[PLUG] Need new solid state drives

John Jason Jordan johnxj at gmx.com
Tue Sep 29 01:41:30 UTC 2020


On Thu, 24 Sep 2020 11:12:14 -0700
John Jason Jordan <johnxj at gmx.com> dijo:

>Another possibility is to ditch the M.2 connectors and use U.2 drives
>instead. There are a couple of 12TB U.2 drives on the market, but they
>are Really Expensive and there are no Thunderbolt 3 enclosures on the
>market that can take more than one. It appears that U.2 connectors may
>eventually replace M.2 connectors, but it will be at least a couple of
>years before that even starts to happen. An advantage of U.2 is that
>the drives commonly connect with a cable, much like SATA drives in a
>desktop computer, so there are more options for location.

I almost have success. Sonnet makes a PCIe 3x16 card that can hold two
U.2 drives right on the card, and there exist Thunderbolt 3 enclosures
that can take three of these cards. Unfortunately, the enclosure made by
Sonnet is out of stock. There is also one from Netstor (NA211TB3), but
it is available from only one vendor, and their Buy Now button says the
order cannot be canceled and returns are not accepted (no thanks). I did
order two of the Sonnet cards, so I can hold four U.2 drives if I can
ever buy a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure to hold them.

More importantly, I found and purchased four brand new Intel P4610
7.68TB U.2 drives for $900 each. These are Intel's latest model, and
have excellent specifications, plus they are on Sonnet's approved list
for the PCI cards that I bought.



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