While still a beast my main system is getting a bit long in the tooth in some aspects. One of those is my M.2 PCIe SSD slots. There are two slots but one is a later PCIe generation being PCIe Gen3. The other is only PCIe Gen2. Quite a while back I went from 512GB on my system drive to 1TB. Since I prefer to do clone backups instead of images I got 2 drives. Problem arose due to the new drives being PCIe Gen4 which is totally fine in my PCIe Gen3 slot but the PCIe Gen2 slot can't see the new drives. Even though I can't use one of the drives I got them cheap enough that I kept both. The second is a backup if ever needed or both will be used in eventual new build.

Problem is that I can't do clone backups. I DO have an internal spin drive for doing images but I prefer to clone. One reason that I'd rather clone is that, using M.2 PCIe SS drives it is quick and my system drive is currently 607GB used space. Even using an internal spin drive doing an image or clone takes quite a while and I can clone in ~10-12 minutes. The other reason I prefer cloning is that, if the system drive fails, I just change the boot order to go to the clone, without a lot of performance loss, and replace the failed drive and clone back. Of course I could do this by cloning to theinternal spin drive I use for images but would see a performance loss. Also could not play one of my 'big' games, Baldur's Gate 3, which requires to be installed on an SSD.

So I finally broke down this morning and ordered a new PCIe Gen3 drive to be the clone backup. The Gen2 slot should see the Gen3 drive fine as the original 512 drives are Gen3. Here is what I got. Got it for $62.99.
https://www.newegg.com/western-digital-1tb-green-sn350-nvme/p/N82E16820250202?Item=N82E16820250202

BTW, when installing the Gen4 SSD I discovered a bit of a trick. I no longer try to use the tiny mounting screw to hold down an M.2 drive. Since I have an aquarium I have a tube of aquatic silicone. A little dab of silicone where the mounting screw would go and a light weight to hold the drive down and it holds fine without trying to find the itty bitty screw when dropped. Works fine and just have to leave the system on its side until the silicone sets. Another tip is mounting putty, the stuff you might use to stick a poster on a wall. A little dab on the screw head will hold the screw on the driver. Personally I prefer the silicone as, over time, the putty will harden in the screw slots and you can't get it all out. The silicone easily pops loose and just peels off the drive.

May seem like there is some waste as to drives, such as the currently unused 1TB Gen4 drive, but it will all work out in the end as, when I eventually do a new build, the 2 Gen4 drives will go in the new build and my current main system will become my backup system in my bedroom with the Gen3 drive as system. While I DO use the bedroom system for watching movies while in bed the main purpose is as a networked system to backup my data and media drives which are the same between the two. Especially as to videos a backup of my media is a must as I have over 6TB of titles between 6 & 4TB spin drives. If one of my media drives fails it will probably take days to restore to a new drive/s through my network but that is a lot better than taking literally years restoring from scratch.

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I like that silicone trick. And good price for that drive!

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Ya, the silicone works well. I just lay the system on its side and mount with a non-conductive light weight on the drive for a day to let the silicone fully set. System is still fully usable while the silicone is setting as the weight is non-conductive. The box just sits on my floor for a day instead of in its cubby but that is not an issue at all. Sort of over due as to pulling it out and cleaning anyway. I always run a desktop with the side cover off and electronics are a dust magnet so it does need cleaning now and then.

Also it will be nice to be able to do quick clone backups again. I DO have an external M.2 enclosure that works with the PCIe Gen4 drive but it is a USB3 connection so you can imagine how long a 600+GB backup would take. New drive should be here in 3-7 days. I get free shipping through New Egg but the delivery schedule leaves a range. Usually it is toward the lower time. Not totally sure why I get free shipping as I don't pay anything for 'special services' or anything but not going to gripe.

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600+GB over USB3 would be rather painful. I've done several hundred GB over a network connection that claims to support Gigabit and that's already painful.

I'd never complain about getting free shipping, either.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Like I said, free shipping is usually much quicker than what they allow especially when the item is sold and shipped by New Egg. Ordered on 2/11 which was a Sunday so doesn't count and tracking shows it arriving on 2/15. Can't complain about that kind of free shipping.

