Not a tech supp. question: M.2 drive slowing down entire PC when transferring files (anyone else?)

[Tesityr]

This is not a Tech Support question - and by that I mean, I don't need anything 'solved' or don't need help with it really - I am just curious if anyone else has run into this issue with these 'newer' drives. Just wondering...

As a treat for myself, with Xmas money I purchased an NVME m.2 drive (little stick of gum size drive that is mostly just computer chips that you plug directly into the mobo). It is supposed to be faster than SSD drives (and it is!) - but my issue is, that when I transfer files thrhough it, or install large programs (eg. games) it slows down my ENTIRE PC lol as in, I cannot do anything else barely, everything takes a long time to respond to clicks, etc. It's like the process 'takes over' the entire system it makes me laugh a bit each time this happens.

Now I know you guys are helpful, and I appreciate there is a Tech Support area (Steam) but I don't really need this 'solved' per se; I am just curious if this is a common thing, or if other people have run into this.

I've run Benchmarks on it and it runs great, much faster than my platter drive (HDD) or my SSD drive. It seems to work fine. Windows starts in like 10 seconds (I used to wait minutes on end when Windows was on my platter/mechanical drive). I'm happy with it - I'm just wondering if this is a 'normal' thing.
If it isn't and everyone says that is wackoshmacko, I'll look into it sometime (Troublehsoot, look for help sometime), but for now I'm just more or less taking a poll I guess... and since it's not directly related to any one game, I figured OT is ok to put this into ((Mods, please feel free to move this if you think it is warranted, I do not want to offend))

Thanks for any input

[Electric Cupcake]

Are you transferring a small quantity of very large files or many small files?

[Autumn_]

Originally posted by Tesityr:

This is not a Tech Support question - and by that I mean, I don't need anything 'solved' or don't need help with it really - I am just curious if anyone else has run into this issue with these 'newer' drives. Just wondering...

As a treat for myself, with Xmas money I purchased an NVME m.2 drive (little stick of gum size drive that is mostly just computer chips that you plug directly into the mobo). It is supposed to be faster than SSD drives (and it is!) - but my issue is, that when I transfer files thrhough it, or install large programs (eg. games) it slows down my ENTIRE PC lol as in, I cannot do anything else barely, everything takes a long time to respond to clicks, etc. It's like the process 'takes over' the entire system it makes me laugh a bit each time this happens.

Now I know you guys are helpful, and I appreciate there is a Tech Support area (Steam) but I don't really need this 'solved' per se; I am just curious if this is a common thing, or if other people have run into this.

I've run Benchmarks on it and it runs great, much faster than my platter drive (HDD) or my SSD drive. It seems to work fine. Windows starts in like 10 seconds (I used to wait minutes on end when Windows was on my platter/mechanical drive). I'm happy with it - I'm just wondering if this is a 'normal' thing.
If it isn't and everyone says that is wackoshmacko, I'll look into it sometime (Troublehsoot, look for help sometime), but for now I'm just more or less taking a poll I guess... and since it's not directly related to any one game, I figured OT is ok to put this into ((Mods, please feel free to move this if you think it is warranted, I do not want to offend))

Thanks for any input :crt:

If you're transferring a lot of data, and your OS is on that drive, it's going to take a while to respond because all of it's bandwidth is being used.
Just the same as any other drive.

It's like trying to drive down a backed up motorway - You're not going to get far, because it's already full.
Whereas, if there's a few people (normal useage / gaming), then you're going to get very far, very quickly.

Just a quick correction though.
NVMe drives are still SSDs, just as USB sticks are also SSDs.
They're just different speeds, controllers, interface, and if they have a cache or not.

Because NVMes use PCI-e, they have MUCH more bandwidth to play with (1970MB/s to 7876MB/s, depending on how many lanes it uses, and what PCI-e version it uses.) Compared to a SATA SSD, which is limited, to you guessed it, SATA3 speeds (~600MB/s)

Though, I really doubt you're going to fully saturate an NVMe just by installing a game. Because your internet wouldn't be able to keep up.
What CPU do you have?

Edit ; for some reason there were 2 quotes, I removed one.

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

File transfer will be limited to the slowest component whether it be a mechanical/SATA SSD drive or the Internet to the NVMe drive, but it should not slow down the entire system. A lot of the normal operations of Windows is cached in RAM so disk file transfers should not impact it. Something else is going on.
Also once the file transfer is initiated, the disks talk directly to each other instead of going through the middle man.

[Tesityr]

Originally posted by Hugsie Muffinball:

Are you transferring a small quantity of very large files or many small files?

I was just expecting 'it's crazy' or 'yah that happens', thanks for your interest; using Crystal Disk Mark, it is virtually the same either way (making it test multiple times with small size, or 1-2 times with large size).

[Tesityr]

Originally posted by Autumn:

If you're transferring a lot of data, and your OS is on that drive, it's going to take a while to respond because all of it's bandwidth is being used.
Just the same as any other drive.

