Non-Motherboard NVMe Installation

[John Ludlow]

I think I was either looking at the throughput readout in the Windows File Explorer file transfer progress indicator and/or the disk read/write displays in the Task Manager performance tab.

I get that the writing drive bottlenecks the throughput, but IIRC, the write and read speeds are actually not too different. Like only a few percent different. (When is there NOT a writing drive on the receiving end? Has me wondering how one could ever realize true read speed potentials.)

I figured it was just the lots-of-little-files factor that bogged it down so. I'd much prefer if there's something I can tweak to vastly improve things. But then I don't do a whole lot of mutli-GB-size transfers. Only when I'm moving data to a new computer. Or maybe when I'm archiving projects to an external drive. But then it's a SATA spinner, so...

My nightly online backup is at the mercy of my 17th-century DSL connection (which lately spends most of it's life under 1 Mbps)! I do have a nightly boot disc image from one EVO to the other that happens, so I suppose that could be fun to watch go faster, but it's kind of inconsequential, happening in the background, and usually after I'm done with the computer for the day.

Gigabit fiber Internet coming in the spring to our town, though! Can't freakin' wait!

Suppose that you are listening to that 39,000 track masterpiece you have recorded: your life's work, finally realized. No write there.

I would suggest that if you really want to check your NVMe speed, use something like this:

https://www.alex-is.de/PHP/fusion/do...?download_id=9

I looked at several of these today. They're generally sneaky about some aspect of the download. They have put a lot of work into their utilities creation and they know that the average person will only plan on using it, like, once - and therefore will be hoping not to have to pay for it. Asking for money upfront eliminates them entirely. So, instead they are sneaky. In this case, it is free even if you don't 'donate', but non-donators must use it in German - which you only find out after you have installed it. Still - works great though.

And, it looks as if there is something to the 'small files slow the transfer down' theory - even with an SSD. Not sure why. I suppose there is overhead at the processor level in starting a new file. But, still...

You will like gigabit fiber. We have a couple of different companies offering it here in KC. I've only tested Google's. But, it was jaw-dropping. A lot of one's actual speed happens in leased lines outside of your local network. Your actual speed is whatever the slowest link in the chain is. Some companies reduce their local throughput requirements by deliberately using (relatively) slow leased lines. So, you never get anywhere near the speed you expect unless you're testing against their local speed check or playing a game against someone next door. Not Google. I did a speed test at my friend's house against a server in Dallas and it was consistently close to a gig read speeds.

[Naturally Digital]

Even between those two SSDs I have these crazy low transfer speeds when it's doing the little files. To be sure I wasn't misremembering, I just did a test. I copied C:\Program Files (x86) to a newly created temp folder on my D: drive. Both NVMe drives were around 60% full. I stopped it about halfway through the transfer, and to that point it varied between about 2 and 200 MB/sec, but seemed to average around 40 MB/sec or so. That's, what, around 320 Mbps?

Dave, you got me wondering about this so I did a search. This is nothing more than one of the first results I hit but it may be of interest. I only read to the point where the OP solved his problem but there are a number of knowledgeable responders in the thread with a number of good suggestions.

I've not yet played with this technology but this discussion here (on the SAW forum) has been interesting.

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...-drive.255319/

[Dave Labrecque]

Suppose that you are listening to that 39,000 track masterpiece you have recorded: your life's work, finally realized. No write there.

Of course! And being the audiophile that I am, I would listen to all those tracks mixing in real time rather than to a stereo mixdown file because even that one generation of loss is offensive to my golden ears, if only due to the placebo effect.

And, it looks as if there is something to the 'small files slow the transfer down' theory - even with an SSD. Not sure why. I suppose there is overhead at the processor level in starting a new file. But, still...

Well, it's not my idea. The benchmarks I saw for various drives when I was SSD shopping made it clear that there were at least two benchmarks that mattered: the continuous data transfer benchmark and the lots-of-little-files transfer benchmark. (They may have called them something different.) The latter was typically quite a bit lower than the former if memory serves.

You will like gigabit fiber. We have a couple of different companies offering it here in KC. I've only tested Google's. But, it was jaw-dropping. A lot of one's actual speed happens in leased lines outside of your local network. Your actual speed is whatever the slowest link in the chain is. Some companies reduce their local throughput requirements by deliberately using (relatively) slow leased lines. So, you never get anywhere near the speed you expect unless you're testing against their local speed check or playing a game against someone next door. Not Google. I did a speed test at my friend's house against a server in Dallas and it was consistently close to a gig read speeds.

Hadn't thought about that, but, yeah, it's hard to imagine many servers that will read or write at close to 1000 Mbps with us yahoos in the field. At least, that's what my never-been-there-or-tried-that brain is telling me. I hope I'm wrong at least some of the time. And your test seems to say it's possible.

Kansas City? Spent many of my formative years there ('73 to '82-ish in Overland Park; junior high, high school, early college years). Still have friends there. Our SAWStudio buddy Frank Farrell, who used to run Kenny Rogers' live shows, is/was based there. You ever cross paths with him? Say hi to KC for me, wouldja?

