There is still one thing that M.2 can’t do right now that sata drives like HDD and SSDs can. There are all these little devices you can get on amazon that will allow you to plug as many drives directly into your motherboard as you would like, but only power the ones you want to use.
can’t post link to amazon, plz dm me if you want the hardware link
These are really handy, say if you have a computer you would like to use for work, play, and mining. You can more safely use one computer for many different tasks, because unlike booting into a specific drive from bios, this way none of the other drives can see one another, because the ones you don’t want to use are all off, even though the sata cable is still in your mobo, the drive has no power to talk to the mobo. In addition, switching between OSs is faster, because you don’t actually have to use the bios menu to select a drive, and you never miss the bios menu on boot. Also, no OS update will ever decide to explore you other drives, and brick any of your systems. Also, as games because 100’s of GB, and larger 8TB drives have exploded in value because of storage crypto, separating your games on one drive, and your work and finance on another drive is a great way to get more out of smaller drives, and is a great security option, even if you only like using one OS.
So, looking at M.2, this is not as straightforward to do, because in that case, there is no unique plug for power and data, the simple interface saves a ton of space, but unifies both power and data into one plug (i’d assume)
Still, there should be no reason that the same strategy can’t be used with these new faster m.2 drives.
I think it would be very easy to make a small pci sled that can carry four drives, two on each side, and allows the user to connect or disconnect power to them at will from buttons located either on the back of the case where the pci card is exposed, or at the end of a USB cable. The cable is much more preferred OFC, because it can save your back.
I am posting here because I want to ask if this is possible? From the computer’s perspective, it wouldn’t be any different, that any other m.2 sleds that already exist, it just needs some simple board work to take a remove voltage from the power pins to the drives you don’t want to use, whatever ones those are.
I don’t really care about this a some sort of invention. I am sure other people have had this idea before. If someone who actually does the hard work wants to give me credit, then cool. But it would be great to just see the parts actually made because I would like to buy one myself. Seeing as L1T has already made the best KVM around, i figured this would be the perfect forum to post this idea. Maybe one of you PCB pros can handle this?
I think it would be great! It’s a lot of hassle to wire on of the existing systems up to four SSDs, there is a low of power cables and SATA cables flying around. This new tool could deliver the new speeds of M.2, remove all of the cable hastle, and make install a breeze, all while improving speeds!
I think this is a great tool that could save people a lot of money, who may not need to build 2 PCs, if they don’t have to use them at the same time. Or, maybe just the person who has recently found themselves working from home, doing their own side hustle, and downloading clash of clans, war thunder, and ROBLOX next to their tax info and finance info, and payroll/bank info?
PS: in b4, just use bios menu…