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  • Vatharian - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    I'd actually love to buy enclosure by itself. USB 3.0 to M.2 AHCI adapters are widely available in rather funny prices, while for obvious reasons USB to NVMe are not available at all.

    This would not only give me very fast attachable storage, but also fool proof way to backup/restore NVMe drives without need to shutdown PC every time.
  • MajGenRelativity - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    That's my idea too
  • ZeDestructor - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    I'll second that motion, and also put in a request for a U.2 version of the same.

    ...I buy entirely too much second-hand server hardware.
  • Vatharian - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    You're not alone :)

    As far as I know U.2 (or rather SFF-8639) actually supports hot plug by itself. You can easily drop in external port trough PCI bracket, tie in some power delivery and voila, You'd only need to 3D print or rig some kind of enclosure, or repurpose 2.5" 15mm SATA one.

    Still, I am disappointed, that U.2 didn't already die. It should go away, like now. We have much better standards and more robust, too.
  • Billy Tallis - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    It's a little soon to be asking for U.2 to die. The EDSFF standards are less than a month old and the NGSFF standard is still a few weeks away. U.2 is a transitional standard to bridge the gap between hard drive-based interfaces and form factors, and pure SSD-oriented standards. That transition isn't over yet, and the industry is only just now entering the final phase of that transition.
  • sheepdestroyer - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    But again, there is the power requirement.
    Will USB be able to provide enough juice to the SSD?
  • WinterCharm - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    SSD's generally use less power than HDD's.
  • SleepyFE - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    + USB power delivery can now pump through 100W (5A at 20V).
  • Vatharian - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    I'm not longing for USB NVMe adapter, that's pointless. Thunderbolt has higher power delivery capabilities than USB 3.1 by itself.
  • theopensauce - Wednesday, February 21, 2018 - link

    The best and logical comment I've seen on this site so far. I had the same thought with the NVMe backup/restore. There are no good ways to clone NVMe drives presently unless you use an older SSD via USB 3.0. And I am not patient. Plus if you do IT support or run a business time is money and the more efficiency you have the more profit you have.
  • jabber - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    I always find the idea of these devices far better then the reality. You get your 3000MBps storage device plug it in all excited, hit 'copy/paste' and feel your smile disappear as 600GB of kb sized files reduce the speed to 60kbps and 5 hours remaining...
  • Ian Cutress - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    For our CPU Compile test, it involves ~250k small files. Of course, that's a pain to copy over the NAS for each new system build we test, so I keep the files zipped on the NAS, copy the zip file over to the new test system, and decompress locally. Scripted, of course.
  • Pinn - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    I've worked on file systems (clustered server). There's not a way around this. Sorry!
  • jabber - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    I think it's a problem that needs addressing. More and more applications are creating GBs of microfiles that just cripple performance.
  • Mikewind Dale - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    "Adding a user-friendly way to activate the hardware encryption capabilities of the internal SSD would be a nice feature to have"

    Can you check whether it at least uses hardware encryption with other encryption utilities? E.g. Windows 10 Pro Bitlocker?

    My understanding is that if you enable Bitlocker, then either the drive will spend several hours encrypting (software encryption) or else it will enable "instantly" (hardware encryption). I think you can also go into the Bitlocker settings to see which kind of encryption has been used.

    It would be interesting to see if hardware encryption can at least be used in the "background" (so to speak) with some other encryption utility.
  • OFelix - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    "We were able to successfully activate TRIM on the TEKQ Rapide."

    Is this something a 'normal' user would have to enable themselves? Why is it not on by default?
    Is it covered in the setup guide (since this is a pre-retail product you may not be able to answer this)?
  • ganeshts - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    If you are running exFAT - I am not sure TRIM gets activated (or, if it is even necessary).

    If you are running NTFS - the OS will take care of the TRIM as long as the drive enters idle with the device powered and connected. When I mention 'successfully activate' - it was in reference to the fact that I could manually trigger a TRIM command (check the screenshot).

