3.2TB SSD for $240

They should work in an x4 slot (assuming it fits), but only be running at x4. They should work fine in a x16 slot as well. Heck, I've got a x16 video card that runs in an x8 slot in my server (Dell R710 if you want to look it up) at x8 speeds after cutting a gap in the end of the slot.

well if you look at what gigabyte did, they gave each slot a full length capability https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/X399-AORUS-Gaming-7-rev-10#kf But they run at 16, 8, 4, 16, 8 if I recall, the middle one goes through the chipset.

So while it would fit I don’t know if it would run or how much speed loss it would suffer.

I used the 16 and 8 slots, I‘ll only try it if temps are an issue.
 
well if you look at what gigabyte did, they gave each slot a full length capability https://www.gigabyte.com/us/Motherboard/X399-AORUS-Gaming-7-rev-10#kf But they run at 16, 8, 4, 16, 8 if I recall, the middle one goes through the chipset.

So while it would fit I don’t know if it would run or how much speed loss it would suffer.

I used the 16 and 8 slots, I‘ll only try it if temps are an issue.

These use a physical x8 slot, but only run at PCI-E 2 x4 speeds. So it'll fit in x8 or x16.
 
These use a physical x8 slot, but only run at PCI-E 2 x4 speeds. So it'll fit in x8 or x16.

While I know they’ll work in the 8 and 16x slots, I’m pretty sure the 4x slot is only wired as 4x despite being 16x length. If it needs all the connectioms of the 8x pinout then it wouldn’t work in that slot. Like I said I only wanted to use that slot for thermal purposes but as long as everything is OK temp wise it doesn’t matter too much.
 
While I know they’ll work in the 8 and 16x slots, I’m pretty sure the 4x slot is only wired as 4x despite being 16x length. If it needs all the connectioms of the 8x pinout then it wouldn’t work in that slot. Like I said I only wanted to use that slot for thermal purposes but as long as everything is OK temp wise it doesn’t matter too much.
The 3.2 TB drives only use 4x - which is good for a theoretical 2,000MB sec. (Which is faster than these drives operate).

IIRC the 6.4TB drives use 8x.

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Bootable???

I ended up making an offer and getting one of the newer SX300 versions. Haven't received it yet, but downloaded the whole driver/firmware/manuals from Western Digital. They tried to obfuscate the firmware file by giving it a random file extension, but it's just a regular zip file. So when I open the zip, low and behold there's a bunch of uefi ROMs. A quick google search leads to:
"Well, with UEFI, you can boot from the ioDrive2, but we never fully supported the feature. It does exist though and does work."
"when you flash it, there's a flag like --enable-uefi or something, but it's not documented."
https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...o-iodrive-2-1-2tb-reference-page.11287/page-5

Anyone want to check it out and provide feedback?
 

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Got mine and it looks OK. Only 64.81% remaining. Wish it was higher, but it should be fine for a game drive. Speeds are good with Seq reads at 1529.5 and writes at 1181.4. Unfortunately HDDsentinel doesn't seem to know about this type of drive and can't get any info from it so it looks like I can only monitor it via command line.
 
Side by side with the new one and the one I bought earlier, the 2nd one has 81% remaining too.

I'm going to try running the second drive in my ancient ESXi build, if I can get ESXi to detect then I should be able to run VMs directly from this.
 

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The drive arrived today and I installed it immediately. One thing I noticed it has two Unallocated spaces of 2048GB and 932.23GB. I can get the 2TB Unallocated space to format and cannot get the 932GB space to format. I tried extending the volume of the first and it was greyed out. Options for the second unallocated space were greyed out as well.
 
The drive arrived today and I installed it immediately. One thing I noticed it has two Unallocated spaces of 2048GB and 932.23GB. I can get the 2TB Unallocated space to format and cannot get the 932GB space to format. I tried extending the volume of the first and it was greyed out. Options for the second unallocated space were greyed out as well.

Try using the clean command in diskpart.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-clean-and-format-storage-drive-using-diskpart-windows-10
 
I see what it did. It was set as an MBR, which limited the size of the volume. I converted it and could format the entire drive. This drive has a little more than 81% left and performs about the same as the other results posted. I placed the drive in the second 16x slot on an Asus Strix X570-E motherboard and shows that slot providing up to 25 Watts of power. I will look in the BIOS to discover if I need to change settings for that particular expansion slot to increase the max power output to the recommended 75 Watts.
 
I see what it did. It was set as an MBR, which limited the size of the volume. I converted it and could format the entire drive. This drive has a little more than 81% left and performs about the same as the other results posted. I placed the drive in the second 16x slot on an Asus Strix X570-E motherboard and shows that slot providing up to 25 Watts of power. I will look in the BIOS to discover if I need to change settings for that particular expansion slot to increase the max power output to the recommended 75 Watts.

did you find out about the 75W setting? I have an MSI Carbon x570 I was looking to do the same thing with...... Thanks!
 
