Can Clone from laptop Internal NVMe, PCIe, M.2 SSD to external NVMe, PCIe, M.2 in USB enclosure
Have Acronis 2019 and Dell XPS 15 9530, 9550 & 9570.
Want to clone internal 1TB NVMe, PCIe M.2 SSD to external 1TB NVMe, PCIe, M.2 that's in a USB enclosure that supports NVMe, PCIe, M.2.
They have enclosures on Amazon NVMe PCIe M.2 Enclosure
Want to know if I will be able to clone from internal 1TB NVMe PCIe M.2 to external 1TB NVMe, PCIe M.2 via USB connection using Acronis 2019, then:
- Boot off the External M.2
- Or swap External with Internal, then boot...
Historically, this wasn't possible because there were no USB enclosures that supported NVMe, PCIe M.2 SSDs...
One had to put target NVMe, PCIe, M.2 in system and connect USB drive that contained full backup image, boot off recover media, then restore image to the internal NVMe, PCIe, M.2 SSD. And if system was set to RAID in bios, that would have to first be changed to SATA...
S G
I believe you should be able to use the Acronis Clone tool to clone your laptops to M.2 NVMe drives in the enclosures you point to in your post.
As for booting that cloned drive from the enclosure, I believe your success will be zero. You can certainly give it a try if you wish.
I have not tried this myself but you may care to:
Using an Windows install media and the Command Prompt you can try running the following commands which supposedly will make an external drive boot Windows.
On the Command Prompt Admin (Windows + X), enter the commands as follows:
E: (Where "E" is your Windows install media drive letter)
cd boot (changes to boot directory)
E:\bootsect /nt60 F: (Where "F" is your external drive letter)
Second, copy all files from the Windows Install media to the external drive using xcopy by entering these commands as follows:
cd\
E:\xcopy E:\*.* /s/h/f F:\
NOTE SPACES AND COLONS IN THE ABOVE COMMANDS.
All those commands should make your external hard drive bootable.
This is not the same as a bit for bit clone of your existing disk but rather a clean install if you will of the Windows OS to an external drive which then is bootable.
I have checked online forums and have found 0 instances of a user being able to boot a PCIE NVME drive from a USB 3.0 to PCIE NVME adapter. I don't think it is possible either (at least not at this time). Windows is designed to boot from an internal (non removable) disk as it is. There are 3rd party tools that can circumvent that and Windows 2 go (available in Enterprise Editions of Windows) also allows this. But natively, it's not going to happen on a PCI NVME hard drive that is external, nor an SSD, nor any other external hard drive.
As Enchantech mentioned, you should be able to clone this way, but you would have to swap the drives out and test them to be sure it actually works.
Personally, I wouldn't change any of the boot configs in Windows because Microsoft has fail safes in place (unless you use 3rd party tools or Windows 2 go) that prevents external hard drive booting of full versions of Windows OS.
Steve Smith wrote:S G, this looks to be duplicating your topic: Backing up OS on a PCIe / M2 SSD
Apologize for that. It's been awhile since I've been on forum. Decided to create new topic since this question / issue is different than backup questions on forum Backing up OS on a PCIe / M2 SSD.
Enchantech wrote:S G
I believe you should be able to use the Acronis Clone tool to clone your laptops to M.2 NVMe drives in the enclosures you point to in your post.
I have found two enclosures on Amazon that should " definitely " allow me to clone from internal NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD in Dell XPS 15 9530 9550 & 9570 to NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD ( 1TB Samsung 970 EVO specifically ) using either of the following enclosures I've found on Amazon:
QNINE NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD Enclosure
SHINESTAR NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD Enclosure
Additionally, I feel pretty confident that I'll also be able to boot off the cloned NVMe, PCIe M.2 SSD in either of the enclosures above as there are several user reviews for each enclosure stating they have successfully booted Win 10 off the cloned M.2 inside enclosure.
I've ordered and received the Samsung 970 EVO. I've ordered both enclosures and should receive those tomorrow ( Wed 23rd ).
I'll post my experience ( success or failure ) in subsequent post.
I'll start XPS 15 9570 since it has not been used much nor configured heavily or had much software installed, so there's little risk if everything goes wrong...
I've also made multiple full disk image backup images just in case of XPS 15 9550 & 9570...
- From within Win 10
- From boot media created with Survival Kit
Enchantech wrote:S G
I believe you should be able to use the Acronis Clone tool to clone your laptops to M.2 NVMe drives in the enclosures you point to in your post.
I have found two enclosures on Amazon that should " definitely " allow me to clone from internal NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD in Dell XPS 15 9530 9550 & 9570 to NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD ( 1TB Samsung 970 EVO specifically ) using either of the following enclosures I've found on Amazon:
QNINE NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD Enclosure
SHINESTAR NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD Enclosure
Additionally, I feel pretty confident that I'll also be able to boot off the cloned NVMe, PCIe M.2 SSD in either of the enclosures above as there are several user reviews for each enclosure stating they have successfully booted Win 10 off the cloned M.2 inside enclosure.
I've ordered and received the Samsung 970 EVO. I've ordered both enclosures and should receive those tomorrow ( Wed 23rd ).
I'll post my experience ( success or failure ) in subsequent post.
I'll start XPS 15 9570 since it has not been used much nor configured heavily or had much software installed, so there's little risk if everything goes wrong...
