16GB Intel M10 Optane M.2 SSD $15.50 New?

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Jeggs101

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Dec 29, 2010
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Jeggs101

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@zack$ have you tried it? It's just an NVMe drive that Intel's software picks up on compatible boards and pulls into caching right? Why would a NVMe drive not be bootable, on an Atom or Xeon server?
 

Sean Ho

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They are just normal NVMe drives, bootable if your UEFI can boot NVMe. These are and older gen and not terribly fast, but they are nice for PFSense. I have a couple; There was a US seller offering them for $10 a while back.
 

am45931472

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Feb 26, 2019
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I know for a fact that these drives are bootable. But also sequential write of 145MB hurts, not that you buy these for sequential write. We used these as boot devices for maybe 2 years but they were generally not worth it.
 

thetoad

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Feb 10, 2021
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it would seem the primary benefit of these drives would be their crazy endurance. - a 16GB drive that has ~160TBW endurance. makes me wish it came in a usb or sd card form factor so that I could run it as my boot drive in an r720/dl380 g8 server, or even a raspbery pi, without worrying that I'd wear out the disc.
 

gb00s

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Jul 25, 2018
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.... makes me wish it came in a usb or sd card form factor so that I could run it as my boot drive in an r720/dl380 g8 server, or even a raspbery pi, without worrying that I'd wear out the disc.
Tons of nvme to usb adapters in the market ....
 

thetoad

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Tons of nvme to usb adapters in the market ....
yea, but most (all?) are meant for external usage. was thinking of it existing in the internal usb on servers, where space/size matters. not designed for a long'ish 2280 card.
 
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gb00s

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yea, but most (all?) are meant for external usage. was thinking of it existing in the internal usb on servers, where space/size matters. not designed for a long'ish 2280 card.
Tons of USB corner adapters in the market ....

I ask a friend if he can provide a photo from his USB corner adapter in his 1U server and connected to his Optane via NVMe to USB adapter :oops::rolleyes:
 

thetoad

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Tons of USB corner adapters in the market ....

I ask a friend if he can provide a photo from his USB corner adapter in his 1U server and connected to his Optane via NVMe to USB adapter :oops::rolleyes:
what is that? my cursory google searching didnt find stuff with that term. Are you talking about adapters that have an external usb cable? I pondered, seemed a bit jankier that I would desire, but can understand some using them and just taping them down to some fixed point in the case.
 

i386

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Mar 18, 2016
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This made me lookup other, larger m2 ssds, I didn't know there were already 512gb/1tb 2230/2240 m2 ssds :oops:
 

hlidskialf

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Apr 28, 2016
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In for one. You reminded me that I have an empty M2-USB adapter doing nothing. Might try it as a boot drive on the USB port of my secondary proxmox box. Thanks for the link.
 

thetoad

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Feb 10, 2021
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ok, that's what you mean, just a usb l connector. I was thinking you mean a nvme to usb that did that. I'd want it mounted nicely inside case, but yes, if one wanted it external, there are many options. I'd be less adverse to just using it with a cable and taping it to the machine on the outside (well if it isn't racked).
 

gb00s

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Just no ... You plug that into your internal USB connector on the motherboard and connect the NVMe to USB connector into it. SO the NVMe to USB is sitting horizontally to the motherboard. I friend of mine has this working just fine.
 

thetoad

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in my r720, for instance, that would make it perpendicular (vertical orientation) to my motherboard, not horizontal/parallel, i guess it works as you epxect if the usb connector is poking up out of the motherboard, but that's not the case on the dell (at least the usb port I'm thinking about. maybe there's another internal one I dont know about.

I should note that the hp dl380p g8 does seem to have it vertical, but unsure either l direction works, one direction goes into the psu's, the other goes into the ram.
 
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Markess

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I use one of these as a boot drive in one of my machines in an NVMe to PCIe adapter. As others have said, it says "Optane" but its a pretty ordinary and actually relatively slow 16GB NVMe drive. Got mine new for about the same price a while back (different seller).

I like the idea of a USB to M.2 adapter for a boot drive. For OS/Hosts that lend themselves to installation on a USB but tend to write to disk frequently (Proxmox, OMV, etc), I think this is a good alternative to using a high quality USB drive and probably doesn't cost a lot more in the end. The more advanced wear leveling of a "true" SSD vs USB flash would extend the live of the drive quite a lot.
 

Markess

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in my r720, for instance, that would make it perpendicular (vertical orientation) to my motherboard, not horizontal/parallel, i guess it works as you epxect if the usb connector is poking up out of the motherboard, but that's not the case on the dell (at least the usb port I'm thinking about. maybe there's another internal one I dont know about
I wonder, since the adapters are wider than the USB A connector, if one would fit with the one power supply where it is? I'm getting ready to do something different with my R620, and booting from the internal USB connector would be handy. I've got the 4 drive version, so offloading boot/OS to another device would be a plus.