[GTALUG] Booting Fedora from M.2 Optane Nvme

[Russell]

On March 19, 2018 2:23:31 PM EDT, lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca wrote:
>On Mon, Mar 19, 2018 at 01:55:56PM -0400, Russell wrote:
>> I wouldn't recommend it commercially or for production, but personal
>privacy may take a lot of different forms and methods. In a sense
>nonstandard can be a good thing. 
>> 
>> There is a pcie adapter for M.2 so I imagine that some amount of
>removal and insertion is built into the lifespan of the product, albeit
>without warranty of purpose.
>
>I would not be surprised if the M.2 connector has a rating of 50
>insertions.  It is obviously designed for internal use and not frequent
>changes.

Probably the same with the pcie cards, but if the data backups for offsite (personal data) are once or twice a year, with carefull handling the card could probably last a generation.
 
>
>> In fact I just wanted to look at a measure of cache performance
>mitigations for now. 
>> 
>> Onboard recovery OS or, deposit box storage of the card w/os & data,
>are just a way of self justifing the cost of playing around with Linux
>and perhaps extending the scope of my tinkering. 
>> 
>> Externals are possibly subject to theft, loss and impact damage from
>falling off the desk. Stuff attached on the inside of the box, is just
>a bit more inconvienent to access and that makes it a little more
>physically secure.
>> 
>> Three second delay for bios and three more seconds to login prompt,
>pretty much changed my mind about useage of this card. 
>
>If only the BIOS could be faster.

Actually the three seconds is the delay to allow the user to hit F2 to enter bios. Could probably reduce that to one, I'll have to check that.

>
>> I'll probably use it as my primary drive for the time being. There is
>an apparent improvement in browsing the web. Seems like pages load
>faster than on the SSD, but that may just be wishfull thinking.
>> 
>> All in good fun. 
>
>Well some browsers do like to maintain their state in databases in your
>home directory so a fast disk sure could help.

Sure seems to. I had intended to put in a larger SATA platter and move my old data onto it. I think now I'll wait a bit longer and see where the CAD vs. tech price point ends up over the next little while and go directly to nvme. 

That is hoping the dollar doesn't tank any further (unlikely), the loonie hasn't been this low in quite a while and also that the bitcoiners stop buying out the stock (also unlikely) but we'll see.

>
>-- 
>Len Sorensen

-- 
Russell