I've also made multiple full disk image backup images just in case of XPS 15 9550 & 9570...
- From within Win 10
- From boot media created with Survival Kit
Below is cut & paste of one user's review who was able to cloned to enclosure and also boot Win 10 from enclosure.
October 30, 2018
Color: NVME EnclosureVerified Purchase
Comes with illustrated instructions, screw driver and 2 cables. I'm using USB 3.0 and cloned Windows 10 to it and was able to boot from it (setting usb in bios). Slower speed from Crystal Disk Mark 5 (usb 3.0), but makes a great external backup for me. Rugged case and also comes with thermal tape. I definitely would buy it again. Cables are short, but probably ok for a laptop. As I see it, it's not designed for quick change. I have to disassemble it to swap the M.2 drive. 2 (tiny) screws for the cover, and 2 (tiny) screws for the small board it mounts to.
I received SHINESTAR enclosure. I've assembled it and connected it to USB-C port it when I go to initialize it there are two options GPT or MBR. The NVMe PCIe M.2 is 1TB ( Samsung 970 EVO 1TB ).
Do I initialize it as MBR or GPT and why?
I'll search forums and general googling in interim while I wait for a response....
I read some of the items in the forums and GPT appears to be ok.
I initialized it as GPT. It Created Basic Disk ( Disk 1 since laptop only has one internal drive ).
I created New Simple Volume.
- Maximum disk space in MB: 953852
- Minimum disk space in MB: 8
- Simple volume size in MB: 953852
Assigned the following drive letter: D
Format this volume with the following settings:
- File system: NTFS
- Allocation unit size: Default
- Volume label: New Volume
- Perform a quick format
- Enable file and folder compression not checked
Formatted completed in less than second...
These 970 EVO's are really fast...
I really like the Samsung T5 1TB drive as it's very durable, seems indestructable and is reasonably fast max spec ~540MB/s, typically get ~380-400MB/s...
~~~~~~~~~~~
Miscellaneous
I'm not getting 900Mb/s expected when dragging copying from internal to enclosure via USB-C port...
Researching what needs to be changed...
I'm debating whether or not I should get rid of the Samsung T5 and order another Samsung 970 EVO NVMe, PCIe M.2 and put it in an enclosure like I've done for this current project, because it's super fast compared to the Samsung T5 and cost about same. Only issue is the 970 EVO in the SHINEStar enclosure isn't as durable and will probably get very hot... The Samsung T5 never got hot...
If I get a 2nd 970 EVO and enclosure I'll use it primarily for transferring files to it, backups to it, practicing cloning because it'll short times significantly and then I can offload files to larger storage that's slower...
What are your opinions?
Speeds reported by both Samsung Magician and CrystalDiskMark are reporting good numbers, but don't see those read or write speeds when actually dragging and dropping files. Hmm?
Below is the Samsung 970 EVO going through the enclosure via the USB-C port
( i'll figure out how to shrink images )
Below are results from the internal NMVe...
Your USB C connection is limited to a maximum of 10 Gbps or 1250 MBps. Your performance test using the Magician software is not the best measure of performance but looks to be on par for the connection method used with the drive.
You will not see read/write speeds approaching advertised speeds for the drive unless you have the drive installed in a PCIe slot. The drivers used are also a big factor in performance and I can tell you that using the Samsung drivers for the drive will reap the biggest benefits in performance.
If you go ahead with your plan to put an M.2 NVMe drive in the enclosure you should consider using one of the 870 models as they are faster than the USB connection so you should be able to almost fully saturate the USB port at 1250 MBps when coping from an Internal NVMe drive.
Here is a CrystalDisk bench of a 970 PRO in use as an Windows OS disk 26% filled capacity (512 GB drive) with drive installed in a PCIe x16 slot on an adapter card on an older Z97 Intel motherboard. For comparison you can see I used the default bench settings same as you.
Here is a capture of the same drive with the test settings changed to a Queue of 32 and Threads of 4. I feel this is a more representative test of the drive capabilities than the default settings. I am using the Samsung 3.0.0.1802 driver.
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 Internal Drive
1 Test Run : Default Settings
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 Internal Drive
5 Test Run : Default Settings
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 Internal Drive
1 Test Run : Queue 32 Thread 4
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 Internal Drive
1 Test Run : Queue 32 Thread 8
For some reason I'm not able to get the speeds that you were seeing
I'm going to research how to determine what driver I have installed for memory and how to get the Samsung Driver installed if it's not already installed...
###################################################################
Below are speeds from the 970 in the enclosure
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 SHINESTAR Enclosure
1 Test Run : Default Settings
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 SHINESTAR Enclosure
1 Test Run : Queue 32 Thread 4
CrystalDiskMark locked up first time...
###################################################################
Below are speeds from internal drive
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 Internal
1 Test Run : Queue 32 Thread 4
XPS 15 1TB Samsung PM951 Internal
1 Test Run : Default
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2018 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : https://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytesSequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 1642.838 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 678.790 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 823.345 MB/s [ 201012.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 358.545 MB/s [ 87535.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 136.198 MB/s [ 33251.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 114.338 MB/s [ 27914.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 25.596 MB/s [ 6249.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 59.765 MB/s [ 14591.1 IOPS]Test : 1024 MiB [C: 34.1% (321.2/940.7 GiB)] (x1) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2019/01/24 1:50:46
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 17134] (x64)
XPS15 1TB Sam PM951 NVMe PCIe M.2 Internal
I tried putting test file folder ( location where CrystalDiskMark places 1GB test file ) on Enclosure and Internal drive. Location of test file doesn't appear to impact performance.