It's like trying to drive down a backed up motorway - You're not going to get far, because it's already full.
Whereas, if there's a few people (normal useage / gaming), then you're going to get very far, very quickly.

Just a quick correction though.
NVMe drives are still SSDs, just as USB sticks are also SSDs.
They're just different speeds, controllers, interface, and if they have a cache or not.

Because NVMes use PCI-e, they have MUCH more bandwidth to play with (1970MB/s to 7876MB/s, depending on how many lanes it uses, and what PCI-e version it uses.) Compared to a SATA SSD, which is limited, to you guessed it, SATA3 speeds (~600MB/s)

Though, I really doubt you're going to fully saturate an NVMe just by installing a game. Because your internet wouldn't be able to keep up.
What CPU do you have?

Edit ; for some reason there were 2 quotes, I removed one.

What a lot of great info - thanks for your input. I didn't want to bother people too much with 'troubleshooting' it, but I have an Intel 9400f, so 'midrange' I think?

I was thinking like you, that it shouldn't be 'that' slow - heck I could do more at the same time of transferring files, when I had an SSD drive as my OS drive (thanks for the clarification, I should have said PCIe in there somewhere maybe, heh) - I was wondering overall if it was a 'normal' happening for these drives.

[Tesityr]

Originally posted by Spec_Ops_Ape:

File transfer will be limited to the slowest component whether it be a mechanical/SATA SSD drive or the Internet to the NVMe drive, but it should not slow down the entire system. A lot of the normal operations of Windows is cached in RAM so disk file transfers should not impact it. Something else is going on.
Also once the file transfer is initiated, the disks talk directly to each other instead of going through the middle man.

This is what I thought - that it should not bother Windows quite so much (eg. browsing the internet while transferring files/installing something). Thanks for your input.

[Autumn_]

Originally posted by Tesityr:

Originally posted by Autumn:

If you're transferring a lot of data, and your OS is on that drive, it's going to take a while to respond because all of it's bandwidth is being used.
Just the same as any other drive.

It's like trying to drive down a backed up motorway - You're not going to get far, because it's already full.
Whereas, if there's a few people (normal useage / gaming), then you're going to get very far, very quickly.

Just a quick correction though.
NVMe drives are still SSDs, just as USB sticks are also SSDs.
They're just different speeds, controllers, interface, and if they have a cache or not.

Because NVMes use PCI-e, they have MUCH more bandwidth to play with (1970MB/s to 7876MB/s, depending on how many lanes it uses, and what PCI-e version it uses.) Compared to a SATA SSD, which is limited, to you guessed it, SATA3 speeds (~600MB/s)

Though, I really doubt you're going to fully saturate an NVMe just by installing a game. Because your internet wouldn't be able to keep up.
What CPU do you have?

Edit ; for some reason there were 2 quotes, I removed one.

What a lot of great info - thanks for your input. I didn't want to bother people too much with 'troubleshooting' it, but I have an Intel 9400f, so 'midrange' I think?

I was thinking like you, that it shouldn't be 'that' slow - heck I could do more at the same time of transferring files, when I had an SSD drive as my OS drive (thanks for the clarification, I should have said PCIe in there somewhere maybe, heh) - I was wondering overall if it was a 'normal' happening for these drives.

Well, if something isn't working like it should, it should be fixed.
And it's no bother, because I'm learning at the same time, it's killing 2 birds with one stone.

9400F shouldn't have any issues with unpacking games that are being downloaded.

I'll look into this a bit later, because I'm busy at the moment.

[_I_]

update bios
make sure the m.2 slot is configured as nvme not sata/pci

[emoticorpse]

My entire pc doesn't slow down when I copy from m.2 to hdd and I constantly transter 100gb+ over. Stays just as responsive and it's usually is.

[Tesityr]

Originally posted by _I_:

update bios
make sure the m.2 slot is configured as nvme not sata/pci

Thanks for that, I did that; the Gigabyte BIOS reports it detected as is "NVME". It doesn't state any "channels" though, oddly. Lots of people in other forums says "check for PCIe 4", etc

[Tesityr]

Originally posted by emoticorpse:

My entire pc doesn't slow down when I copy from m.2 to hdd and I constantly transter 100gb+ over. Stays just as responsive and it's usually is.

Thanks for your reporting in, heh. That's what I was wondering... It is 'fast' but something 'takes over' the entire thing and everything in Windows is slowwwww. Thinking about it again, I wonder if it could be the mainboard because of that...

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

Even though Windows has its own, the drive manufacturer may have released NVMe drivers. I know Samsung does. If you haven't already.

Originally posted by Tesityr:

Thanks for that, I did that; the Gigabyte BIOS reports it detected as is "NVME". It doesn't state any "channels" though, oddly. Lots of people in other forums says "check for PCIe 4", etc

There are no channels as such. Intel does not do PCIe 4.0 yet so you would be checking to make sure the board is set to Gen3 but if you have no such options then the board will be using auto-detect.