[Dave Labrecque]

Interesting. Maybe I'll "nuke my drive" next chance I have. Not sure how to do that. Probably involves a learning curve. And maybe a Geiger counter?

[John Ludlow]

Hadn't thought about that, but, yeah, it's hard to imagine many servers that will read or write at close to 1000 Mbps with us yahoos in the field. At least, that's what my never-been-there-or-tried-that brain is telling me. I hope I'm wrong at least some of the time. And your test seems to say it's possible.

Kansas City? Spent many of my formative years there ('73 to '82-ish in Overland Park; junior high, high school, early college years). Still have friends there. Our SAWStudio buddy Frank Farrell, who used to run Kenny Rogers' live shows, is/was based there. You ever cross paths with him? Say hi to KC for me, wouldja?

Well, consider that I was testing Internet speed against an Internet speed test site. So, their server was up to that task by definition. I would expect that one's mileage might vary from site to site. But, at least the limiting factor is the site you're connecting to (or a network nearby them).

You grew up and went to school in OP? That's wild! I live in OP now. I grew up in Prairie Village. My family moved there from a suburb of St. Louis in '62. We almost certainly went to the same high school (SMS). I think I must be a few years older than you though because I graduated and moved on the year you arrived, and by '82 I was playing rock-n-roll for a (poor) living out of Lawrence. Dave, we've 'known' each other for closing in on 30 years and I never suspected we had that in common. Small world. I wonder whether we know anyone? Probably not, I suppose - just due to the difference in age.

No, I've never met Frank. I remember him from many years ago at this site though (or, rather, earlier versions of it). He seemed very professional to me at the time. He used to rep Native Instruments later too. At the time he seemed like someone I didn't have enough stripes to approach. When he went to gigs, he traveled in a plane or a plush bus with Kenny Rogers. Back when I went to gigs, I sat on whatever metal floor wasn't occupied by gear in an Econoline van. Class differences, you know?

And sure - I'll say hi to KC for ya!

[Dave Labrecque]

Well, consider that I was testing Internet speed against an Internet speed test site. So, their server was up to that task by definition. I would expect that one's mileage might vary from site to site. But, at least the limiting factor is the site you're connecting to (or a network nearby them).

You grew up and went to school in OP? That's wild! I live in OP now. I grew up in Prairie Village. My family moved there from a suburb of St. Louis in '62. We almost certainly went to the same high school (SMS). I think I must be a few years older than you though because I graduated and moved on the year you arrived, and by '82 I was playing rock-n-roll for a (poor) living out of Lawrence. Dave, we've 'known' each other for closing in on 30 years and I never suspected we had that in common. Small world. I wonder whether we know anyone? Probably not, I suppose - just due to the difference in age.

No, I've never met Frank. I remember him from many years ago at this site though (or, rather, earlier versions of it). He seemed very professional to me at the time. He used to rep Native Instruments later too. At the time he seemed like someone I didn't have enough stripes to approach. When he went to gigs, he traveled in a plane or a plush bus with Kenny Rogers. Back when I went to gigs, I sat on whatever metal floor wasn't occupied by gear in an Econoline van. Class differences, you know?

And sure - I'll say hi to KC for ya!

Would you believe my family moved from suburban St. Louis (Manchester/Baldwin) to Overland Park in '73? I did the public school track for seventh and eighth grades (Indian Creek JH, which has been something else for years, on 103rd Street), living near 99th and Nall). Then I went to Rockhurst HS on State Line Rd. All my friends went to SMS, of course. My first job was bagging groceries at a store at 95th and Nall (Milgram) across the street from the old blue Capital Federal bank building.

When Kenny and Frank came through Tucson ten or twelve years ago, Frank let me and a friend sit behind the FOH mixer (Frank was the monitors guy and stage manager) at a casino show. Super nice guy (Frank; did not get to meet Kenny) who regaled us with his Steve Miller and Paul McCartney stories afterwards while the roadies packed everything up. He had used SAWStudio to play Kenny's home movies on a big screen at the back of the stage! Maybe because it was sync'd to some backing tracks, I don't recall. Kenny had a full band, so maybe strings? Or just a click for the drummer? Can't remember.

Geeze, when I was in OP, civilization ended just past I-435. I think 110th Street was the boonies. We used to head out past the highway on Metcalf to buy fireworks outside the city limits. We felt like Lewis and Clark making that trip every July. I know things have changed since then.

[John Ludlow]

My 8th grade class opened Indian Creek. We were the hump of the baby boom and they built new schools for us all the way through. We had been 4 to a locker at Nallwood the previous year. I moved to public school from Cure, where I got through 6th grade. So, I knew a lot of people at Rockhurst.

When we moved here in '62, the city ended at 95th st, at least it did on Mission rd, which was the center of my world. And we could ride our bikes to Ranchmart where there was a strip mall on one side and the beginning of bucolic rolling prairie on the other. Nothing but stick trees and construction sites in my neighborhood as they were building it as fast as they could possibly manage - to handle the influx of young movers and shakers. And I had an account at Cap Fed, where money went to die (from my perspective as a child forced saver). Now, it's out past 150th going South (the city, not Cap Fed).

