE so I figure it is
enabled by default or something.  It works but should I change my kernel
and software to use something that is better, faster, more dependable or
whatever? 

I doubt I can change the phone tho.  I'm sure the phone picks and uses
the least common denominator.  exFAT seems to fit that purpose and it
does work for most likely ever OS out there, widoze, Macs, Linux etc
etc.  I did find where I could add apps that would allow ext* file
systems but don't see the need for media files. 

Thoughts?

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 10:32 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Even tho the USB on my phone is slow, my puter USB isn't the fastest out
> there either, it is pretty darn fast.

Sure, but it would be just as fast with a $30 USB thumb drive as with
an M.2 drive plus enclosure and all that.

> Also, very large storage space
> compared to USB sticks.  The biggest USB stick I've ever bought, 128GB.
> I haven't used it yet.  It just sits on my desk.

You can get 1TB USB drives.  They're probably comparable in
performance to what you're putting together.

> I
> could build a Raspberry Pi for a NAS box, a media center hooked to my TV
> or some other things.  Like a torrent box maybe.

USB3 drives work fine on a Pi.  Just make sure it is a newer Pi that
actually has USB3 and not an old one which is v2 only.  Also, I think
those Pis only have one USB host, so for hard drives that probably
isn't much of an issue but if you're going to use it for more than one
SSD drive it will start to limit the bandwidth across all of them.

> I've went from
> wouldn't trust USB to trusting it a lot more.  That has some value.

Sure, but you don't need to buy an M.2 drive for that.

All that said, looking at prices, you aren't paying THAT much of a
premium for the M.2 enclosure.  So maybe it isn't a terrible idea if
you don't mind the larger form factor, and can avoid breaking it (I'm
guessing the M.2 enclosure is more fragile than a typical thumb
drive).

I'm actually buying NVMe more for my storage simply because NVMe flash
isn't much more expensive than SATA flash anyway, so might as well get
the IOPS.  I'm still running it over PCIe though.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 14:48:52 Greenwich Mean Time Peter Humphrey 
wrote:
> On Monday 24 February 2025 22:48:26 Greenwich Mean Time Frank Steinmetzger
> 
> wrote:
> > You need a common denominator. ExFat is a good candidate, methinks, as it
> > won’t give any issues with file permissions. Since I’ve never held an iOS
> > device in my hands, I have no idea about what FS they support. But the
> > answer should be just a short DuckDuck away. :)
> 
> I tried exfat on a USB M.2 drive at the weekend. I tripped over soft links:
> I keep a plain copy of /etc with the other tar files for ease of use, and
> of course the run-level entries are all links.
> 
> Yes, permissions are fine, but special files are not - not soft links,
> anyway.

As I understand it neither FAT nor exFAT are POSIX-compatible and Linux 
permissions will not translate across.  Both will acquire the ownership of 
whoever mounts the filesystem - e.g.:

- udisks/GUI will mount them under the ownership of the user executing the 
mounting action in userspace;
- mount command on the CLI will mount them as root.

Any changed ACLs will not survive a remount.

ACLs are possible with NTFS, but they will not translate 1:1 with MSWindows.  
I recall with the ntfs-3g driver you had to add a a file in the root 
directory, or each subdirectory(?), to specify some basic access rights.  I am 
not sure how it works with the in-kernel driver today.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 10:57 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Still, is FUSE the best way to handle this or should it be done the same way as EXT4?  I don't recall enabling FUSE so I figure it is enabled by default or something.

ext4 is a filesystem.  FUSE is a kernel API that can be used to
implement any filesystem.

I'm pretty sure there is a kernel setting to enable FUSE, and it is
pretty typical for it to be enabled.  Lots of stuff uses it.

In many operating systems (with a microkernel architecture) the
equivalent of FUSE is the only way filesystems are implemented.

Usually people prefer to use built-in kernel drivers if they are
available.  There isn't really anything wrong with FUSE, but in many
cases the in-kernel drivers are just better maintained.

It isn't unusual to see less conventional "filesystems" implemented as
FUSE first, since this is more maintainable if you never intend to get
your work integrated into the kernel.  FUSE uses the stable system
call interface, while an actual kernel module has no stable interface
and is therefore more painful to maintain outside of the mainline
kernel.  For example, see sshfs, gzipfs, restic, etc.  I know a guy
who created a novelty "filesystem" that just creates files dynamically
using the filename as GPT prompts.  Stuff like that would never be
accepted into the mainline kernel, but they can be implemented
reliably using FUSE.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 10:32 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Even tho the USB on my phone is slow, my puter USB isn't the fastest out
>> there either, it is pretty darn fast.
> Sure, but it would be just as fast with a $30 USB thumb drive as with
> an M.2 drive plus enclosure and all that.
>
>> Also, very large storage space
>> compared to USB sticks.  The biggest USB stick I've ever bought, 128GB.
>> I haven't used it yet.  It just sits on my desk.
> You can get 1TB USB drives.  They're probably comparable in
> performance to what you're putting together.
>
>> I
>> could build a Raspberry Pi for a NAS box, a media center hooked to my TV
>> or some other things.  Like a torrent box maybe.
> USB3 drives work fine on a Pi.  Just make sure it is a newer Pi that
> actually has USB3 and not an old one which is v2 only.  Also, I think
> those Pis only have one USB host, so for hard drives that probably
> isn't much of an issue but if you're going to use it for more than one
> SSD drive it will start to limit the bandwidth across all of them.
>

Given that I would likely have 3, 4 or maybe 5 drives using LVM, I'd
want as fast as I can get.  At least fast enough that the drives
themselves is the limited part. 


>> I've went from
>> wouldn't trust USB to trusting it a lot more.  That has some value.
> Sure, but you don't need to buy an M.2 drive for that.
>
> All that said, looking at prices, you aren't paying THAT much of a
> premium for the M.2 enclosure.  So maybe it isn't a terrible idea if
> you don't mind the larger form factor, and can avoid breaking it (I'm
> guessing the M.2 enclosure is more fragile than a typical thumb
> drive).
>
> I'm actually buying NVMe more for my storage simply because NVMe flash
> isn't much more expensive than SATA flash anyway, so might as well get
> the IOPS.  I'm still running it over PCIe though.
>

Yea, plus I think this might be more dependable as well.  As was
mentioned in the other thread, USB sticks aren't as good as they used to
be, some of them anyway.  It's one reason I stick with genuine Sandisk
or some other brand mentioned on this list as a known good brand, every
time. 

One of these days, I may be able to set up SSDs for all my videos.  I
suspect that at some point, spinning rust may go away.  Right now, for
bulk storage spinning rust is still the more economical path.  That
could change tho.  I have to say tho, at least the quality of hard
drives hasn't dropped, yet.  The respectable brands are pretty good
still.  They still improving the tech as much as they can too. 