I placed the drive in the second 16x slot on an Asus Strix X570-E motherboard and shows that slot providing up to 25 Watts of power. I will look in the BIOS to discover if I need to change settings for that particular expansion slot to increase the max power output to the recommended 75 Watts.

I have the ioScale in my second x16 slot too. There wasn't a BIOS setting for increased power on my TUF X570-Plus. I just did the 75W override commands via terminal window and that worked to enable the full power range.
 
Got mine on Wednesday but didn't get a chance to put it in until this weekend. Only 59% life left on it which is pretty low compared to most of the others I've seen around, I also need to get a PCIE 1x Riser Cable for my sound card since my only 4X slot running at fullspeed disables the only 1x slot my sound card can sit in currently. Debating on RMA'ing it to see if I can get one with more life or just living with it.
 
Got mine on Wednesday but didn't get a chance to put it in until this weekend. Only 59% life left on it which is pretty low compared to most of the others I've seen around, I also need to get a PCIE 1x Riser Cable for my sound card since my only 4X slot running at fullspeed disables the only 1x slot my sound card can sit in currently. Debating on RMA'ing it to see if I can get one with more life or just living with it.

Second listing ended, meaning if you attempt an RMA, you're very likely going to be offered a refund, not a replacement.

Folks are getting too hung up on the life remaining on these drives. 59% of this drive left means you still have ~12PB of writes left. Consumer drives are much less than that. 100-300TB is probably normal. Even exaggerating that to 500TB for easy math, you've got 24 consumer SSD's worth of lifespan here.

EDIT: I see you ninja'd in a link where they have more. Since they keep running out and then relisting a few days later, my guess is what keeps getting relisted is drives like yours, ones that are getting returned due to a low lifespan. Why go though the trouble? Even if you do get a better drive, you're trading a drive you'll never see the EOL on for another drive you'll twice as never see the EOL on. Put it out of your mind and enjoy a great SSD.
 
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Viper22
A brand new Samsung 960 EVO NVME drive (very popular and highly recommended around here for an OS drive) is rated at 200TB endurance. I’ve never heard anyone talking about actually wearing one out. 200TB vs 20PB. Thats factor of 100.

So, you still have ~60 times that on your 59.6% life remaining Fusion I/O card.

If your used enterprise Fusion I/O card showed only 1% remaining life, it would be the same as a brand new Samsung 960 Evo NVME SSD at 200TB.


And as the manual says these drives are over-provisioned too which is why we saw one guys drive initially reading -6% endurance rating and still fully healthy. He asked for a exchange (reasonable request because the drive was already in the negative life remaining) and I think the seller just gave him a refund, IIRC.
 
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Viper22
A brand new Samsung 960 EVO NVME drive (very popular and highly recommended around here for an OS drive) is rated at 200TB endurance. I’ve never heard anyone talking about wearing one out or even concerned about the fear of such. 200TB vs 20PB. Thats factor of 100.

So, you still have ~60 times that on your 59.6% life remaining Fusion I/O card.

If your used enterprise Fusion I/O card showed only 1% remaining life, it would be the same as a brand new Samsung 960 Evo NVME SSD at 200TB.


And as the manual says these drives are over-provisioned too which is why we saw on guys drive initially reading -6% endurance rating and still fully healthy. He asked for a exchange (reasonable request because the drive was already in the negative life remaining) and I think the seller just gave him a refund, IIRC.
People always worrying about the life of a SSD around here. SSD are more likely due to the controller dying long before the nand. People really do need to chill out about it.
 
Got one coming for $215. Going to make this my game drive and retire my 3TB spinner.
 
my servers are out of slots and i give up trying to notch the pcie slot ends, it always winds up with 1 to 3 pins getting mangle and barley being able to straighten them. i just need an epyc boards and CPUs now. that or place my RAID 10s on my H700 series dell raid cards. 5.6tb to 2.9tb though, idk how much of an upgrade that would even be.
 
$215 offer was accepted last week. (Turned down $200.) Got the drive on Saturday. 86% remaining. Installed in my old Asus Z97 and it benches just like all of the other drives in the thread. Moved all my game installs over. Thanks OP and everyone who tested these. I am a happy camper!
 
This may be a stupid question, but considering the first gen PCIe storage setup, I'm just not sure:

Can this be moved between machines (specifically Win7 to Win10) without losing the data? I know the raw data in the flash is safe, obviously, but when it goes to a new box, will the system see the partitions and GPT created on the old one?

I'll be using mine as a game drive and other storage on my current system and once the CPU for the new one arrives, (ETA: many moons; get it together, Intel), I want to just move it right over like any other drive without needing to worry about a very long network backup-recovery process.
 
Damn that's a good price on those 6.4s... if I hadn't gotten a 3.2 I would have jumped on that. My game library is still less than 1tb though.
 
This may be a stupid question, but considering the first gen PCIe storage setup, I'm just not sure:

Can this be moved between machines (specifically Win7 to Win10) without losing the data? I know the raw data in the flash is safe, obviously, but when it goes to a new box, will the system see the partitions and GPT created on the old one?