I've got to figure out how to get better performance from the internal SSD ( NVMe, PCIe, M.2 ) before attempting to clone and later swap with internal...
Not sure how to upgrade / update driver or where, but I'm going to research that now...
Not sure if this is the Samsung Driver I should install.
Samsung NVM Express Driver v3.0
Under System Configuration it says: cannot install when storage config in bios is set to "RAID" which it is on my laptop.
If set to AHCI then install and then set back to RAID would that work?
System Configuration '
Windows Operating System shall successfully load the driver only when Samsung NVMe SSD 970 PRO, 970 EVO, 960 PRO, 960 EVO or 950 PRO is installed to
- PCIe slot directly connected to CPU or
- M.2 or PCIe slot connected to PCH.
However, in the PCH case, Windows Operating System cannot load the driver under following BIOS configurations where
- PCH Storage Configuration is set to “Raid Mode, or
- NAND/Storage Remapping option*” is enabled.
* The option name can be different according to M/B manufacturers.
Please refer to your M/B manual
I believe this is the driver the Samsung Driver you reference earlier. Is this the Samsung Driver that should be installed?
Samsung NVM Express Driver v3.0
System Configuration
Windows Operating System shall successfully load the driver only when Samsung NVMe SSD 970 PRO, 970 EVO, 960 PRO, 960 EVO or 950 PRO is installed to
- PCIe slot directly connected to CPU or
- M.2 or PCIe slot connected to PCH.
However, in the PCH case, Windows Operating System cannot load the driver under following BIOS configurations where
- PCH Storage Configuration is set to “Raid Mode, or
- NAND/Storage Remapping option*” is enabled.
* The option name can be different according to M/B manufacturers. Please refer to your M/B manual.
S G wrote:Below is cut & paste of one user's review who was able to cloned to enclosure and also boot Win 10 from enclosure.
October 30, 2018
Color: NVME EnclosureVerified Purchase
Comes with illustrated instructions, screw driver and 2 cables. I'm using USB 3.0 and cloned Windows 10 to it and was able to boot from it (setting usb in bios). Slower speed from Crystal Disk Mark 5 (usb 3.0), but makes a great external backup for me. Rugged case and also comes with thermal tape. I definitely would buy it again. Cables are short, but probably ok for a laptop. As I see it, it's not designed for quick change. I have to disassemble it to swap the M.2 drive. 2 (tiny) screws for the cover, and 2 (tiny) screws for the small board it mounts to.
Curious if he's booting Windows... or if you're able to once you've cloned. As a USB drive, I would think it would fail to boot since we can't do this with a USB external to SATA drive.
As for speeds... you're not going to get max speed with the adapter compared to true PCI-E since you're still having to go through the USB bus. Yeah, 3.1 is up to 10Gb and 3.0 is up to 5Gb, but good luck getting that on anything other than large files at a time. You lose speed on the small file transfers with any drive and going through USB will take another hit. Still though, not bad speeds compared to any external SATA SSD.
Please verify that your machines have only a single NVMe drive. Based on the numbers you have posted I will assume that you do.
The below only applies to single drive systems
In order to install Samsung drivers you will have to change the SATA Mode setting in your bios. By default this should be set as RAID. To install the Samsung driver you must first change this RAID setting to AHCI. After that, boot to Windows, download the Samsung driver found HERE
The download will be an .exe file. Once you have it run it as Admin, (right click on file, select Run as administrator).
The file will create a new device entry under Storage Controllers in Device Manager and install the driver there.
This will replace the default Intel controller/driver as installed by Dell. The default will remain in Device Manager if you care or need to revert to it later.
Your PM951 drives have a maximum of 2260MBps read and 1600MBps write speeds. These are for Sequential numbers.
The 970 EVO have a max of 3500MBps read and 2500MBps write. For the 970 PRO drives the write speed gets a bump to 2700MBps.
As Bobbo says achieving those numbers is doable but is best case scenario. Performance gains on these drives in in IOPS for the most part in average everyday computing. If you increase Queue depth and Thread count you should see better numbers in the bench.
Another factor is the NAND used in the drives. EVO drive use 3D NAND 3 bit MLC whereas the PRO uses V NAND 2 bit MLC. This means that the PRO drives will run faster.
As for speeds... you're not going to get max speed with the adapter compared to true PCI-E since you're still having to go through the USB bus.
I'm thinking of just turning RAID off and switching it to AHCI instead because so many applications & software cannot see disks when RAID is configured...
CrystalDiskMark & Crystaldiskinfo don't work and Samsung Magician intermittenly ( rarely ) will see internal drive...
Is there any benefit to leaving RAID set?
Are there any negative repercussions if AHCI is set and used indefinitely instead of RAID?
Side note:
970 EVO PLUS is due out soon...
They're saying 1TB will initially go for $245 US dollars...
Supposedly only major difference is lower power...
Enchantech,
I noticed your system config below that I believe you used to report CrystalDiskMark numbers earlier...
Is CrystalDiskMark reporting stripe ( RAID 0 ) numbers or performance of single drive in the RAID 0...