I'm pretty sure you mentioned this once before in one of my older
threads.  I can't find it tho.  I use PCIe x1 cards to connect my SATA
drives for my video collection and such.  You mentioned once what the
bandwidth was for that setup and how many drives it would take to pretty
much max it out.  Right now, I have one card for two sets of LVs.  One
LV has four drives and the other has three.  What would be the limiting
factor on that, the drives, the PCIe bus or something else?  I'm
thinking about adding a card and hooking the drives for one LV to one
card and the other LV to a second card, if I would benefit from it in
some way.  I'd just a refresh on just what limits what.  I been trying
to find the post you made on this but I couldn't find it anywhere.  This
time, I'm going to copy the info and put it in my hard drive info
directory. 

Thanks. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 12:26 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm pretty sure you mentioned this once before in one of my older
> threads.  I can't find it tho.  I use PCIe x1 cards to connect my SATA
> drives for my video collection and such.  You mentioned once what the
> bandwidth was for that setup and how many drives it would take to pretty
> much max it out.  Right now, I have one card for two sets of LVs.  One
> LV has four drives and the other has three.  What would be the limiting
> factor on that, the drives, the PCIe bus or something else?

It depends on the PCIe revision, and of course whether the controller
actually maxes it out.

1x PCIe v3 can do 0.985GB/s total.  That's about 5 HDDs if they're
running sequentially, and again assumes that your controller can
actually handle all that data.  For each generation of PCIe
forward/backwards either double/halve the transfer rate.  The
interface works at the version of PCIe supported by both the
motherboard+CPU and the adapter card.

If you're talking about HDDs in practice the HDDs are probably still
the bottleneck.  If these were SATA SSDs then odds are that the PCIe
lane is limiting things, because I doubt this is an all-v5 setup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions

The big advantage of NVMe isn't so much the bandwidth as the IOPS,
though both benefit.  Those run at full PCIe 4x interface speed per
drive, but of course you need 4 lanes per drive for this, which is
hard to obtain on consumer motherboards at any scale.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 17:05:12 Greenwich Mean Time Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 10:57 AM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Still, is FUSE the best way to handle this or should it be done the same
> > way as EXT4?  I don't recall enabling FUSE so I figure it is enabled by
> > default or something.
> ext4 is a filesystem.  FUSE is a kernel API that can be used to
> implement any filesystem.
> 
> I'm pretty sure there is a kernel setting to enable FUSE, and it is
> pretty typical for it to be enabled.  Lots of stuff uses it.
> 
> In many operating systems (with a microkernel architecture) the
> equivalent of FUSE is the only way filesystems are implemented.
> 
> Usually people prefer to use built-in kernel drivers if they are
> available.  There isn't really anything wrong with FUSE, but in many
> cases the in-kernel drivers are just better maintained.

Unless I'm wrong there is/was a speed penalty when accessing a fs over FUSE.  
Anyway, I was configuring kernel 6.12.16-gentoo today and came across this:

CONFIG_FUSE_PASSTHROUGH

More details here:

https://lwn.net/Articles/832430/

It looks quite promising.


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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 2:00 PM Michael <confabulate@kintzios.com> wrote:
>
>
> Unless I'm wrong there is/was a speed penalty when accessing a fs over FUSE.
> Anyway, I was configuring kernel 6.12.16-gentoo today and came across this:
>
> CONFIG_FUSE_PASSTHROUGH
>
> More details here:
>
> https://lwn.net/Articles/832430/
>
> It looks quite promising.
>

It isn't 100% clear when this will work.  This seems to be about
skipping the FUSE userspace driver to directly connect an application
to the ultimate backing store, but this assumes the kernel even
implements the backing store.  I get that this might often be the
case, but I can imagine that in a lot of FUSE applications there is no
linux-native filesystem involved.

I'm not surprised to hear that FUSE performance isn't great - it just
isn't seen as a mainstream way to mount things.  On a microkernel
there is no such thing as a kernel-native filesystem implementation,
so the kernel maintainers obviously need to optimize for this use
case.  I imagine that they will still have many context switches to
deal with.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wol]

On 25/02/2025 15:04, Rich Freeman wrote:
> That said, there is nothing "wrong" with buying M.2 drives just to use
> them exclusively USB3 enclosures.  I just think you're paying a big
> premium for something that isn't really much better than a thumb
> drive.

Until you get a TV like ours, that DEMANDS a disk drive to hang off its 
USB. I tried sticking a USB3 stick in, and it refused. Hang a bare 
laptop HDD off it, and it's quite happy.

So I'm hoping a M2 in an enclosure will keep it happy ...

(Of course, every other TV I've ever had is perfectly happen with just a 
USB stick!)

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 20:19:18 Greenwich Mean Time Wol wrote:
> On 25/02/2025 15:04, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > That said, there is nothing "wrong" with buying M.2 drives just to use
> > them exclusively USB3 enclosures.  I just think you're paying a big
> > premium for something that isn't really much better than a thumb
> > drive.
> 
> Until you get a TV like ours, that DEMANDS a disk drive to hang off its
> USB. I tried sticking a USB3 stick in, and it refused. Hang a bare
> laptop HDD off it, and it's quite happy.
> 
> So I'm hoping a M2 in an enclosure will keep it happy ...
> 
> (Of course, every other TV I've ever had is perfectly happen with just a
> USB stick!)
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

Some 'smart' TVs won't use a USB drive unless and until they've formatted it 
first.  I've attached a 3" drive in a USB 3.0 docking station and it worked 
fine *after* it was formatted.  Then it wouldn't unmount it, even after I had 
shutdown the TV.  I can't recall what fs format it had used.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 19:18:57 Greenwich Mean Time Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 2:00 PM Michael <confabulate@kintzios.com> wrote:
> > Unless I'm wrong there is/was a speed penalty when accessing a fs over
> > FUSE. Anyway, I was configuring kernel 6.12.16-gentoo today and came
> > across this:
> > 
> > CONFIG_FUSE_PASSTHROUGH
> > 
> > More details here:
> > 
> > https://lwn.net/Articles/832430/
> > 
> > It looks quite promising.
> 
> It isn't 100% clear when this will work.  This seems to be about
> skipping the FUSE userspace driver to directly connect an application
> to the ultimate backing store, but this assumes the kernel even
> implements the backing store.  I get that this might often be the
> case, but I can imagine that in a lot of FUSE applications there is no
> linux-native filesystem involved.
> 
> I'm not surprised to hear that FUSE performance isn't great - it just
> isn't seen as a mainstream way to mount things.  On a microkernel
> there is no such thing as a kernel-native filesystem implementation,
> so the kernel maintainers obviously need to optimize for this use
> case.  I imagine that they will still have many context switches to
> deal with.

