Originally Posted By: Mike Halloran
-Google is your friend.
-Unfortunately, the internet is full of armchair experts who haven’t a clue as to how any of this works.

True on both counts. Here's another quote, "This stuff isn't for the timid or non-technical PC users". I was VERY fortunate that my Dell Precision Workstation already had a Dell Ultra-Speed Duo M2 PCIE-3 card in it. Apparently, they are hard to get a hold of.

Also, this wasn't a simple plug and play to work. I had to follow a few steps:

1) Disable BIOS setting for Intel VMD (Volume Management Device) Technology (Got lucky and found a YouTube vid that showed this. I had NO idea this was related to allowing the M2 disks to activate).
2) Showed up as individual disks in Disk Management on boot to Windows.
3) Opened Control Panel-->System & Security-->Storage Spaces-->Create a Storage Pool
---This is done to combine them to make it a single disk. Basically RAID disk settings.


PERFORMANCE WRITE TESTING VIA UserBenchmark utility:
C:\ SanDisk Ultra II 960GB - MY INTERNAL STANDARD SSD DRIVE
SusWrite @10s intervals: 374 246 246 211 209 225 MB/s

F:\ Microsoft Storage Space Device 4TB - THE NEW M2 DISKS
SusWrite @10s intervals: 1955 1959 1963 1953 1921 1958 MB/s

M2 appears to operate about 10x faster than standard SSD drive.


My next challenge on this is I want the new M2 drive to become my Windows OS drive since it operates so fast. I'll update as I get this done if it's allowed to boot.

Attached Files (Click to download or enlarge) (Only available when you are logged in)
20220517_085109.jpg (123.23 KB, 186 downloads)
M2 Adapter
20220517_085303.jpg (278.29 KB, 185 downloads)
PC View


Steve

BIAB/RB 2022, Pro Tools 2020, Korg N5, JBL LSR 4328 Powered Monitors, AKG/Shure Mics.
PC: Win11 PRO, 4 TB M2 SSD, 2 TB HD, 128 GB Memory