It would be kind of an awkward to adapt a new and fast NVME drive to a clunky old SATA controller. M.2 conversions would typically not have the physical space required for any active conversion circuitry, and it would be more expensive than buying a SATA drive. If you've got a full 2.5" bay, you can get native 2.5" consumer SATA SSDs up to 16TB... which is more than I want to read/write at SATA3 speeds. And if you want to take advantage of fast storage, you can just skip the whole SATA controller and use PCIE.
In an enterprise environment, nobody is really hooking up fast new storage to old slow storage controllers. They are either maintaining old systems, where they will use the legacy storage technologies, or they are deploying entirely new systems.
Yeah, there is very little reason to want to do this. It may become more of an issue if new SATA/SAS drives stop being produced anymore for maintaining those legacy systems - but at that point something based on an FPGA (as was suggested in another comment) is probably going to be more economic than a company bothering to spin an ASIC for the purpose. But I don't see SATA drives dying out for a fair while yet.
> Since (M.2) NVMe to USB adapters exist, protocol conversion is certainly possible, and since such adapters are surprisingly inexpensive, presumably there's enough demand to drive down the price of the underlying controller chipsets.
> (These chipsets are, for example, the Realtek RTL9210B-CG or the ASMedia ASM3242.)
The NVMe to USB adapters aren't converting the NVMe protocol to another disk access protocol. They are USB3-connected PCIe endpoints, which allow the PCIe NVMe drive to connect to the host as an NVMe device.
This isn't equivalent to the protocol conversion the author is seeking, which would accept SATA commands on one end and translate them to NVMe on the other end. I would actually call that SATA drive emulation, not protocol conversion, as SATA and NVMe aren't 1:1 such that you can convert SATA commands into NVMe commands and vice versa.
This is an RTL9210B NVMe enclosure. It's a UAS device (and I believe it supports BOT too.)
I have not examined this in much detail but I believe these converter ICs are actually rather powerful SoCs with PCIe host, SATA host, and USB device peripherals. The existence of firmware (several hundred KB!) for them is further evidence of this fact.
I don't believe this is true. Something like thunderbolt could allow this but the cheap commonly available ones "simply" appear as a USB disk and can't use any of the NVMe specific features like HMB, can't be secure erased with nvme-cli, etc. Lack of HMB support is a particularly painful limitation these days as dram isn't available on most new drives.
Writing SATA to NVME adapter is nonsensical endeavor. It is as writing RoCE to HTTPS adapter. Makes no sense at all. And im not even talking about voltages etc.
Any NVME disk can be connected even over PCIE3 x1 so there is plenty of capability on DESKTOP computers he is "managing".
And what is he writing and how is he writing it is unbelievable that he can not seem to understand what SAS expander is etc.
> there also doesn't currently seem to be any high capacity M.2 SATA SSDs
I have a high capacity M.2 SATA in my computer. It's 4TB which I think qualifies for high. I bought it because I found out about that empty slot in my computer and wanted to fill it, not because of a particular need. Having a rare part in my computer gives me an indescribable sense of joy. And don't worry it's entirely used for extra redundancy so I won't lose data even if it dies.
I think You're looking for something called a "tri-mode HBA." They run about $200 on ebay and as you mentioned- the m.2 to u.2, u.3, etc is passive (minus power)
That's not really a M.2 nvme to sata converter though. That's just something that can take pci-e lanes and either give them to nvme drives through a pci-e multiplexer or convert the pci-e lanes to saas or sata. It also isn't passive, there's lots of processors to make it happen.
Oddly enough, I bought a bunch of M.2 format adapter things from the overseas fleamarket. One includes 9 SATA ports in a 2280 form factor. I've also seen PCIe x8/x16 expansion boards that connect via M.2.
If I had transfinite funds, I would make a video about turning a dual socket motherboard+CPU combination with the most PCIe lanes with the goal to connect maximum GPUs via Thunderbolt 4 hubs and enclosures, PCIe bifurcation cards, and M.2-to-PCIe adapters (whichever method maximizes GPU count) all powered by many PSUs.
Honestly I don't quite get why they do have a problem here.
That chassis sports a proper 16-port SAS backplane so they can just use... SAS drives?
Sure, SAS 7.68Tb drives cost a bit more than some shit like 870 QVO 8Tb SATA drive, but:
you will have at least 12Gbps instead of 6Gbps of bandwidth so your storage would be faster;
you will not have a shitshow of STP so your storage would be faster;
you will not have a USB thumbdrive speeds if you exhaust the SLC cache so your storage would be faster;
you will have a better DWPD (1 vs 0.3) so your storage would be faster for a longer time.