    The takeaway is : For normal users, as long as the drive is formatted in NTFS, and they are using Windows - the TRIM feature is taken care of. I can't comment about Macs, though.
  • WinterCharm - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    Hey Ganesh, Any chance you plan to review the Atom Glyph SSD's? They're blade style SSD's and I'd be really interested in whether they're worth using.
  • ganeshts - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    The Atom Glyph looks interesting for sure. If their PR team reaches out, I don't see any issues with reviewing them. Currently, I have a huge backlog to address in terms of review units, but I will think about reaching out once that is addressed.
  • Hurr Durr - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    Considering external SSDs, does anybody here have any experience with M.2 USB3 enclosures? How are speeds, do they overheat?
  • repoman27 - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    “The only current alternative to the TEKQ Rapide in its price range is the OWC Envoy Pro EX / EX(VE).”

    What about the Sonnet Fusion Thunderbolt 3? Only available in 1TB, but pretty comparable.
  • ganeshts - Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - link

    Yes, I am aware of the Sonnet Fusion. However, it is definitely not a mainstream market product (as you can guess from the only available capacity point). I would say $300 is the sweet-spot for a high-end portable SSD that still caters to the mainstream market.
  • Vidmo - Wednesday, February 21, 2018 - link

    You can just ignore this Thunderbolt device in you use Windows Server, Intel does not allow Thunderbolt support on Windows Server: https://communities.intel.com/thread/113299
  • timbotim - Thursday, February 22, 2018 - link

    It would be really nice if there was a commercially available box for using NVMe SSDs (preferably in pairs) externally over PCIe 'cable', along with a PCIe adapter such that you could connect internal PCIe to an expansion slot bracket for the aforementioned PCIe 'cable'. I've had to create a piece of home-brew kit to do this but it's not pretty. All the pieces of the technology are COTS, I'm surprised someone like Startech hasn't done this.
  • jabber - Thursday, February 22, 2018 - link

    So...e-NVMe basically?
  • jabber - Thursday, February 22, 2018 - link

    If such a thing existed that is. We ended up with e-SATA so I guess other options will come along in time.
  • GPUnut - Thursday, February 22, 2018 - link

    Your 6 minute Thermal Test was interesting. I ran a 10 minute cycling sequential read/write using AJA System Test (16G test size, 4K frame size). The write speed of the Rapide dropped from 1200MB/s to 300MB/s at the 6 minute mark and never recovered. The Sonnet Fusion TB3 maintained a steady 1100MB/s during the full 10 minute test.
  • ganeshts - Friday, February 23, 2018 - link

    Interesting - but, have you considered that in 10 minutes - you have probably written more than the capacity of the drive itself ? The 6 minute test that I did accesses around 240 GB of data - equivalent to the capacity of the drive - anything more than that is not realistic.

    Btw, the drop in the write speed is probably not due to thermals, but, the nature of the Phison SSD itself. I am willing to bet that if we use the same SSD inside as the Sonnet Fusion, the perf will be similar.
  • GPUnut - Saturday, February 24, 2018 - link

    I was testing the 512G version. You are correct about the Phison. I replaced it with a 512G Samsung SM951. No drop in write speed during 10m test.
  • s.yu - Sunday, March 4, 2018 - link

    I wonder where I'd get a single slot 3.5" enclosure with support for up to at least 12TB, right now it's hard to expand the storage of my laptop setup as my old case only supports 4TB.
  • GoodyMartin - Monday, March 5, 2018 - link

    Why the hell you didnt plug a samsung m.2 960 probto maje tests ? You need to plug a higher soeed ssd m.2 and test to see ir resch 2.5gbps of write and if drops soeed or not after filling and wrutw mant times the drives
  • GoodyMartin - Monday, March 5, 2018 - link

    So gt a 960 pro or 960 and plug into this rapide box and giveus test numbers, thats the real important thing for all guys, not the stupid default crappy phison slow m.2 unit
  • Sailor23M - Wednesday, April 18, 2018 - link

    I would also love to buy just the box without the drive, heck pay a good premium for it too.

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