NMVe drive replacement questions

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Haole Boy

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Aloha everyone. I will be replacing my first NVMe drive soon. It seems straightforward enough, but I do have a couple of questions and would appreciate any advice you can pass along.

I'll be replacing a WDC PC SN720 SDAPNTW-512G-1101 with a 1 TB drive. I'm looking at the WD_Black SN750 for this, and I notice that on Amazon that you can also bundle it with a heat sink and thermal compound. Do these NVMe drives usually have a heat sink? If there is already one on the existing drive, can I transfer it to the new drive? The machine involved is a Lenovo IdeaPad FLEX-15IWL.

I'm also considering a Samsung 970 Evo NVMe drive which is a little more expensive

Anyone have a preference either way?

Mahalo for your assistance!

Harry Z
 
The only chip on the NVMe that really needs to be cooled is the "Controller Chip". The sticker that is on the top of the NVMe cards is a type of thermal insulator anyway.

If not using for intensive purposes heat-sinks are a bit of an overkill IMHO. Scamazon just trying to make some extra $$. As long as case is well ventilated there should be no issue. Though personally for me I never use heat-sinks on NVMe cards, up-to yourself. ;)
 
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Will the heatsink fit? Does the unit have an internal fan? No to either or both of those means it's useless. @frase is right, they're just trying to take on some additional revenue by suggesting those. My exposure to those types of mass storage is limited but I've never seen one with a regular heat sink.
 
I don't know, but I did a recovery from a similar NVMe and it got very hot in short order (no pun intended). They include thermal pads with all the USB NVMe enclosures for a reason, and they don't have any air flow. I always use a thermal pad with an aluminum plate pressed against it to absourb and radiate the heat when I transfer data from one NVMe to a larger one.
 
Larry Sabo said:
when I transfer data from one NVMe to a larger one.
Click to expand...

OT a bit but related - Larry, do you have an USB enclosure that works 100% of the time to mount the new drive for cloning? We have no less than three different models, and we still run into drives that won't be seen this way. We made a special bench machine with an available M2 slot to use when the enclosures fail, but that only lets us backup the data since it only has 1 slot. I'm thinking we need to rebuild that machine with a new motherboard with 2 slots. Such a pain.

Probably the unit we have with the best success rate is this one, We have 2 and they fit into standard hot-swap bays on our bench machine. That works about 75% of the time, I'd guess. Still easier to leave the machine intact and use a USB enclosure for the new drive, but even with 3 different models of enclosures, it's a 50/50 shot for that to work.
 
@HCHTech, I have this one and this one. The second one was only recently received and bought to avoid the need to image the drive then restore the image to the new, larger drive. Saves time and storage space. I haven't used either a lot but have yet to have any problem with either.
 
Most Dell laptops come from dell with heatsinks and they need them. I upgraded a DELL e series that had a spinning hard drive and a slot for M.2 and didn't know I needed the heat sink. Crashed after running for 5 minutes. Getting the proper Dell heatsink solved the issue. On a desktop with plenty of airflow across the motherboard, it is probably not needed but anything like a laptop or an external USB caddy is going to require it.
 
I don't normally hijack a thread or self-promote, but thought I'd mention that I invested about $15K USD into a PC3000 Portable with NVMe SSD recovery support. As of right now, my lab is only one of a handful who have made this investment because the number of SSDs supported is still quite small.

If I were to advise on NVMe SSD investment, I'd avoid Intel and Samsung, thanks to their digital signatures and encrypted firmware, preventing any way for us to recover them when the firmware goes stupid (which is why most SSDs fail). I recommend sticking with Silicon Motion or Phison controllers which have far greater chances of being recovered, if ever needed.
 
nlinecomputers said:
Most Dell laptops come from dell with heatsinks and they need them. I upgraded a DELL e series that had a spinning hard drive and a slot for M.2 and didn't know I needed the heat sink. Crashed after running for 5 minutes. Getting the proper Dell heatsink solved the issue. On a desktop with plenty of airflow across the motherboard, it is probably not needed but anything like a laptop or an external USB caddy is going to require it.
Click to expand...

Worked on a few OptiPlex 3070 models recently and they come with a thermal pad on the motherboard about 0.5in thick which the M.2 drive presses up against. So yeah, it's not just laptops.

Maybe if a huge OEM like Dell deems it worthwhile we should be following suit? Not something I've really thought about until now because I can count the number of nvme upgrades I've done on one hand.
 