Pretty beefed up system:
PC 1 ASRock Extreme 7+ mobo, i7 6700K @ 4.0GHz, 32GB G.Skil 3200 DDR4 ram,
RAID 0 ( Striped Config )? OS
2 Samsung 970 PRO M.2 NVMe 512GB drives in RAID 0 for Win 10 Pro OS,
RAID 0 ( Striped Config )? Storage
2 Samsung 970 PRO M.2 NVMe 512GB drives in RAID 0 for storage,
1 Samsung 970 PRO M.2 NVMe 512GB secondary storage drive,
1 Samsung 850 EVO 120GB SATA drive for user data.
I could Google it and will later but your motherboard ( mobo ) has 5 or 6 NVMe PCIe slots?
Pretty awesome hardware configuration...
By any chance are you water cooling or just fans?
Enchantech,
If I install the Samsung driver what happens when using windows update and there's a new Intel storage driver, will it override and use that instead of the Samsung Driver?
Scoop
Bobo
Enchantech
Steve Smith
Thanks to all of you for Awesome & Superb help, assistance & quick detailed responses...
I've been away from hardware & sysadmin type stuff for past several years ( 3-5 )...
Thanks for all of your patience, professionalism, time & effort and so much, much more...
Out of curiosity are any of you into VMware Servers ( ESXi, vSphere ) or whatever they're running nowadays?
Reason for asking is I was just thinking of setting up VMware servers and thus ensuring all home systems just stay up automatically with automatic failover & migrations and hardware raids underneath...
May even be worthwhile to virtualizing desktops and laptops
Hi SG,
I don't have much access to ESXI these days. I dabble with VMWorkstation at home, but that's about it. Lot's of similarities, but also lots of differences (not virtual adapters or hot failover, etc.) I do test Acronis backup and recovery in the VMware environment though.
I would keep the PCIE NVME drive in RAID instead of AHCI. AHCI has a queue limitation which prevfents the NVME drive from reaching its full potential performance. This is why most vendors (Dell, HP, etc.) usually ship systems with these types of drives with RAID configured instead of AHCI, even for a single PCIE NVME hard drive. I'm not sure why an application would not be able to see your drive if it is available to the OS. There may be a limitation in the application that only allows it to interact directly on an internal (fixed) disk vs. an external drive with a USB adapter. In most cases, as long as Windows has it mounted and assigned a drive letter, there should be nothing preventing applications from using it.
Will you really see a difference between RAID and AHCI... probably not in most operations. But 64K commands in a single I/O vs 32 commands is a pretty significant difference. If you have sequencing software, modeling / rendering applications, encoding software, etc. - they should be able to take advantage of it.
https://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/storage-hardware/nvme-vs-sata-comparison.html
https://searchstorage.techtarget.com/definition/AHCI-Advanced-Host-Controller-Interface
S G,
Will try to respond to all you have posted.
As for my systems, The PC1 system is NOT what I used for my bench screens posted in this thread. I used my PC2 machine for those captures.
The PC1 is a power house. I built it with that in mind actually. The motherboard has 3 onboard M.2 slots which can be mapped to PCIe lanes directly to the CPU. Each NVMe drive uses 4 PCIe lanes. This board supports 16 CPU PCIe lanes directly and 20 PCIe lanes via Z170 chipset to the PCH controller for a total of 36 lanes. The direct CPU PCIe lanes of Gen 3.0 x 4 as supported by the 6th Gen i7 6700 I have has a theoretical bandwidth of 3.9GBps or 3900MBps x 4 lanes. In benchmarks I was able to exceed 6000MBps on a 2 drive RAID 0 storage volume by mounting 2 of the 970 PRO drives in PCIe 3.0 x 4 adapter cards plugged into PCIe x 16 motherboard slots. I had posted a number of results from this machine here on the Forum but they have since been removed. I can put my best results back up here if you would like to see them.
Because of the above what Bobbo posted is correct except it does not tell the whole story on performance as I have tried to illustrate above.
My PC2 by using the drive in an PCIe Gen 3 x 4 adapter maps directly to the CPU thus bypassing the DMI bus. Your motherboard(s) may lack this ability.
In your laptop you are using an M.2 slot on the motherboard for the drive so you will have the DMI spec of the board as the limiting factor. If your board uses DMI 2.0 rather than 3.0 you will have a significant difference in bandwidth, roughly half at 2GBps.
I would not be afraid to try swapping AHCI for RAID in the SATA mode setting. Your drive connected via the M.2 slot on the board would use the PCH/DMI data link so the SATA RAID mode would not matter using the Samsung driver. You can always swap back if you like.
As for Windows updates to the drivers, Windows update will only update drivers for hardware that is initialized on the device. By using the Samsung driver what will happen is that once you run the driver .exe file it will install a new Storage Controller called Samsung NVMe Controller and the drive will be installed there. This leaves the Intel controller and driver intact but not used. I have never found Windows update to update storage drivers so I think you are fine in that respect here.
As for your slow down/drop in performance issue I can only suspect that you are reaching the point of system resource saturation and you are seeing the effects. These 2nd Gen NVMe drives are fully capable of doing that in my opinion based on my testing and would be especially true on a laptop platform.
I do not use VM much so will not comment there.
Hope all my ramblings help! :)
Enchantech,
I would definitely appreciate seeing performance numbers here in this thread...