From what I read in this paper, the FUSE driver gets the OK from the FUSE 
daemon for accessing the fs directly, instead of having to route each read/
write via the FUSE daemon:

https://source.android.com/docs/core/storage/fuse-passthrough

Perhaps this is some Android specific setup to allow userspace management of 
attached devices and their fs, instead of the wider Linux desktop environment.  
:-/


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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 08:21:08PM +0000 schrieb Michael:
> On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 20:19:18 Greenwich Mean Time Wol wrote:
> > On 25/02/2025 15:04, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > > That said, there is nothing "wrong" with buying M.2 drives just to use
> > > them exclusively USB3 enclosures.  I just think you're paying a big
> > > premium for something that isn't really much better than a thumb
> > > drive.
> > 
> > Until you get a TV like ours, that DEMANDS a disk drive to hang off its
> > USB. I tried sticking a USB3 stick in, and it refused. Hang a bare
> > laptop HDD off it, and it's quite happy.
> > 
> > So I'm hoping a M2 in an enclosure will keep it happy ...
> > 
> > (Of course, every other TV I've ever had is perfectly happen with just a
> > USB stick!)
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Wol
> 
> Some 'smart' TVs won't use a USB drive unless and until they've formatted it 
> first.  I've attached a 3" drive in a USB 3.0 docking station and it worked 
> fine *after* it was formatted.  Then it wouldn't unmount it, even after I had 
> shutdown the TV.  I can't recall what fs format it had used.

As I mentioned, I have a Sony TV. Sony is not known to be customer-friendly 
with regards to openness and Digital Restrictions Management. But since it’s 
GoogleTV, it eats sticks and HDDs alike. I actually have a USB 2 extension 
cord dangling from the back to the front.

I don’t even have to format it with the TV. It will only add all the 
Android-typical directories when I stick in a drive for the first time. The 
only case when I would need to format a drive: if I want to use it to record 
TV onto it. Because then the recording is DRM-entangled to only be watchable 
on that TV.

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

Earthworms can’t bite, because the have a tail at the front and end.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 09:56:49PM -0600 schrieb Dale:

> > The USB 3 family starts at 5 Gbps. All but the cheapest boards have at least 
> > one 10 Gbps USB, either as USB-A or USB-C. Some at the back, some as a new 
> > internal connector for a USB-C socket at the case front. Still rare are USBs 
> > with 20 Gbps. But I think your board was quite a good model, no? I tried to 
> > find it out by perusing old threads, but they are a bit confusing at times.^^
> >
> > I found mentions of Asus Prime X670-P and of Asus B550 Plus. The former has 
> > a 20 Gbps socket, the latter only provides 10 Gbps.
> >
> 
> I started out with the X670 I think but ended up with the B550.  The
> B550 had more PCI slots. I needed expansion options.  The AM5 mobo just
> don't have it.

Well then, The ASUS Prime B550-Plus has two USB ports that deliver 10 Gbps; 
one type A and one type C. The fastest A can usually be made out by having a 
different colour than the rest. The “slow” 5 Gbps is typically mid-blue as 
it has been since the beginning of time. (Plus on the Prime, the fast A is 
grouped with the C in one socket pair).

> I was sitting here thinking on which file system to try first.  Then it
> hit me.  I didn't know if this would work or not, but I figured it
> wouldn't hurt to try.  I just took the m.2 stick thingy and plugged it
> into my phone.  It popped up and said something about not being ready to
> access and did I want to format it.
> […]
> Anyway, I found this thing called File
> Manager plus.  I used it to copy the picture directory and then paste it
> on the m.2 stick.  My Samsung S9 phone is likely USB 1, maybe 2.

It’s typically 2.0. The premium ones come with USB 3 these days. I don’t 
think there are any devices on the consumer market these days that still 
have 1.0, that would be 1.2 MB/s.

> Oh, copying from m.2 stick to my puter hard drive, seconds.  I used the
> type C USB port which is likely the fastest and it hit close to
> 300MBs/sec.  Keep in mind, this is pictures with a few videos.  Small
> files tend to be slower.  Still, pretty good.  A lot better than USB 1.0
> days. 

300 MB/s is ok-ish, but that’s not even SATA speed. Something may still be 
amiss here. What may be interesting is whether the partition is properly 
aligned. If not, this can incurr huge performance penalties. Also, what does 
hdparm -t say? Out of curiosity, what does hdparm say when the enclosure is 
attached to a 5 Gbps and to a 10 Gbps port?

I took my very first SSD ever from my desk drawer, a 10½ year old low-end 
Sandisk 128 GB SATA, sitting in a USB enclosure. Back then, even cheap SSDs 
used MLC flash, which may be the reason why it never “forgot” anything and 
is still snappy. Since I use it as photo backup, it contains the same file 
sizes as your phone copy, so it’s perfect for comparison. The only 
difference is that I use f2fs on LUKS, so no FUSE involved.

I ran the command: "tar cf /dev/null /path/to/SSD/" and saw a transfer speed 
of 390 MB/s.

Then I did the same with my internal 970 Evo Plus, that’s a PCIe 3.0×4. Tech 
reviews back then reached around 2500 MB/s, which is actually about the 
speed I reach with hdparm -t.

I ran the same tar command again, and reached 1700 MB/s. *face of dissapointment*


And this brings me to another nifty tool that I wrote a while back. :D :D
It gives you a distribution of file sizes. I wrote it when I wanted to find 
out the optimal record size for my NAS’s ZFS pool. Because by tuning the 
record size to the most prevalent file size, you can optimise ZFS storage 
efficiency.

For my main photo archive:

File size histogram:
  size <=   count  histogram                                 cumulative size  histogram
     0 B       10  ........................................         0 B    ........................................
     1 kiB     29  ........................................      11.7 kiB  ........................................
     4 kiB     62  ........................................     162.9 kiB  ........................................
    16 kiB    123  ........................................       1.1 MiB  ........................................
    64 kiB     46  ........................................       1.7 MiB  ........................................
   128 kiB    236  #.......................................      22.8 MiB  ........................................
   256 kiB    892  ##......................................     171.5 MiB  ........................................
     1 MiB   3699  #########...............................       2.0 GiB  #.......................................
     4 MiB   6214  ###############.........................      15.7 GiB  #####...................................
    16 MiB  16302  ########################################     116.2 GiB  ########################################
     1 GiB    719  ##......................................      47.8 GiB  ################........................
    bigger      2  ........................................       6.5 GiB  ##......................................

So most files are between 4 and 16 MiB in size. But there is a considerable 
data volume of files between 16 MiBs and 1 GiB, so basically videos or maybe 
some RAWs.