If the laptop originally had a bare M.2 drive then you can assume there is enough airflow to keep it cool. The new one won't be any different.
 
fincoder said:
If the laptop originally had a bare M.2 drive then you can assume there is enough airflow to keep it cool.
Click to expand...
That's a dangerous assumption to make. Most manufactures don't care if the computer blows up so long as it happens a month after the one year warranty. Check the temps of the drive before making the assumption that it's okay bare. When I back up NVMe drives using an external USB adapter, they get REALLY hot. And I don't have them enclosed or anything. I'm going to rig up a USB case fan that I can set on top of the adapter so the drives don't overheat when I'm backing them up.
 
An M.2 drive with heatsink could theoretically hinder cooling if it's in a tight spot and airflow is eliminated by the bulk of the heatsink. So unless you're comparing temps under load with and without heatsink you don't know for sure which is best.

So my approach is to follow the lead of the manufacturer's engineering dept.

sapphirescales said:
Most manufactures don't care if the computer blows up so long as it happens a month after the one year warranty.
Click to expand...

O/T: In Australia the federal consumer law (2011) dictates the warranty period, it's what a 'reasonable' person would expect for that product. In practice any computer costing $500 or more has a minimum 2 years. I've seen warranty claims honoured after 3.5 years for HP Pavilion AIO PCs and high end HP Envy laptops. Hopefully our consumer law will eventually improve the reliability of IT products everywhere!
 
lcoughey said:
I recommend sticking with Silicon Motion or Phison controllers which have far greater chances of being recovered, if ever needed.
Click to expand...

Thanx for the feedback. How do I tell what controller the WD Black SN750 is using? I've looked at the WD website and downloaded the "data sheet", but no mention of what type of controller chip is being used.
 
Sad to hear about the low-recovery rates for Samsungs - they remain our "go to" for SSDs both SATA and NVMe. We have put 970s in almost every computer we build for the past couple of years. Most without heatsinks, but these are tower cases with good airflow. We do use the heatsinks if we're doing a slimline case. This discussion makes me want to change SOP to include heatsinks, though. An extra $5 or $6 to remove overheating as a potential problem has a great cost/benefit ratio. As Gen4 drives come into the mainstream, I expect many will ship with heatsinks included.

We have a stock of heatsinks and the hold-down posts & screws for upgrades, since OEMs never seem to include the mounting hardware if the unit wasn't made with an M2 drive.

We stress and push backups pretty hard, especially with SSD machines - the standard speech includes the "low recovery rate on failure is the tradeoff for all that extra speed" discussion.

For upgrades/replacements of computers with existing M2 drives, we follow the OEM. If it had a heatsink originally, will put one on, if it didn't, we won't. Laptops in particular are often space-constrained. Some have thermal pads, some don't.
 
nlinecomputers said:
Most Dell laptops come from dell with heatsinks and they need them. I upgraded a DELL e series that had a spinning hard drive and a slot for M.2 and didn't know I needed the heat sink.
Click to expand...

Knowing Dell, if you bought that with an M2 drive from the factory, it would have come with a heatsink and maybe even a slightly different cooling solution. It always p1$$3$ me off to see their towers come with proprietary power supplies whose capacity is about 5 watts more than you need to power the accessories from the original order - and only the cables necessary to connect the accessories from the original order. Customer: "Can we get a better graphics card for this machine?" or "Can we put in an extra storage disk in this machine?" or "Can I add a third monitor?" Me: "Well....it's not as simple as you think."
 
HCHTech said:
OT a bit but related - Larry, do you have an USB enclosure that works 100% of the time to mount the new drive for cloning? We have no less than three different models, and we still run into drives that won't be seen this way. We made a special bench machine with an available M2 slot to use when the enclosures fail, but that only lets us backup the data since it only has 1 slot. I'm thinking we need to rebuild that machine with a new motherboard with 2 slots. Such a pain.

Probably the unit we have with the best success rate is this one, We have 2 and they fit into standard hot-swap bays on our bench machine. That works about 75% of the time, I'd guess. Still easier to leave the machine intact and use a USB enclosure for the new drive, but even with 3 different models of enclosures, it's a 50/50 shot for that to work.
Click to expand...

Something playing around in my head about using the M2 computer and a J5create cable to connect it to another computer. In these situations I usually end up looking like a genius or an idiot nothing ever in between.

Rick
 
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