As for the rest of the information I'll have to review it again to digest ( understand / grasp it all )...
For now I think I'll put trying to enhance speed on pause and continue with original goal and seeing if I can boot off clone...
Ultimate goal is to find way to get reliable backups or clones that are easy to swap in an out quickly...
Since rear cover is pretty secure I may just leave 4 of 12 screws in if I can successfully clone a drive and swapping it to internal works...
Or worst case...
Buy extra ( exactly same configuration ) laptop and clone laptops
Laptop #1 primary
Laptop #2 secondary
Clone #1 to external enclosure
Continue to use #1 since it's already up and running...
Connect enclosure with cloned drive inside to #2
Clone from enclosure connect to #2 to the internal drive
Boot afterwards then use #2 laptop going forward...
And keep flip flopping whenever major changes occur...
Data is easy to backup...
Just want to make sure my coding environments are preserved so if anything should happen down time is minimal ( basically no interruptions )...
What's all fuss?
Maybe going to coding bootcamp where we'll be coding 15 to 17 hours practically every single day, 5 to 6 days minimum a week for 6 consecutive months straight... Don't want to worry about any hardware issues whatsoever...
Now that I'm thinking about it that's best option / solution...
Most of students use iMacs and they cost almost twice as much as Dell configured below:
Dell XPS 15 32GB 1TB NVMe GTX 1050ti, 4K Ultra HD (3840x2160 ) Touch
I paid $1880 for above... $2200 with 4yr on site warranty, including drops, spills, submersion...
Equivalent iMac cost $3700 to $3900 not counting apple care...
Well enough of that...
Please send CrystalDiskMark results from those 970 Pros in PCIe x16 cards
S G,
I think your plan to have a fully prepped machine for your purpose is sound, a bit over the top but probably a fail safe idea given your work load and circumstance.
I am posting some screenshots of my raided machine for you here. What you need to know is that I have 5 Samsung 970 PRO 512 GB drives installed in this machine along with an Samsung 850 EVO sata SSD on which I store user files and host some application installs.
I used 2 of the 970 PRO drives to create a RAID 0 array for the Windows 10 OS disk. These drives are installed in 2 of the 3 onboard M.2 slots on the mobo.
I used 2 more of the 970 PRO drives to create a second disk array using Windows Disk Management Stripe Volume which is a software RAID 0 for all intents and purposes. These drives are installed on PCIe gen 3 x 4 adapter cards in PCIe x 16 slots.
The last 970 drive is installed on an adapter card as well but is a single drive.
I will notate the screenshots so that you know what was tested.
I like Anvil test bench so thought I would post this result. This is the Stripe volume array. 5251.28 read 4096 write Sequential tests.
The above bench is of the OS RAID 0 array OS disk. Note all test runs set at Q16 T4. This array uses the Intel storage controller and the latest series 15 Intel drivers.
The above screenshot is the OS disk again using Q64 T8. Intel controller and driver
The above screenshot is the Strip Volume Q64 T8 using the Samsung controller and driver.
Finally the above is an Activity screenshot of a backup task of the Win 10 OS RAID 0 array to the Stripe Volume array. Notice the speed is an average 3,130 MBps of a total of 77GB of data elapsed time 2 mins. 14 sec. Stellar!
As a note manufacturer advertised speeds are measured using sequential test data.
Enchantech
Those numbers are simply incredible.
Had I not seen it I would not have believed it...
Apologize if I asked this question earlier in thread but other than benchmarking what are you using such powerful machines for?
S G,
Lol, yes those numbers are at the top of the chart for a 2 drive NVMe raid 0 array. Better hardware would yield better results than mine however. The machine used to produce those numbers is old these days, based on the Z170 there are 2 newer generations beyond that now. Still it outperforms a lot of that hardware as well!
What do I do with such a machine, have fun mostly, I am a long time PC enthusiast/builder and got into fast storage back when the first Gen SSD was introduced. Those devices seem agonizing slow these days. In fact the SATA SSD of today seems quite slow as well since the advent of using the PCIe interface for storage purposes hit the scene.
Your post has peaked my interest in external storage using the NVMe spec so I have found a device to give that a go and have it on my wish list now. You can view it HERE
Enchantech,
Looked at enclosure you referred to below:
Aluminum M.2 NVME to USB 3.1 Type A PCIE SSD HDD CNC Processing Enclosure M-Key SSD to USB-A Adapter (USB-A)
My only hesitation in purchasing the above would be there are no reviews...
Some has to take the plunge and be the first to purchase & review but I would not put an expensive NVMe PCIe drive like 970 in that enclosure in case it had some manufacturing flaws or defects in design that could potentially destroy an expensive NVMe card...
S G,
Thanks, I would not run a new Gen 3 NVMe drive in that enclosure. I have several OEM Samsung 951 drives one of which is a 512GB model that I pulled from my computer that I updated to the 970 PRO drives. I think it is a good candidate for an enclosure like I posted.
Enchantech,
My only concern is the enclosure USB Connector is attached to enclosure like a flash drive...
The enclosure is a little long & possibly a lil heavy to be protruding & supported by usb connector only if enclosure will be in mid air and plugged into a USB port on desktop system.