The photo backup SSD is even more unequivocal, as those are photos straight 
from the camera that I haven’t edited yet. Therefore they are all around 
8..10 MiB. I tend to edit photos and save them in JpegXL, resulting in sizes 
between 200 kiB and 2 MiB.

  size <=   count  histogram                                 cumulative size  histogram
     0 B        0  ........................................         0 B    ........................................
     1 kiB     48  ........................................      21.2 kiB  ........................................
     4 kiB     45  ........................................      90.9 kiB  ........................................
    16 kiB     36  ........................................     261.5 kiB  ........................................
    64 kiB     11  ........................................     371.5 kiB  ........................................
   128 kiB      8  ........................................     855.1 kiB  ........................................
   256 kiB     39  ........................................       7.0 MiB  ........................................
     1 MiB     61  ........................................      34.9 MiB  ........................................
     4 MiB    533  ###.....................................       1.5 GiB  #.......................................
    16 MiB   6969  ########################################      57.2 GiB  ########################################
     1 GiB    172  #.......................................      16.4 GiB  ###########.............................
    bigger      7  ........................................      20.8 GiB  ###############.........................

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

“When I get home I think I should have a second-generation chrome book in
the mail.  Just because for some odd reason Google sends me these things.”
– Linus Torvalds

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wols Lists]

On 25/02/2025 21:34, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> I don’t even have to format it with the TV. It will only add all the
> Android-typical directories when I stick in a drive for the first time. The
> only case when I would need to format a drive: if I want to use it to record
> TV onto it. Because then the recording is DRM-entangled to only be watchable
> on that TV.

My new TV (that refuses to RECORD to anything other than a hard drive) 
will happily READ usb sticks. But it doesn't insist on formatting a 
drive to record - indeed I think it formats them NTFS, and will happily 
accept exFAT.

But there's a AES-128 key or something in the TV firmware. so all 
recordings are encrypted using the TV's own key. That's an LG TV that 
uses Web OS.

Likewise, our older Philips TV. That's probably about 10 years old, the 
USB stick is formatted ?FAT32?, and it will quite happily record to it, 
but the recordings are not visible to a (windows) computer. I haven't 
dug any deeper yet. I guess that's Philip's own OS.

And our JVC TV - again about 10 years and their own OS - just records 
unencrypted to FAT or exFAT USB stick.

So the LG is the only one that won't record to a stick. But WebOS seems 
to be the in thing nowadays - JVC has gone over to it too, along with 
others. I hope recording to hard drive isn't becoming universal.

If you can root your tv, though, you can get at the AES key, and there's 
a utility that will decode the recordings. It's linux-based ...

What I want though, if anybody knows, is an app that will share the USB 
drive on the network so I can copy my own stuff to it without faffing 
about taking it off, putting it on a laptop, transferring and putting it 
back. But Google seems to think "sharing" and "casting" mean the same 
thing, assumes everything is Android, and can't tell the difference 
between "sending" and "receiving".

In other words, if you're not a lemming Google doesn't have a clue what 
you're talking about ...

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 12:26 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm pretty sure you mentioned this once before in one of my older
>> threads.  I can't find it tho.  I use PCIe x1 cards to connect my SATA
>> drives for my video collection and such.  You mentioned once what the
>> bandwidth was for that setup and how many drives it would take to pretty
>> much max it out.  Right now, I have one card for two sets of LVs.  One
>> LV has four drives and the other has three.  What would be the limiting
>> factor on that, the drives, the PCIe bus or something else?
> It depends on the PCIe revision, and of course whether the controller
> actually maxes it out.
>
> 1x PCIe v3 can do 0.985GB/s total.  That's about 5 HDDs if they're
> running sequentially, and again assumes that your controller can
> actually handle all that data.  For each generation of PCIe
> forward/backwards either double/halve the transfer rate.  The
> interface works at the version of PCIe supported by both the
> motherboard+CPU and the adapter card.
>
> If you're talking about HDDs in practice the HDDs are probably still
> the bottleneck.  If these were SATA SSDs then odds are that the PCIe
> lane is limiting things, because I doubt this is an all-v5 setup.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions
>
> The big advantage of NVMe isn't so much the bandwidth as the IOPS,
> though both benefit.  Those run at full PCIe 4x interface speed per
> drive, but of course you need 4 lanes per drive for this, which is
> hard to obtain on consumer motherboards at any scale.
>


This I think is what I needed.  As it is, I'm most likely not maxing
anything out, yet.  The drives for Data, torrent stuff, stays pretty
busy.  Mostly reading.  My other set of drives, videos, isn't to busy
most of the time.  A few MBs/sec or something, playing videos type
reading.  Still, next time I power down, I may stick that second card in
and divide things up a bit.  Might benefit if those cards aren't to great. 

I did copy this info and stuck in in a text file so I don't have to dig
for it again, or ask again.  ;-) 

Thanks.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Wednesday, 26 February 2025 14:43:41 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
> Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 12:26 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I'm pretty sure you mentioned this once before in one of my older
> >> threads.  I can't find it tho.  I use PCIe x1 cards to connect my SATA
> >> drives for my video collection and such.  You mentioned once what the
> >> bandwidth was for that setup and how many drives it would take to pretty
> >> much max it out.  Right now, I have one card for two sets of LVs.  One
> >> LV has four drives and the other has three.  What would be the limiting
> >> factor on that, the drives, the PCIe bus or something else?
> > 
> > It depends on the PCIe revision, and of course whether the controller
> > actually maxes it out.
> > 
> > 1x PCIe v3 can do 0.985GB/s total.  That's about 5 HDDs if they're
> > running sequentially, and again assumes that your controller can
> > actually handle all that data.  For each generation of PCIe
> > forward/backwards either double/halve the transfer rate.  The
> > interface works at the version of PCIe supported by both the
> > motherboard+CPU and the adapter card.
> > 
> > If you're talking about HDDs in practice the HDDs are probably still
> > the bottleneck.  If these were SATA SSDs then odds are that the PCIe
> > lane is limiting things, because I doubt this is an all-v5 setup.
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions
> > 
> > The big advantage of NVMe isn't so much the bandwidth as the IOPS,
> > though both benefit.  Those run at full PCIe 4x interface speed per
> > drive, but of course you need 4 lanes per drive for this, which is
> > hard to obtain on consumer motherboards at any scale.
> 
> This I think is what I needed.  As it is, I'm most likely not maxing
> anything out, yet.  The drives for Data, torrent stuff, stays pretty
> busy.  Mostly reading.  My other set of drives, videos, isn't to busy
> most of the time.  A few MBs/sec or something, playing videos type
> reading.  Still, next time I power down, I may stick that second card in
> and divide things up a bit.  Might benefit if those cards aren't to great. 
> 
> I did copy this info and stuck in in a text file so I don't have to dig
> for it again, or ask again.  ;-) 
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 

The other thing to straighten out, already hinted at by Rich et al., is an 
NVMe M.2 card in a USB 3 enclosure won't be able to maximise its SSD transfer 
rates.  To do this it will require a Thunderbolt connector and a corresponding 
Thenderbolt PC port, which will connect it internally to the computer's PCIe 
bus, rather than USB/SATA.  Hence a previous comment questioning the perceived 
value of paying for a NVMe SSD M.2 form factor within a USB enclosure.  It 
won't really derive much if any performance benefit compared to a *good* 
quality USB 3 flash drive (UFD), which can be sourced at a much lower price 
point.

