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Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

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Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#81

Post by astrodust »

stan_rogers wrote: post #58
Rebelgecko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less common and I might be mangling terminology , but there's also PCIe, PCIe-Mini, mSATA, SATA Express (same connector as SATA). There's also a variety of m.2 form factors

Don't forget U.2 - NVMe in a (usually) 2.5" form factor.

There's also M.2 "M key" and M.2 "B key" because why not have two different types of connector in your brand new standard. There's also "M+B" which reminds me of the days of CD-RW and CD+RW with CD+/-RW thrown in to try and unify things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2

This is annoying because some dual M.2 adapter cards have one of each, so you can't use two M-type cards in it.

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#82

Post by ilaksh »

Seems like a good thing for mini-PCs and laptops.

I am really into mini-PCs. Like the Mini-STX DeskMini GTX/RX is my favorite thing at the moment even though I don't really need it. It uses MXM (laptop) graphics cards such as even a 1080.

I am wondering, with an external power brick like the DeskMini GTX/RX uses, could you make the systems even smaller than Mini-STX? Maybe there could be a way to separate out the components package from a cooling solution that would be attached.

I like the combination of portability, easily plug-able components, and power.

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#83

Post by hipboi »

gambiting wrote: post #18
djsumdog wrote: post #2

Wonder if we'll see these on the Raspberry Pi 5 and other embedded boards? This is pretty amazing; much better than the current eMMC and SDCard based storage solutions on a lot of dev boards.

RockPi has a full size M.2 connector that accepts most NVMe drives: http://rockpi.org/

Ongoing work on the reverse-engineered Panfrost OpenGL ES driver for Arm Mali GPUs has turned the RK3399 SoC into a very attractive platform to try out Wayland on ARM devices.

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/blog/2019/08/06/rock...

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#84

Post by craz8 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #45
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #35

I can definitely see the perks of the form factor here, and totally see SSD cooling hardware as being the next big thing, and it sounds like they're prepared for that here. But I mourn how fast the interface format is changing now, because I don't have the hardware to support all of these formats. I've got a handy USB to SATA adapter that did the job for, I don't know, a decade and a half, and now there's eight diffe…

SATA, M2, now this. What other interfaces are there?

I’m rooting for SCSI to make a comeback - I have a box full of cables ready to go!

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#85

Post by diamondo25 »

astrodust wrote: post #81
stan_rogers wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget U.2 - NVMe in a (usually) 2.5" form factor.

There's also M.2 "M key" and M.2 "B key" because why not have two different types of connector in your brand new standard. There's also "M+B" which reminds me of the days of CD-RW and CD+RW with CD+/-RW thrown in to try and unify things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2 This is annoying because some dual M.2 adapter cards have one of each, so you can't use two M-type cards in it.

Because this fixes the issue of "i plugged it in but it doesnt work" issue, as you already know it wont work because it doesnt fit. Kinda like DDR slots

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#86

Post by bayindirh »

bobwaycott wrote: post #79
bayindirh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm running a batch of SBCs which boot from SD cards as home or forgettable servers. None of them died due to SD card failure yet. A good SD card with a little optimization keeps the flash media wear out at bay.

What little optimizations?

Like writing logs to RAM and syncing back to disk daily or only on reboots/shutdowns, keeping high-write applications on a USB drive and providing the biggest cache possible by slimming down the OS memory footprint.

This two things reduce the hits to SD card substantially.

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#87

Post by imtringued »

throwaway542134 wrote: post #24
shawnz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it better than SD Express though, which also supports PCIe and is backwards compatible with existing cards?

I don't think the connector is the problem but the devices you connect to. RPis are notorious for having a poor lifespan due to reading/writing from the SD cards, but I think that's mostly due to the cost tier of a $30 computer.

It has more to do with the garbage $2 power supply someone had "lying around".

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#88

Post by Tepix »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #35

I can definitely see the perks of the form factor here, and totally see SSD cooling hardware as being the next big thing, and it sounds like they're prepared for that here. But I mourn how fast the interface format is changing now, because I don't have the hardware to support all of these formats. I've got a handy USB to SATA adapter that did the job for, I don't know, a decade and a half, and now there's eight diffe…

Just get a new USB 3 adapter. Here's one for M.2 for 5 bucks https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/bq4e19rS

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#89

Post by GrryDucape »

Not sure if this will end up in consumer devices but it would be a hell of a lot better than SSD chips soldered onto laptop motherboards. The latest ultraportables all seem to have soldered SSDs because once Apple did it and the world kept spinning, that made it okay for Dell and everyone else to follow suit. Of course the SSDs themselves would have to become easily available for people to upgrade their laptops or it will just be the next MXM standard, upgradeable in theory but no one actually does it.

Re: Toshiba Introduces New Tiny NVMe SSD Form Factor

#90

Post by bayindirh »

astrodust wrote: post #80
AmVess wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The connector requires a small amount of downward force to slot the nvme device. Without a screw, the device can easily pop out of the slot.

If only engineers working on that sort of product had some kind of way of using a plastic tab or something to hold things into place. Like have lunch with the memory socket or PCIe people and talk shop.

I was shopping for an Apple 2013 SSD to PCIe or SATA converter yesterday, and I've found that some adapters have a configurable clip on the PCB instead of a screw. You insert the clip on the PCB according to the size of the SSD and viola.
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