If you're going to use a cable to connect the enclosure to a desktop so enclosure's weight is supported somewhere as opposed to being suspended in air and only USB connector that'll probably be ook
If you're going to use it in laptop the surface supporting laptop will support weight of enclosure to...
Just an opinion...
I ordered three more enclosures and one of them is same as one I currently have because it's nearly impossible to get file off enclosure ( reads almost always hangs ) when trying transfer a backup image file previously written to the enclosure to larger storage ( 8TB )...
Backup image is ~200GB...
Copies from enclosure to internal drive in laptop or to another USB drive fails...
I tried different cables...
I tried with no external cooling blowing on enclosure...
I tried with external fan blowing on enclosure...
Nothing seems to solve problem of copying backup image previously written to enclosure to any other storage...
Hopefully one of the three enclosures I'm ordering and should have by Thursday should work...
Samsung T5 is rock solid when reading or writing files ...
Talked and explained to Amazon what I was doing and they said No Problem. If I had any issues going forward just return items for full refund...
Are you using Explorer to transfer these backup files? If yes, did you disable Acronis Active Protection first? If no do that before starting transfer and see if that changes the behavior.
I'd be a little leery of that particular enclosure too (with the fixed USB connector) because of the length and potential "bend" sticking out like that over time. The one I have my eye on right now is from Sabrent, as I've used other variants of their enclosures and docks in the past without issue. This is the one I'm considering: Sabrent USB 3.1 Aluminum Enclosure for M.2 NVMe SSD in Gray (EC-NVME)
S G,
If disabling the protection doesn't help, do you have any ports on the back of the system? I wonder if it is just not able to keep up or there is too much power draw from the devices to keep up at those speeds. On my own rig (GA-Z170X-Gaming 3), I find that when using both the USB front ports, drives tend to dip in and out. I basically can only use one USB 3.0 port at a time on the front and then have to supplement with one of the 3.0 ports or the only 3.1 port on the back if I want more externals connected at the same time.
Yes, Using Windows Explorer.
I'm currently using the SHINESTAR enclosure and everything is perfect accept when trying to copy a large file ~200GB in size from the enclosure. Sometimes it just fails at 50% of file size as described above, 90% reproducible; other 10% of time it will successfully complete... Totally strange.
I can copy and move folders around with Acronis Protection on or off...
If protection is on, I cannot rename the file nor delete it, but can copy it to different locations on laptop or to different devices as well.
I ordered following three enclosures. I ordered the SHINESTAR again, just in case there's an issue with one I've got...
Bobbo,
I'm using laptop. It has
- 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports both USB-A connector & Power Delivery ( Power Share )
- 1 x Thunderbolt 3 (4 lanes of PCI Express Gen 3) supporting:
- Power Delivery ( Power Share ),
- Thunderbolt 3 (40Gbps bi-directional)
- USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps),
- Native DisplayPort 1.2 video output,
- Power Delivery ( Power Share ),
You bring up a good point concerning power draw. I'm going to research that...
Wouldn't writes take more power than reads ( even reads are moving data faster through USB port )?
Enclosure get's hotter when performing writes than reads when I don't have a fan blowing over enclosure.
Irony is I can backup ( write ) to the enclosure which places the ~200GB full backup image on the 970 EVO that I later try to copy off.
I can also clone to the enclosure.
Writes to the Enclosure from any source ( internal or external to laptop ), from any port or device works without any issues...
I've got portable 5TB, 4TB, 3TB ( Seagate & Western Digital ) drives that don't require anything other than one USB cable plugged into laptop ( no AC )
I've got portable 8TB ( Seagate ) drive that is powered by AC and connects to any of the USB-A 3.1 Gen 1 ports or USB-C USB 3.1 Gen 2 port.
I was thinking of trying to connect to the enclosure from my Samsung Note 8 phone which has USB-C connector / port, but haven't done it yet because wasn't sure whether or not, it would damage phone. I can connect and use ( read & write ) to Samsung T5 1TB from my Note 8 phone without any issues...
When I first got the SHINESTAR enclosure I could literally do anything, reads, writes, to any drive, internal or external and never had any issues and the image size was 3x larger ( ~ 600 GB ) because I hadn't cleaned up the system...
I removed ~400GB from the system so full backup image is ~200GB and that's when I started noticing random issues with trying to copy ( drag & drop ) file to internal PM951 only, but no issues copying ( drag & drop ) to any of the portable USB drives ( 8TB, 5TB, 4TB )...
Then eventually I couldn't copy to any of the drives internal nor external portables...
Then today for some reason, nothing changed I was able to copy ~200GB file to the 8TB portable drive...
On Windows 10 system, Is it possible to clone from enclosure back to internal drive and if so, would it boot?
Scenario #1
- On Windows 10 system
- Boot from USB Acronis media
- Clone from internal NVMe M.2 to NVMe M.2 in enclosure
- Immediately clone from Enclosure to Internal
Scenario #2
- On Windows 10 system
- Boot from USB Acronis Media
- Clone from internal NVMe M.2 to NVMe M.2 in enclosure
- Put brand new 970 EVO straight from box into laptop
- Clone from Enclosure that was cloned above to Internal
- Would system boot?
Scenario #3
- Clone between two laptops that are identical
- On Laptop #1
- Boot from USB Acronis media
- Clone to enclosure
- On Laptop #2
- Boot from USB Acronis
- Clone from Enclosure to internal drive on laptop #2
Reason for asking is, in case lots of data got deleted from internal drive or drive wouldn't boot because O/S got corrupted, but drive ( internal NVMe M.2 ) was functionally ok.