External storage medium, transfer protocol, device controller, PC bus and 
cables/connectors/ports, will all have to have aligned generations of 
technology and standards, if you expect to make most of their advertised 
transfer speeds.  Otherwise you'll be stuck at some component of a lower 
performance providing a bottleneck to your aspirations.  ;-)

Sometime ago I bought a SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable SSD, which has a USB-C 
connector and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller as a replacement for a flaky USB 3.0 
stick.  It is slightly bigger than a small UFD and more expensive than the 
cheaper UFD offerings, but the faster speeds more than compensate for it.  At 
the time I bought it, external NVMe M.2 drives were too expensive and I only 
had USB 3.0 ports anyway.  So in my use case it was offering the best bang for 
my buck.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Tuesday, 25 February 2025 21:34:11 Greenwich Mean Time Frank Steinmetzger 
wrote:
> Am Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 08:21:08PM +0000 schrieb Michael:

> > Some 'smart' TVs won't use a USB drive unless and until they've formatted
> > it first.  I've attached a 3" drive in a USB 3.0 docking station and it
> > worked fine *after* it was formatted.  Then it wouldn't unmount it, even
> > after I had shutdown the TV.  I can't recall what fs format it had used.
> 
> As I mentioned, I have a Sony TV. Sony is not known to be customer-friendly
> with regards to openness and Digital Restrictions Management. But since it’s
> GoogleTV, it eats sticks and HDDs alike. I actually have a USB 2 extension
> cord dangling from the back to the front.
> 
> I don’t even have to format it with the TV. It will only add all the
> Android-typical directories when I stick in a drive for the first time. The
> only case when I would need to format a drive: if I want to use it to record
> TV onto it. Because then the recording is DRM-entangled to only be
> watchable on that TV.

Yes, this ^^^^.

I had forgotten the formatting was related to also adding encryption to 
protect DRM content.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Wednesday, 26 February 2025 07:52:27 Greenwich Mean Time Wols Lists wrote:

> What I want though, if anybody knows, is an app that will share the USB
> drive on the network so I can copy my own stuff to it without faffing
> about taking it off, putting it on a laptop, transferring and putting it
> back. But Google seems to think "sharing" and "casting" mean the same
> thing, assumes everything is Android, and can't tell the difference
> between "sending" and "receiving".
> 
> In other words, if you're not a lemming Google doesn't have a clue what
> you're talking about ...
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

Smart TVs, STBs, etc. tend to have a DLNA client, which should be able to 
stream content from your home DLNA server/PVR box.  Some also work with SAMBA 
and perhaps NFS?

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wol]

On 26/02/2025 16:44, Michael wrote:
> Smart TVs, STBs, etc. tend to have a DLNA client, which should be able to
> stream content from your home DLNA server/PVR box.  Some also work with SAMBA
> and perhaps NFS?

Which doesn't sound like what I'm looking for at all ... do you mean I 
can run the DLNA client on the TV, connect to the network, and PLAY any 
media files I find? Which is no use whatsoever when I go away with my 
portable TV and don't have access to my home network.

I want a SERVER running on the TV, so I can - on my laptop! - "mount 
//TV/USB-drive/A", and copy stuff FROM my laptop TO the USB, while it's 
physically connected to the TV!

Especially if I've got 2 terabytes of hard drive physically attached to 
the TV, I don't want to have to keep on disconnecting/reconnecting the 
disk to copy stuff on to it.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 1:03 PM Wol <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
>
> I want a SERVER running on the TV, so I can - on my laptop! - "mount
> //TV/USB-drive/A", and copy stuff FROM my laptop TO the USB, while it's
> physically connected to the TV!
>
> Especially if I've got 2 terabytes of hard drive physically attached to
> the TV, I don't want to have to keep on disconnecting/reconnecting the
> disk to copy stuff on to it.

I think it makes way more sense to just host a media server of some
sort on Linux and point everything to it, rather than try to turn a TV
running some proprietary smart TV OS into one.

If you're running Jellyfin or Plex or whatever on Linux, then adding
media to it is basically the same as putting any other sort of file
onto a linux box.  You have ssh, samba, nfs, various web applications,
etc.  You could just run it on a Pi though the performance wouldn't be
great (probably would beat the performance of using a smart TV as a
file server though).

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wol]

On 26/02/2025 18:05, Rich Freeman wrote:
> I think it makes way more sense to just host a media server of some
> sort on Linux and point everything to it, rather than try to turn a TV
> running some proprietary smart TV OS into one.

And where do I put that media server? How do I power it? Why do I want 
the hassle of another computer? It might only be a few watts, but when 
I'm relying on a 100W solar panel for EVERYTHING, its watts I don't want 
to spend.

And anyway, I'm not trying to turn a tv with a proprietary OS into a 
media server. First off, the tv is running linux, and secondly all I am 
(and want to) doing is putting media files on a USB stick attached to 
the tv. Which is standard behaviour pretty much encouraged by all smart tvs!

So the SIMPLEST solution is just sneakernet - disconnect the usb, plug 
it into the laptop and copy the files, disconnect it again and plug it 
back into the tv.

All I want to do is avoid the hassle (and possible damage) of having to 
repeatedly unplug and replug the USB.

If I *HAD* to do something like you suggest, I'd stick a pi in one of 
those cases you screw into the back of a tv, and just use the tv to 
display the pi screen. But that's more hassle than I want, as opposed to 
just putting a samba server or similar as an app on the tv.

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 1:42 PM Wol <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On 26/02/2025 18:05, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > I think it makes way more sense to just host a media server of some
> > sort on Linux and point everything to it, rather than try to turn a TV
> > running some proprietary smart TV OS into one.
>
> And where do I put that media server? How do I power it? Why do I want
> the hassle of another computer? It might only be a few watts, but when
> I'm relying on a 100W solar panel for EVERYTHING, its watts I don't want
> to spend.

Well, obviously I'm not familiar with your particular application.  I
let kubernetes figure out where to run the media server, but I'm not
sure I'd be running a cluster on a 100W solar panel.  (Not that you
can't run k3s on a Pi.)

> And anyway, I'm not trying to turn a tv with a proprietary OS into a
> media server. First off, the tv is running linux, and secondly all I am
> (and want to) doing is putting media files on a USB stick attached to
> the tv. Which is standard behaviour pretty much encouraged by all smart tvs!

You can of course do things however you want, and if you're really
reduced to the bare minimum of computing more power to you getting it
to work.

I'm just saying that in general it is going to be way easier to get a
TV to connect to a media server, than to turn it into one without a
lot of limitations.

--
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wols Lists]

On 26/02/2025 19:26, Rich Freeman wrote:
> I'm just saying that in general it is going to be way easier to get a
> TV to connect to a media server, than to turn it into one without a
> lot of limitations.

