I was looking at some intel optane M.2 Drive modules to use as my L2 ARC on my Truenas scale NAS-box. I have a couple of free M.2 ports that support NVMe drives.
Looking at that listing, the M.2 Key does not look like a NVMe key M.2 key. Usually that key/version of the interface is used just in SATA-only M.2 Drives.
Here is a example of a normal NVMe Drive and a SATA-M.2 for comparison.
SATA 3 keyed drive:
(I used WD drives because the M.2 Interface shows best within their marketing materials)
Are these second-hand Intel optane M.2 modules legit or a scam? I remember that Wendel made a video about these cheap optane modules a while back.
The modules linked below are still availlable for purchase through Newegg, but it really does not make sense for me because I would need to pay a lot of money to ship those from the USA and pay the 24% import tax/VAT on those modules.
I was wondering if anyone else has any ideas or thoughts on this subject?
For L2ARC, capacity is king. 32GB isn’t capacity. And those old 32GB sticks (I think they were called H10 and should be listed at Intel Ark) really suck at bandwidth…they will slow down your pool more than accelerating.
Just get a 1-2TB NVMe locally and you’re fine. Best bang for the buck. No import VAT, no customs, no disappointment.
And don’t forget to enable persistent L2ARC and tune parameters if using both L2ARC and special vdev at the same time.