But okay, even if you don't go the SAS way... I'm again not sure what is going on here, but besides 870 EVO (desktop SATA QLC shit) there are Kingston DC600M, Solidigm D3-S4520 and Samsung PM893 which are the enterprise SATA drives and they cost only 10% more than 870 EVO (and only 10% less than Kioxia PM6-R SAS).
Oh, by the way: don't do U.2 in 2025 and later. It would bite you later.
his article does not make sense at all. i do not ... know why it is even here and why some other commenters are inserting additional "points" to that article just to make it seem sane. :)
Yeah, it explains why I can't buy one of these. Now, what I am puzzled by is why none of the various PCIe (standard form factor) cards that offer m.2 nvme slots on them will work with any of my older computers; they have PCIe lanes to spare but I suppose the system firmware itself just doesn't know what to do with them.
kube-system|6 months ago
In an enterprise environment, nobody is really hooking up fast new storage to old slow storage controllers. They are either maintaining old systems, where they will use the legacy storage technologies, or they are deploying entirely new systems.
aidenn0|6 months ago
1. I already had a 2.5" hotswap setup
2. 2.5" 8TB SSDs are 4x as expensive as 8TB NVMEs.
A: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertaking...
stephen_g|6 months ago
Aurornis|6 months ago
> (These chipsets are, for example, the Realtek RTL9210B-CG or the ASMedia ASM3242.)
The NVMe to USB adapters aren't converting the NVMe protocol to another disk access protocol. They are USB3-connected PCIe endpoints, which allow the PCIe NVMe drive to connect to the host as an NVMe device.
This isn't equivalent to the protocol conversion the author is seeking, which would accept SATA commands on one end and translate them to NVMe on the other end. I would actually call that SATA drive emulation, not protocol conversion, as SATA and NVMe aren't 1:1 such that you can convert SATA commands into NVMe commands and vice versa.
userbinator|6 months ago
No?
https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/framework3/ori...
This is an RTL9210B NVMe enclosure. It's a UAS device (and I believe it supports BOT too.)
I have not examined this in much detail but I believe these converter ICs are actually rather powerful SoCs with PCIe host, SATA host, and USB device peripherals. The existence of firmware (several hundred KB!) for them is further evidence of this fact.
jonbiggums22|6 months ago
yummypaint|6 months ago
IgnaciusMonk|6 months ago
Any NVME disk can be connected even over PCIE3 x1 so there is plenty of capability on DESKTOP computers he is "managing".
And what is he writing and how is he writing it is unbelievable that he can not seem to understand what SAS expander is etc.
kccqzy|6 months ago
I have a high capacity M.2 SATA in my computer. It's 4TB which I think qualifies for high. I bought it because I found out about that empty slot in my computer and wanted to fill it, not because of a particular need. Having a rare part in my computer gives me an indescribable sense of joy. And don't worry it's entirely used for extra redundancy so I won't lose data even if it dies.
aidenn0|6 months ago
SteveNuts|6 months ago
Just make sure to still back up the data!
cbhl|6 months ago
privatelypublic|6 months ago
rmb938|6 months ago
unknown|6 months ago
[deleted]
anon6362|6 months ago
If I had transfinite funds, I would make a video about turning a dual socket motherboard+CPU combination with the most PCIe lanes with the goal to connect maximum GPUs via Thunderbolt 4 hubs and enclosures, PCIe bifurcation cards, and M.2-to-PCIe adapters (whichever method maximizes GPU count) all powered by many PSUs.
justsomehnguy|6 months ago
That chassis sports a proper 16-port SAS backplane so they can just use... SAS drives?
Sure, SAS 7.68Tb drives cost a bit more than some shit like 870 QVO 8Tb SATA drive, but:
you will have at least 12Gbps instead of 6Gbps of bandwidth so your storage would be faster;
you will not have a shitshow of STP so your storage would be faster;
you will not have a USB thumbdrive speeds if you exhaust the SLC cache so your storage would be faster;
you will have a better DWPD (1 vs 0.3) so your storage would be faster for a longer time.
But okay, even if you don't go the SAS way... I'm again not sure what is going on here, but besides 870 EVO (desktop SATA QLC shit) there are Kingston DC600M, Solidigm D3-S4520 and Samsung PM893 which are the enterprise SATA drives and they cost only 10% more than 870 EVO (and only 10% less than Kioxia PM6-R SAS).
Oh, by the way: don't do U.2 in 2025 and later. It would bite you later.
IgnaciusMonk|6 months ago
his article does not make sense at all. i do not ... know why it is even here and why some other commenters are inserting additional "points" to that article just to make it seem sane. :)
timzaman|6 months ago
mikestorrent|6 months ago
Maybe I need to use a little sata SSD as /boot?
lostmsu|6 months ago
IgnaciusMonk|6 months ago
[deleted]
tomhow|6 months ago
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
CyberDildonics|6 months ago