And you're doing what Google is doing - reading far more into what I 
want to do, and not actually understanding the problem.

It is BOG STANDARD functionality for TVs nowadays to play media files 
off a USB stick that is plugged into the TV. The TV in question COMES 
with a version of linux.

All I want to do is to get mp3/mp4 files on to that USB stick without 
having to resort to sneakernet.

I don't know who started talking about media servers, but it sure wasn't 
me. All I want to do is take advantage of STANDARD functionality that 
comes with ANY modern TV.

(I do appreciate that the tv manufacturers almost certainly haven't 
thought of that, so it won't cross their minds to make it easy.)

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Rich Freeman]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 2:47 PM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
>
> All I want to do is to get mp3/mp4 files on to that USB stick without
> having to resort to sneakernet.

Great, then do that.  I don't see what the problem is if your TV
supports this.  If it doesn't, well, then I suspect you'll find it way
easier to use a general purpose computer as a general purpose computer
than to turn a TV into one.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 5557 bytes --]

Michael wrote:
> On Wednesday, 26 February 2025 14:43:41 Greenwich Mean Time Dale wrote:
>> Rich Freeman wrote:
>>> On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 12:26 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> I'm pretty sure you mentioned this once before in one of my older
>>>> threads.  I can't find it tho.  I use PCIe x1 cards to connect my SATA
>>>> drives for my video collection and such.  You mentioned once what the
>>>> bandwidth was for that setup and how many drives it would take to pretty
>>>> much max it out.  Right now, I have one card for two sets of LVs.  One
>>>> LV has four drives and the other has three.  What would be the limiting
>>>> factor on that, the drives, the PCIe bus or something else?
>>> It depends on the PCIe revision, and of course whether the controller
>>> actually maxes it out.
>>>
>>> 1x PCIe v3 can do 0.985GB/s total.  That's about 5 HDDs if they're
>>> running sequentially, and again assumes that your controller can
>>> actually handle all that data.  For each generation of PCIe
>>> forward/backwards either double/halve the transfer rate.  The
>>> interface works at the version of PCIe supported by both the
>>> motherboard+CPU and the adapter card.
>>>
>>> If you're talking about HDDs in practice the HDDs are probably still
>>> the bottleneck.  If these were SATA SSDs then odds are that the PCIe
>>> lane is limiting things, because I doubt this is an all-v5 setup.
>>>
>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#History_and_revisions
>>>
>>> The big advantage of NVMe isn't so much the bandwidth as the IOPS,
>>> though both benefit.  Those run at full PCIe 4x interface speed per
>>> drive, but of course you need 4 lanes per drive for this, which is
>>> hard to obtain on consumer motherboards at any scale.
>> This I think is what I needed.  As it is, I'm most likely not maxing
>> anything out, yet.  The drives for Data, torrent stuff, stays pretty
>> busy.  Mostly reading.  My other set of drives, videos, isn't to busy
>> most of the time.  A few MBs/sec or something, playing videos type
>> reading.  Still, next time I power down, I may stick that second card in
>> and divide things up a bit.  Might benefit if those cards aren't to great. 
>>
>> I did copy this info and stuck in in a text file so I don't have to dig
>> for it again, or ask again.  ;-) 
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>> Dale
>>
>> :-)  :-) 
> The other thing to straighten out, already hinted at by Rich et al., is an 
> NVMe M.2 card in a USB 3 enclosure won't be able to maximise its SSD transfer 
> rates.  To do this it will require a Thunderbolt connector and a corresponding 
> Thenderbolt PC port, which will connect it internally to the computer's PCIe 
> bus, rather than USB/SATA.  Hence a previous comment questioning the perceived 
> value of paying for a NVMe SSD M.2 form factor within a USB enclosure.  It 
> won't really derive much if any performance benefit compared to a *good* 
> quality USB 3 flash drive (UFD), which can be sourced at a much lower price 
> point.
>
> External storage medium, transfer protocol, device controller, PC bus and 
> cables/connectors/ports, will all have to have aligned generations of 
> technology and standards, if you expect to make most of their advertised 
> transfer speeds.  Otherwise you'll be stuck at some component of a lower 
> performance providing a bottleneck to your aspirations.  ;-)
>
> Sometime ago I bought a SanDisk 1TB Extreme Portable SSD, which has a USB-C 
> connector and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller as a replacement for a flaky USB 3.0 
> stick.  It is slightly bigger than a small UFD and more expensive than the 
> cheaper UFD offerings, but the faster speeds more than compensate for it.  At 
> the time I bought it, external NVMe M.2 drives were too expensive and I only 
> had USB 3.0 ports anyway.  So in my use case it was offering the best bang for 
> my buck.


It is true that this is a costly method.  A USB stick is also much
smaller as well.  Thing is, it was easier for me to connect to my
phone.  The included cable did the job just fine.  It also allowed me to
put my eggs in more than one basket.  I'll still likely store important
files on USB sticks, since I'm not using them for anything else, but I
also have it on a m.2 stick as well. 

I'm not really worried about speed.  As it is, it is plenty fast
enough.  Even when I copied my camera pics to the m.2 stick, it only
took a few minutes.  It copied them over while I was doing something
else.  Having it finish in half the time or something wouldn't have
affected me at all.  If it took a couple more minutes, that would have
been fine too. 

Also, I got to play with external storage on my new rig.  I didn't trust
it on my old rig.  I had lots of issues with USB and storage on the old
rig.  The new rig, be it software, hardware or both does a lot better. 
It also has the faster USB 3 stuff, including a type C port.  Either
way, I trust it more now. 

I also had a little fun playing with this stuff.  Keep in mind, the
first m.2 stick I saw was the one I bought for my OS on this new rig. 
Before that, only read about them or saw pictures of them.  Plus read
about them on this list. 

Basically, I'm happy.  Did find out that backing up /root, /etc, world
file and my camera directory almost fills up this 480GB stick. 

Oh, I also noticed they fixed the title on the listing.  It now says
480GB instead of 1TB.  Disappointed that I didn't get a response tho. 
They could have said sorry for the boo boo.  :/  Still, I'm fine with it. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 1:34 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
> Basically, I'm happy.  Did find out that backing up /root, /etc, world file and my camera directory almost fills up this 480GB stick.
<SNIP>

And in my opinion that's all that matters.

Cheers,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Wol]

On 26/02/2025 19:56, Rich Freeman wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 2:47 PM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>> All I want to do is to get mp3/mp4 files on to that USB stick without
>> having to resort to sneakernet.
> 
> Great, then do that.  I don't see what the problem is if your TV
> supports this.  If it doesn't, well, then I suspect you'll find it way
> easier to use a general purpose computer as a general purpose computer
> than to turn a TV into one.
> 
And that was my question. Does anyone know a way to get a WebOS (aka 
linux) tv to share the usb over the network?