Here is the plan...
1) Of course pull the system out of its cubby and put on its side.
2) Mount the drive with silicone and weigh down the drive to allow the silicone to set.
3) Boot up right away as the system will be fully operational while the silicone sets.
4) Initialize the new drive in Drive Management and set to it being off-line.
5) Make the first clone and then change the boot to the new drive to test integrity.

Will probably be around a 30-40 minute process including doing the clone.

If one thinks my way of doing this kind of backup may raise some questions.

1) Q: Why not just setup a mirror R.A.I.D. array instead of manually doing clones? A: R.A.I.D. is fine except for system security/integrity. Say that my system get infected or an update breaks things. If I use a Mirror R.A.I.D array both drives are affected and I have a broken system. Going the clone route the drives are independent and I just boot to my True Image CD and do a clone in reverse to restore the actual system drive.

2) Q: Why would I set the clone drive to off-line in Drive Management? A: Protection for the clone drive. If there happens to be an infection this helps protect the clone backup as, if Windows can't access the drive, most infections also can't. This is probably not 100% but is another layer of protection/security. The version of True Image I use, 2018, is not actually on my system as I installed, made a boot CD and uninstalled. The boot CD I use is Linux based and will see the clone drive even though Windows won't. I do the same thing with my internal spin drive that I use for doing images but in a bit of a different way. Since the internal image drive is really just a partition on my data drive I can't set to off-line so I use Drive Management to just remove the drive letter. Does basically about the same but I doubt that it is as secure as setting to off-line. A side affect is that it makes 'This PC' less cluttered as these drives do not show. Has to be remembered that I have a LOT of drives.

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All done and 1st clone made.

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Just took a peek at something that I may find of interest. Since I went from 500GB system and clone M.2 drives to 1TB drives I now have 2 500GB M.2 drives not in use. I DO have a dual drive external M.2 enclosure but one of the enclosures slots is M.2 PCIe and the other is strictly M.2 SATA.

So, at best, I could make use of one of the 500GB drives in the enclosure which would be restricted to USB3 speeds. Enter PCIe1 slots of which I have two. Actually I also have unused PCIe16 Gen 2&3 slots not in use. On a whim I took a look at New Egg as to PCIe1 and PCIe16 cards that will hold an M.2 PCIe drive. These cards are the next thing to being free. A PCIe1 card is around only $5.00 USD and a PCIe16 card is still under $10,00 USD. I could spend around $10.00 USD on two of the PCIe1 cards and make use of both 500GB M.2 drives internally.

This is REALLY interesting as I could then use one of the 500GB drives as my data drive which only has 265GB used space since I killed my virtual machines and the other for my video conversions. The video conversions is the biggie as I currently use a 240GB SATA SSD for this. The processing time for videos would be drastically improved.

Going to think about this but will likely end up doing. I mean, why not? Dramatic video processing improvement and faster data access... for ~$10.00 bucks?

<edit>
Oh, BTW, my current data drive is 4TB spin but partitioned between data and internal system images. If I end up doing the adapter thing above I'd wipe the 4TB spin drive and dedicate it to just internal image backups. That way I could set the drive to be off-line in Windows giving a bit more security to my images than just running without a drive letter. Just not possible to set just a partition as off-line. It is an all or nothing type thing.

This is all sort of fun. I think it pretty well known that I like "playing" with a system and this presents another play aspect that I've never done and involves almost no cost.

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That sounds like a no-brainer to me, Jay. That $10 (or $20) would be very well spent.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"

Agreed. Just ordered one for $5.48 USD with free shipping. Just got one as I'm not really sure this card will work on my mother board. If it doesn't work I'm not really out anything.

https://www.temu.com/m-2-nvme-ssd-to-pcie-4-0-adapter-card-m-2-adapter-pcie-expansion-card-fast-adapter-mkey-for-size-2280-22110-2242-g-601099531074585.html

Not much to it really...

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Tracking shows that the interface card should be here Saturday 2/24. I'm sort of anxious as I really don't know if the card will work as it is stated as PCIe gen4 and my motherboard is PCIe gen 2&3 depending on the port used. I have 2-PCIe X1 ports that I THINK are 1-PCIe gen 3 with the other PCIe gen 2. I'm basing that on the ports color coding.

I'll try a 1TB NVMe M.2 drive in each PCIe X1 port to see what happens. I'll do the same with a 500 GB NVMe. If all goes as hoped the earlier generation 500 GB drive will work in what I believe to be a gen2 slot and the 1 TB drive will work in what I believe to be a gen 3 port. If this all works I'll order another interface card. I'm fairly certain that the earlier 500 GB drive will work but no clue as to the later 1 TB.