Really hard to say. I have a BPX PCIE NVME drive and it will just dog out at times with similar behavior, but other times it runs like a beast (and that's internal on an adapter card on the PCIE 16 lane). My theory is heat on this one since it runs a good 20 degrees hotter than the 960pro that my OS is installed on.
Could be the external hardware, drive heat, USB power, USB bus saturation, PCIE NVME running out of cache and recalibrating itself, etc. Lots of variables that could come into play. Hopefully, with some luck, one of your new enclosures will wipe out the problem on its own. If not though, it may be a crap shoot isolating the issue. What I've been reading on different PCIE NVME drives though, is that they do take a hit when they run out TLC/SLC cache (usually around 100Gb of a large single file, give or take). I guess that's thy the 970Pro is still king with MLC (but at that higher cost).
I'm working on getting an enclosure and another drive to test with in the near future too. I'm thinking about opting for the ADATA XPG Gammix 11 Pro or the XPG SX8200 over the EVO 970. Still can't decide though. But when I do, it will be interesting to see how the external transfers and clones and read/writes go.
Bobbo,
Do you think following would work:
Scenario #3
- Clone between two laptops that are identical
- On Laptop #1
- Boot from USB Acronis media
- Clone to enclosure
- On Laptop #2
- Boot from USB Acronis
- Clone from Enclosure to internal drive on laptop #2
After performing a clone using Acronis 2019, the disk ID on the clone drive didn't change...
Read somewhere that the drive id would change on the clone drive and in fact would have the same id as the source, but isn't case here. The clone drive kept the same Disk ID it had before it was cloned...
Before the clone:
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 953 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 7452 GB 0 B *
Disk 2 Online 931 GB 1024 KB *
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DISKPART> select disk 2 ( DRIVE BEFORE CLONE )
Disk 2 is now the selected disk.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DISKPART> detail disk
Samsung SSD 970 EVO 2B2Q SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: {C5AF1ED2-39E9-450F-B5FE-3A0D0F38D012} <<< Drive that will be cloned
Type : USB
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 6 F 970 EVO NTFS Partition 931 GB Healthy
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 953 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 7452 GB 0 B *
* Disk 2 Online 931 GB 1024 KB *
DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> detail disk
PM981 NVMe Samsung 1024GB
Disk ID: {3042CB9A-F9A0-4EFC-96B4-76BDC31143AD}
Type : RAID
Status : Online
Path : 1
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1700)#RAID(P01T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : Yes
Pagefile Disk : Yes
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : Yes
Clustered Disk : No
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 C OS NTFS Partition 938 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 1 WINRETOOLS NTFS Partition 990 MB Healthy
Volume 2 Image NTFS Partition 12 GB Healthy
Volume 3 DELLSUPPORT NTFS Partition 1099 MB Healthy
Volume 4 ESP FAT32 Partition 650 MB Healthy System
After Cloning
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
* Disk 0 Online 953 GB 1024 KB *
Disk 1 Online 931 GB 0 B *
DISKPART> detail disk
PM981 NVMe Samsung 1024GB
Disk ID: {3042CB9A-F9A0-4EFC-96B4-76BDC31143AD}
Type : RAID
Status : Online
Path : 1
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(1700)#RAID(P01T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : Yes
Pagefile Disk : Yes
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : Yes
Clustered Disk : No
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 C OS NTFS Partition 938 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 1 WINRETOOLS NTFS Partition 990 MB Healthy
Volume 2 Image NTFS Partition 12 GB Healthy
Volume 3 DELLSUPPORT NTFS Partition 1099 MB Healthy
Volume 4 ESP FAT32 Partition 650 MB Healthy System
DISKPART> select disk 1 ( Drive after cloning )
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> detail disk
JMICRON JMS583 SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: {C5AF1ED2-39E9-450F-B5FE-3A0D0F38D012} <<< ID remained same after cloning
Type : USB
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : UNAVAILABLE
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 5 D OS NTFS Partition 915 GB Healthy
Volume 6 WINRETOOLS NTFS Partition 990 MB Healthy
Volume 7 Image NTFS Partition 12 GB Healthy
Volume 8 DELLSUPPORT NTFS Partition 1097 MB Healthy
Volume 9 ESP FAT32 Partition 650 MB Healthy Hidden
DISKPART>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
After cloning
S G wrote:Bobbo,
Do you think following would work:
Scenario #3
- Clone between two laptops that are identical
- On Laptop #1
- Boot from USB Acronis media
- Clone to enclosure
- On Laptop #2
- Boot from USB Acronis
- Clone from Enclosure to internal drive on laptop #2
Yeah, most likely. Take a backup of laptop #2 to be on the safe side though ahead of time. As long as the drivers are close enough and bios settings pretty similar (after configuring perhaps, but if both Dell, should be easy). Windows 10 is especially good at handling driver changes if there are some slight differences.
You'd just want to make sure that both systems were already licensed with Windows 10 or that you have a transferable Windows license (retail box). For instance, never wipe out a new system OS with Windows 10 OEM until after you've logged in and let it phone home to activate. If you don't activate it on the hardware at least once, if you clone an already activated license to it, then it's likely to not activate on the new hardware. That's a plus and minus with with Windows 10 OEM. So as long as the OS is the same (home / home or Pro / Pro) and already active on both, should be just fine.