Cheers,
Wol

Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Michael]

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On Wednesday, 26 February 2025 21:25:09 Greenwich Mean Time Wol wrote:
> On 26/02/2025 19:56, Rich Freeman wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 2:47 PM Wols Lists <antlists@youngman.org.uk> 
wrote:
> >> All I want to do is to get mp3/mp4 files on to that USB stick without
> >> having to resort to sneakernet.
> > 
> > Great, then do that.  I don't see what the problem is if your TV
> > supports this.  If it doesn't, well, then I suspect you'll find it way
> > easier to use a general purpose computer as a general purpose computer
> > than to turn a TV into one.
> 
> And that was my question. Does anyone know a way to get a WebOS (aka
> linux) tv to share the usb over the network?
> 
> Cheers,
> Wol

Unless the WebOS comes with some compatible app like file manager, ftp server, 
etc., I would think you'd need to root it to install samba/nfs.  I understand 
legacy WebOS was easier to root, always with the risk of ending up with a 
super-sized brick in your living room, but I think later versions have been 
locked up more.

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Re: [gentoo-user] m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Dale wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> <<< SNIP >>>
>
> Dale
>
> :-)  :-) 
>


I got the 1TB stick and the enclosure, and the fire bags, in today.  As
expected, the Samsung stick is exactly what it said it would be.  It's
1TB.  Anyway, I put it together, added a piece of thermal pad to make
sure it contacts the metal case top and adjusted my so called script to
use the new stick.  I also went with ext4 for the file system.  I set
the reserved root to only 1% tho.  I doubt it will ever need it on
that.  I usually set to zero for this sort of thing. 

I got /etc, /root, world file and the really important, camera pics.  I
have those on my regular backups and the m.2 sticks.  Some of those pics
are irreplaceable.  If lost with no backups, gone forever.  Some people
aren't even with us anymore.  I don't know of anything else really
important to

I started the backup while I was doing some stuff in the kitchen.  I'm
not sure how long it took but it was done when I came back.  Oh, just
like the other m.2 stick, it runs cool.  It has two sensors.  It peaks
out at 99F and 86F.  Pretty sure that is nowhere near where it would
reduce speed, throttle or whatever.  It seems that aluminum enclosure
dissipates the heat really well.  I can't feel much warmth tho.

We all know the Samsung m.2 sticks are really good.  They are well known
for the quality.  While I've only ever had this one m.2 enclosure, I'd
recommend it for sure.  I really can't find anything bad about it.  The
sticks go in nicely, locks into place and the aluminum enclosure
dissipates the heat really well.  It also has the little LED for power
and activity.  The cable that comes with it is nice too.  With the
little adapter, it can use a type C or type A USB port. 

So, if anyone else wants this sort of setup, this is one that works
really well.  Oh, the m.2 sticks are in one of the fire bags inside my
fire safe.  I hope to not test and see if they protect it well enough. 

I been helping a friend cut up one large oak tree.  Thing is about 33 to
34" across.  We been working on it for almost a week.  May take another
week to finish.  Some we can't use due to knots but still a LOT of
firewood.  Some of my joints aren't happy tho.  I'm getting to old for
this sort of thing. 

Glad I got this setup.  Now I have my eggs in two different kinds of
basket.  Both baskets in two protection devices.  Now let us pray.  :-D 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2025-02-28, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

> We all know the Samsung m.2 sticks are really good.  They are well
> known for the quality.

I can definitely agree with that.  Over the years I've installed
probably close to fifteen Samsung flash drives.  Some SATA, some m.2,
a couple USB 3.

They're all still working flawlessly.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2025-02-28, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> We all know the Samsung m.2 sticks are really good.  They are well
>> known for the quality.
> I can definitely agree with that.  Over the years I've installed
> probably close to fifteen Samsung flash drives.  Some SATA, some m.2,
> a couple USB 3.
>
> They're all still working flawlessly.

This is the last bit of SMART for the m.2 stick on my new rig with the
OS on it, and my chroot where I do my updates.  I been running this rig
for a while.  Thank goodness the memory seems to be OK.  Anyway, you or
anyone else see anything wrong here? 


=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning:                   0x00
Temperature:                        32 Celsius
Available Spare:                    100%
Available Spare Threshold:          10%
Percentage Used:                    0%
Data Units Read:                    4,065,300 [2.08 TB]
Data Units Written:                 3,820,463 [1.95 TB]
Host Read Commands:                 61,480,937
Host Write Commands:                31,916,826
Controller Busy Time:               1,525
Power Cycles:                       119
Power On Hours:                     706
Unsafe Shutdowns:                   30
Media and Data Integrity Errors:    0
Error Information Log Entries:      0
Warning  Comp. Temperature Time:    0
Critical Comp. Temperature Time:    0
Temperature Sensor 1:               38 Celsius
Temperature Sensor 2:               32 Celsius

Error Information (NVMe Log 0x01, 16 of 64 entries)
No Errors Logged

Read Self-test Log failed: Invalid Field in Command (0x002)



It looks good to me but I don't see many of these.  Really, that is the
first SSD type thing I ever used. I'm not sure what it looks like when
one is having problems or went bad either.  What do they show when they
are having problems?  If you know. 

Oh, I was looking at a 2.5" SSD and enclosure.  I don't think I'll build
one anytime soon but I may build one just to play with one day.  For the
data size tho, there isn't much difference price wise.  The 2.5" might
be a little cheaper.  I suspect inside the 2.5" is the same as a m.2
stick.  May even be a m.2 stick in that thing.  LOL  I did order me some
longer type C USB cables tho.  The ones that came with my m.2 stick
enclosure are kinda short. 

I also notice that cool temp up there.  The high one is only 38C.  :-D

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Frank Steinmetzger]

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Am Sun, Mar 02, 2025 at 10:01:41AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
> Grant Edwards wrote:
> > On 2025-02-28, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> We all know the Samsung m.2 sticks are really good.  They are well
> >> known for the quality.
> > I can definitely agree with that.  Over the years I've installed
> > probably close to fifteen Samsung flash drives.  Some SATA, some m.2,
> > a couple USB 3.

While we probably all knew what you meant, let me please pick a nit that you 
can also have M.2 as SATA. You wanted to compare SATA to NVMe. Because M.2 
is a form factor, while SATA is a protocol (which for SSDs usually meant the 
2.5″ form factor). M.2 supports several protocols, which is coded by its 
“key”, i.e. the location of notches on the connector. It can support just 
SATA, just NVMe (i.e. PCIe) or both.


> This is the last bit of SMART for the m.2 stick on my new rig with the
> OS on it, and my chroot where I do my updates.
>
> I been running this rig for a while.

On first read I thought that was a new stick. Because then it would have 
been curious why there were 700 hours of runtime on it. Good thing I read it 
again, so all looks OK. :)


> It looks good to me but I don't see many of these.  Really, that is the
> first SSD type thing I ever used. I'm not sure what it looks like when
> one is having problems or went bad either.  What do they show when they
> are having problems?  If you know. 