Sort of sorry about this post as it isn't needed but I think you know how anxious I get when waiting for something especially when it involves experimentation. Also it sort of serves as a help for my pathetic memory as to how I want to go about things.

Oh, if even just the 500 GB NVMe drive works out, it will become my video conversion drive doubling the size and dramatically increasing speed. The current 240 GB San Disk SATA drive currently used for video conversions would then probably become the system drive in an older Dell laptop running Linux Mint. On the Linux Dell a 240 GB system drive would be more than enough as Linux is just a 'toy' for me and doesn't need extensive storage space.

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ARG!!! USPS is messing with me! Yesterday, 2/21, tracking for the card showed 2/24. Looked this morning and tracking said that it was out for deliver so I like COOL, two days early. Mail arrives and no package so I check tracking and it, again, says 2/24. Grrr.

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Well the card does work but slowly. Probably due to the generation of my PCIe X1 slots... By slow I mean SATA SSD speeds. Still the 1TB M.2 drive is seen and usable.

I figure that I'll end up using the 1TB drive in the card and make it my data drive then wipe the data partition from the current spin drive that is partitioned for data/images. Then I will set what will then be a strictly image spin drive to off-line for added security. Using the PCIe X1 card with the 1TB drive will be faster than the current spin drive so all in all it will be an improvement and I'm not disappointed with the new card.

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Put the above on hold! I happen to have an open PCIe Gen 3 X16 slot open. I looked at it and, if you ignore most of the slot, the end by the back of the box looks very similar to an X1 slot. Knowing me it probably isn't a surprise that I tried plugging the new card into the X16 slot but without a drive mounted. The card has a little green LED to show that it is seen by the system and the LED lit up, the 1X card IS seen in the X16 slot. Not going to mount a drive this evening but the plot thickens... Still don't know if a drive mounted on the card will be seen in an X16 slot but I'm going to just have to try it out. If it works it is great as to my drive mounting but even better is that I'll have learned something new.

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All this fun and it comes with a screwdriver.

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I hear and I forget.
I see and I remember.
I do and I understand.

William A. Gustafson
I know I have forgotten more than I can ever hope to remember.

LOL! It would not be even possible to build a system without a screwdriver!

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I'll be danged, it worked! The PCIe X1 card is now in a PCIe Gen3 X16 slot with the 1TB Gen4 drive mounted and functioning. Speed is better than in the X1 slot but still slow compared to the other 1TB in an actual M.2 slot. They are the same drive as to make and model but with the X1 card I only get 905 MB/sec while the other gets 3654 MB/sec but I know why. The X1 slot is only 1 lane and the same in the X16 slot while the other is 4 lanes. Makes sense as take the 902 times 4 and it is very close to the higher speed. A similar card but for an X16 slot is less than $9.00 so I figure on getting one.

<edit>
Just ordered the X16 card. It was on sale from the same outfit for $3.98, $4.22 including tax. Hopefully going from X1 to X16 will give me 4 lanes...

https://www.temu.com/goods.html?_bg_fs=1&goods_id=601099531055197

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@ Steve: Earlier in this thread you said that you liked my solution on the tiny screws for an M.2 drive by using silicone. Well I discovered a better solution. A drop of Super Glue does the same without waiting for the silicone to set. One may think that Super Glue would be too permanent and you were stuck but not true. Quite a while back it was either here or on the aquarium forums I'm on when I presented a problem with using Super Glue as I wanted to undo. Someone brought up alcohol. I can't even remember what the problem was but alcohol actually makes Super Glue disappear like it was never there so removal is even easier than with silicone. Use a Q-tip with alcohol and the Super Glue is gone. Of course for this to all work you have to be careful with the application of the Super Glue to be sure to just use a minimum drop and to stay away from the actual screw threads but once using the glue you don't really even need the threads again.

As a side note: Super Glue is often used in aquariums to attach plants that should not actually be planted in the substrate and such to rocks, wood and even to use slate to build cave systems. It surprised me that Super Glue is totally aquarium safe.

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stephen boots
Microsoft MVP 2004 - 2020
"Life's always an adventure with computers!"