Personally, I just take a backup image since you don't have to image the entire thing each time and can update it easily (incrementals or differentials) and then restore it instead. Same basic concept though and you could use the same image to deploy to both systems with recovery media.
S G
Your Scenarios 2 and 3 will work for cloning.
In regard to your assertion that the Disk ID remain unchanged after clone I believe what you are seeing is the Device ID for the USB enclosure which does not change. The cloned disk itself should inherit the ID of the source disk.
Since you are moving very large files around between these disks I am going to suggest that before you copy the files you trim the destination disk. Below is a PowerShell command to do that very quickly on the drives
Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter YourDriveLetter -ReTrim -Verbose Replace YourDriveLetter with the letter of drive you want to trim. This will only run from an admin PowerShell instance.
Bobbo,
Personally, I just take a backup image since you don't have to image the entire thing each time and can update it easily (incrementals or differentials) and then restore it instead. Same basic concept though and you could use the same image to deploy to both systems with recovery media.
I don't have enough examples or have lots of confidence nor lots of repeated past success in restoring a drive using systems image backup in versions before 2019... After completing the restores, drive would not boot ( to long ago to remember details )... Plus laptops seem to have lot more complexity than desktops... Desktops are super easy to clone and swap removable 5.25 disk enclosures and desktop comes up 100% of time...
In previous versions before 2019 it was hit and miss ( on laptops ) and in one particular scenario I has 5 full image backups and two of the five were sector by sector and none of the five worked..
Dell came to my house, swapped a motherboard ( removing & reinstalling memory & NVMe PCIe m.2 )...
System would not boot and money of the basic recovery methods worked ( F5, F8 trying restart, refresh, recover from recovery backups, reset " revert back to Factory defaults )...
I ended up having to use an image I created by using a bootable usb flash stick ( ubuntu ) and the *nix " dd " command...
The " dd " command always creates images that can be restored or always clones drives that work 100% afterwards...
Acronis 2019 seems to be a lot better...
I've restored XPS 15 9570 from
System image
System image sector 2 sector
No problems...
But that system is brand new with minimal changes / updates and basically none of my software or apps installed
Enchantech,
It's been awhile since I've used defrag, trim, optimize disk, etc...
I'll do bit of reading then perform trim...
Thanks for suggestion...
If I'm correct trim doesn't perform any writes to media so it doesn't increase wear like a defrag would on ssd...
SG - just curious how the enclosures are working out? I ended up getting the Sabrent. I like it a lot - heavy little sucker, but nice aluminum and hopefully equates to heat dissipation. However, speeds are all over the place. Overall, it does what it says and gives me an option to clone or read other PCIE NVME drives externally so can't complain with that. On my Dell Latitude 5285 USB C ports, large files hover around 400MB copying onto an older 250GB Samsung Pro 950 in it. They dip all over when doing a range of small files though. On my home computer, I can get up to 900MB copying onto the same drive, but again, it's all over and that speed doesn't stick even when repeating the same copy.
FYI, anyone seen this 1TB drive from Silicon Power for $165 and have thoughts? No reviews on it anywhere else (one reviewer has a diskmark shot showing pretty close to specs on the 1TB, but the rest is Amazon garbage with mixed reviews for 5 different products by Silicon). That's the sweetest spot for price / performance I've seen when you compare it to the current EVO 970 at nearly $100 more. Wish I would had found it before I ordered my 500Gb XPG SX8200 Pro (which has been great so far, but for $50 more could have gotten twice the space and some extra theoretical write speed too).
Silicon Power 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 R/W up to 3,200/3,000MB/s SSD (SU001TBP34A80M28AB)
S G,
The command I posted runs Trim Optimization of the desired SSD drive. This trim is performed by the drive controller so you are correct that no writes occur. The controller simply sets all marked cells to cleared status or 1's. So the way to look at this is if you have a 1TB drive and write 200GB of data to the drive 5 times you have written to all cells one time. The drive controller at that point will be set to run trim on the nand cells but will wait until the drive is idle for a predetermined amount of time. Using the PS command will force the trim to take place immediately and you can watch it in PS. It will only take a few seconds to complete. Once done you have all cells back to ready to write state.
Amazon Prime Now is truly amazing with 1hr deliver for small price ( $7 ) and 2hr delivery is free...
Bobbo,
I received enclosures haven't unboxed. Was trying to continue experimenting with reading files off 970 EVO...
It has gotten to point it crashes all the time when trying to copy full disk image file from 970 EVO in Enclosure...
Image was created using Acronis 2019 after booting from USB, then saving ( writing ) directly to 970 in enclosure...
There were several different windows error messages popping up after each failure. I'd post error now but I'm on my phone...
Doesn't matter which ports I connect the 970 in enclosure to ( two different USB 3.0 ports with USB-A connector ) or USB-C port Gen 2
I explained to Amazon what I was doing because I didn't want them to think I was abusing policy if all these parts do not work as expected because I will be returning all enclosures but one if they all misbehave and one of the memories...
Amazon put notes in my account and said it's ok... If parts don't work not our ( customer's ) fault... Plus I'm not a habitual returner of same items...
I've ordered another 970 EVO 1TB and will compare to current one I already have...