It may run slow when flash cells degrade, or maybe even show some indicative 
SMART errors. But typically, they just fail the next time you switch on the 
computer. That means your data is gone, you can’t scrape it out like from an 
HDD. If the controller fails, there is no (easy) way to access the data. 

I’ve been using SSDs since 2014, my collection contains 7 so far and an 
eight which was broken; it worked at first when writing data, but reading 
the files back produced I/O errors from day one, so basically DOA. That was 
my smallest yet, being a 2240 format (40 mm long).

> Oh, I was looking at a 2.5" SSD and enclosure.  I don't think I'll build
> one anytime soon but I may build one just to play with one day.  For the
> data size tho, there isn't much difference price wise.  The 2.5" might
> be a little cheaper.  I suspect inside the 2.5" is the same as a m.2
> stick.

Not quite, the PCBs have a 2.5″ heritage. Back when flash was bulky, it 
filled the entire case. Especially for the bigger capacities. But with flash 
density and bit levels increasing, the PCBs shrunk down to a bare minimum.
Here is a review of the recently discontinued (to many people’s dismay, 
because it was a very good series) Crucial MX500 with photos of the PCB:
https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/storage/crucial-mx500-4tb-test.78072/
And I think there was a website that collects photos of SSD PCBs, or maybe 
it was a thread in the computerbase hardware forum – can’t remember.

PS.: maybe instead of an enclosure, a desktop SATA dock might be better 
suited to your needs –  Maybe even a 2-bay model –, since you shuffle HDDs 
around so much.

> May even be a m.2 stick in that thing.

Unlikely for a retail SSD. But you can get enclosures, which will simply 
pass the SATA connector through to a SATA-only M.2 slot.

-- 
Grüße | Greetings | Salut | Qapla’
Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

- “What impressed you most about the LilyPond code base?” - “No comment.”
- “But I really want to know!” - “I just told you!”
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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sun, Mar 02, 2025 at 10:01:41AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>>
>> This is the last bit of SMART for the m.2 stick on my new rig with the
>> OS on it, and my chroot where I do my updates.
>>
>> I been running this rig for a while.
> On first read I thought that was a new stick. Because then it would have 
> been curious why there were 700 hours of runtime on it. Good thing I read it 
> again, so all looks OK. :)
>

That sounds good. 


>> It looks good to me but I don't see many of these.  Really, that is the
>> first SSD type thing I ever used. I'm not sure what it looks like when
>> one is having problems or went bad either.  What do they show when they
>> are having problems?  If you know. 
> It may run slow when flash cells degrade, or maybe even show some indicative 
> SMART errors. But typically, they just fail the next time you switch on the 
> computer. That means your data is gone, you can’t scrape it out like from an 
> HDD. If the controller fails, there is no (easy) way to access the data. 
>
> I’ve been using SSDs since 2014, my collection contains 7 so far and an 
> eight which was broken; it worked at first when writing data, but reading 
> the files back produced I/O errors from day one, so basically DOA. That was 
> my smallest yet, being a 2240 format (40 mm long).
>

Given my rig runs basically 24/7, would I get some sort of errors while
it was running?  I quite often have uptimes of several months.  My
biggest reason for shutdowns, power failure.  I'm also curious, would
SMART show anything?  I know even a spinning rust drive can go bad with
no SMART warning at all.  It can detect some failures but not all.  For
example, spindle motor failure.  It may spin until powered off and then
never spin up again.  SMART is fairly decent at what it is good at but
there is some things it just can't predict.  Is SMART even capable of
detecting that a SSD drive is about to fail?  Or is SMART in the dark
still?


>> Oh, I was looking at a 2.5" SSD and enclosure.  I don't think I'll build
>> one anytime soon but I may build one just to play with one day.  For the
>> data size tho, there isn't much difference price wise.  The 2.5" might
>> be a little cheaper.  I suspect inside the 2.5" is the same as a m.2
>> stick.
> Not quite, the PCBs have a 2.5″ heritage. Back when flash was bulky, it 
> filled the entire case. Especially for the bigger capacities. But with flash 
> density and bit levels increasing, the PCBs shrunk down to a bare minimum.
> Here is a review of the recently discontinued (to many people’s dismay, 
> because it was a very good series) Crucial MX500 with photos of the PCB:
> https://www.computerbase.de/artikel/storage/crucial-mx500-4tb-test.78072/
> And I think there was a website that collects photos of SSD PCBs, or maybe 
> it was a thread in the computerbase hardware forum – can’t remember.
>
> PS.: maybe instead of an enclosure, a desktop SATA dock might be better 
> suited to your needs –  Maybe even a 2-bay model –, since you shuffle HDDs 
> around so much.
>
>> May even be a m.2 stick in that thing.
> Unlikely for a retail SSD. But you can get enclosures, which will simply 
> pass the SATA connector through to a SATA-only M.2 slot.
>


To me, it looks like a m.2 turned sideways.  Sort of.  It looks like
they needed the room for the connectors so just turned it sideways. 
Given I think the 2.5" SSD came first, they actually turned the m.2 long
ways and fit it all on that.  You get the idea tho.  Either way, they
are tiny little things. 

Someone mentioned long term storage and data going bad.  Let's say I put
either the Samsung or Crucial m.2 stick in my safe and left it there. 
How often should I plug it in?  How long should I leave it plugged in
even if I'm not updating data or anything?  From my understanding, it
stores a small charge, or doesn't, for the 1's and 0's.  I'd expect the
charge would go away at some point.  I've read some claim a spinning
rust drive can lose the magnetic field if left alone long enough.  I'm
not sure if it is true and if it is how long that would take.  Figure it
would take a while tho.  While I tend to update backups once a week, a
month being the longest I've ever went, I'd think that would work.  Just
curious tho, how long they can store data with no power being applied
since it stores the data as a charge instead of a magnetic field like
spinning rust.  Just want to be sure I don't do something it can't handle.

These chips still amaze me. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: m.2 nvme stick not what I was expecting at all.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2025-03-02, Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7@gmx.de> wrote:
> Am Sun, Mar 02, 2025 at 10:01:41AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>> Grant Edwards wrote:
>>> On 2025-02-28, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> We all know the Samsung m.2 sticks are really good.  They are well
>>>> known for the quality.
>>>
>>> I can definitely agree with that.  Over the years I've installed
>>> probably close to fifteen Samsung flash drives.  Some SATA, some
>>> m.2, a couple USB 3.
>
> While we probably all knew what you meant, let me please pick a nit
> that you can also have M.2 as SATA. You wanted to compare SATA to
> NVMe.

Actually, no. I was talking about the three different
physical/electrical connection types: M.2, the "old" SATA 7-pin data
connector, and USB 3.

I don't know what that old SATA connector is called other than a
"SATA" connector.