I'll tell you something I'll bet you did not know. The Who played a dance at SMS in 1967, which was three years before I got there. They were touring with the Buckinghams - and they were the warm up band. KC is centrally located, the Interstates were new, and the bus had to drive through town anyway - so they agreed tp play the show for $10G. If you look at the list of Who shows, you'll see that my high school was the only one they ever played. Brewer and Shipley played there several times as well as others. The rock show business was not yet what it would become.

It was a student council coffer builder program that went bad the following school year when they booked the Byrds for the football stadium - and it rained. The school district was left on the hook for guaranteed booking and so student council had no budget for the next several years. It rankled the subsequent classes since that '69 class got to stage rock concert failures and we had to pay for it. I was on the student council in '70-'71 and so that's how I knew. It was also the end of bringing big acts to a Shawnee Mission school with high school kids doing the business. There were so many novel things that were up and coming back then that sometimes you just had to try something to know for sure that it was a bad idea.

https://www.ritland-concert-photos.com/Who/who.html

https://byrdsflyght.ucoz.com/index/concerts_1969/0-10

[Dave Labrecque]

Wow. The memories. So we shared a junior high school. Man, Indian Creek lasted what? 15, 20 years, total?

Our family were regulars for mass in the basement (following Sunday school) at Cure of Ars until we kids got through our confirmations (having completed the other sacraments prior to the move to KC). Then we were done. No more church for us. Strange, if inadvertent, telegraphing to one's offspring, I've always thought.

Strange to hear how undeveloped OP was only a few years prior to our arrival. Ranchmart (that's where my bank was, I think). SMS. Indian Creek. Metcalf South. Glenwood Theatre. It all comes rushing back.

The Who at SMS! The ill-fated Byrds show! What were they thinking trying to hold an outdoor concert in March! I sure hope they had better luck one month later in Shawnee.

Great stuff, John. Thanks for the memories.

It's kind of amazing, the folks I've met here over the years. Angie Dickinson-Mickle and I worked at the same little 1000-watt AM radio station way out in the Chicago suburbs--at different times. Crazy, man!

[John Ludlow]

You mentioned Metcalf South. In 1962 it hadn't been built yet. But, diagonally across the street to where it would someday be, was a pay fishing lake. For $5 you could fish there all day. On days when Mom didn't know for sure what to do with my brother and me - it was a special treat for us. In the late seventies they built those black office towers there that everyone called 'The Darth Vader Buildings'. There is still the vestige of the original lake there - a little pond that makes me smile when I drive past.

Well, they had to build schools for the baby boom. But, after the crest of that wave, they had to figure out what to do with them. I suspect that Indian Creek was planned to be a district computer operations center from the beginning. And it still is. The only school, at the time, that was mostly built underground and had tinted windows that did not open.

The baby boom was real. When we first moved to town I was a second grader. Linwood grade school didn't have enough space for all of us. So, they put two extra second grade classrooms in the same room in the basement there. The classes faced opposite directions. A teacher on each end. I still remember ours telling us to simply ignore that other teacher (as she was talking on the other end of the room). Of course - that worked great. So, when Trailwood was finally almost done, my second grade class and a kindergarten class were the first ones that moved in - in the middle of the year. They tore it down recently. My next year, after rising to the top of the waiting list, was at Cure. The second graders were fifty to a class. Nallwood was 4 to a locker my first year in junior high. Luckily I wasn't one of the two guys who had to keep their books piled together on the bottom - particularly on snowy days (boots...). My home room there was in one of the 4 double-wide trailers they erected in the space that would have been an outdoor common area. The following year Indian Creek opened, so I spent the next two years there. It had all young teachers and they operated it as 'experimental education'. That meant that we got to have study hall, unsupervised, in one of the stairwells if we wanted to (and we did) and we were introduced to psychedelic light shows put on by the teachers with overhead projectors and colored oil to the music of The Beatles, Steppenwolf, and Iron Butterfly. All that and suddenly realizing we children were going to be conscripted to fight in that war we had been watching every night on the news for our entire lives in a very short amount of time - or else be expected to sneak into Canada.

My family was also a regular at that Family Mass. But, by the time that started, I was already gone. You might have met them. However, I did play at its predecessor, guitar masses (folk songs played too slow, and badly) that took place upstairs in the old church that became the gymnasium when they built the new church. We were terrible and I was embarrassed to be involved. To be fair - embarrassment was kind of my thing then though. Sitting on card table chairs in front of the confessionals. Playing without amplification (which was just as well, in retrospect). Father Kelly, who was old school, was clearly annoyed that we were what his bishop believed was going to bring young people back to church. The answer, my friend, was blowin' in the wind. But, playing did give one something to do. By then I guess I was already on my way out as a Catholic too.

[Dave Labrecque]

Taking this to PM-land. Sorry we took so long, everyone!