I'll be using mine as a game drive and other storage on my current system and once the CPU for the new one arrives, (ETA: many moons; get it together, Intel), I want to just move it right over like any other drive without needing to worry about a very long network backup-recovery process.
I don't see why it would be a problem, Windows 10 can read GPT and partitions from Windows 7. The only thing you would have to be careful about it ensuring you installed the proper fio driver (links in this thread) for Windows 10. But the driver install shouldn't wipe the drive, so all your data should be there still.
 
Got the 3.2, then saw the post for the 6.4. Sold the 3.2 to a friend, and got the 6.4 for $425. Different drivers than the 3.2, but you can use the same Dell site to get them without having to register. http://dell-support.sandisk.com/ Mine came at 89.36% remaining. The 3.2 and the 6.4 CANNOT be used together in the same system. Speeds are outstanding, I'm getting 2908 MB/s read and 2604 MB/s write, using a x8 slot. However, it runs MUCH hotter than the 3.2. About 68c at idle. The drive suddenly shut down after gaming for about 40 minutes, so I guess it hit 84c. Disappeared from my system, so I rebooted. On boot, it ran a check on the drive for about 10 minutes, during which time, the PC was unusable. Very annoying. Any thoughts on cooling? To put heatsinks on each chip would be about $40, not counting the controller, so I really don't want to go that route. Not sure about fitting/ securing a fan underneath my GPU. Solutions? Thanks guys!
 
Got the 3.2, then saw the post for the 6.4. Sold the 3.2 to a friend, and got the 6.4 for $425. Different drivers than the 3.2, but you can use the same Dell site to get them without having to register. http://dell-support.sandisk.com/ Mine came at 89.36% remaining. The 3.2 and the 6.4 CANNOT be used together in the same system. Speeds are outstanding, I'm getting 2908 MB/s read and 2604 MB/s write, using a x8 slot. However, it runs MUCH hotter than the 3.2. About 68c at idle. The drive suddenly shut down after gaming for about 40 minutes, so I guess it hit 84c. Disappeared from my system, so I rebooted. On boot, it ran a check on the drive for about 10 minutes, during which time, the PC was unusable. Very annoying. Any thoughts on cooling? To put heatsinks on each chip would be about $40, not counting the controller, so I really don't want to go that route. Not sure about fitting/ securing a fan underneath my GPU. Solutions? Thanks guys!

Something like this above and/or below. There are a whole lot of different PCI-E slot coolers on ebay. This selection is just for an idea. I have no experience with any of them:

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/222560654024

Or


https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/162967155016
 
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I'm hearing several people say they are getting forced to a drive check on boot sometimes with this drive. My concern is in rare instances my system may crash if I reboot am I going to be stuck in 5+ minute check at boot? is this something that can be skipped?
 
Got the 3.2, then saw the post for the 6.4. Sold the 3.2 to a friend, and got the 6.4 for $425. Different drivers than the 3.2, but you can use the same Dell site to get them without having to register. http://dell-support.sandisk.com/ Mine came at 89.36% remaining. The 3.2 and the 6.4 CANNOT be used together in the same system. Speeds are outstanding, I'm getting 2908 MB/s read and 2604 MB/s write, using a x8 slot. However, it runs MUCH hotter than the 3.2. About 68c at idle. The drive suddenly shut down after gaming for about 40 minutes, so I guess it hit 84c. Disappeared from my system, so I rebooted. On boot, it ran a check on the drive for about 10 minutes, during which time, the PC was unusable. Very annoying. Any thoughts on cooling? To put heatsinks on each chip would be about $40, not counting the controller, so I really don't want to go that route. Not sure about fitting/ securing a fan underneath my GPU. Solutions? Thanks guys!

Probably could zip tie some extra case fans to it if you have some.
 
I bought this drive and it seemed to be running fine. However, I have now found through trial and error that the 3.2 TB drive is somehow preventing Windows from restarting OR shutting down (I found this out conducting a hard power cycle and skipping the Fusion IO drive integrity check. After logging in, I was able to immediately restart, skip the check again, log in, and then shut down with no issue. Then I turned on the computer, allowed the integrity check to proceed, and tried to restart or shutdown to no avail). To add further detail, when I click shutdown or restart, the computer just sits there with the mouse and hour glass constantly flashing. Windows Event Logger/Viewer records that my computer failed to shutdown or restart.

I'm running Windows 7 on a z97 board. Any thoughts? Would PCIe slot power be the culprit? Or do I have a bad drive?
 
I'm hearing several people say they are getting forced to a drive check on boot sometimes with this drive. My concern is in rare instances my system may crash if I reboot am I going to be stuck in 5+ minute check at boot? is this something that can be skipped?

It can be skipped but you won't be able to mount it till it does run a check. You can boot in and run the check while in the OS with fio-attach, that's what I've been doing in cases of crashes.
 
Got mine today and installed (from the latest SuperMicro batch):

95.64%! Whee!

Weekend chore will be to migrate the 300GB Steam library...
 
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